You can use a wide variety of aggregates to achieve a nice looking background. The material of choice is not so much the key ingredient to an authentic or natural looking background, it is the process and techniques used which allow you to achieve either a real or fake looking background.



One thing that I have noticed in most people's home made backgrounds, is that they take absolutely no consideration into what actually makes up a real rock escarpment or boulder. They make everything off the top of their head, without consulting photos of real formations. Most people often use square pieces of styrofoam, or unnatural shapes and contours, and then glop some sort of aggregate/adhesive on top of that, and leave it as is.



Real rocks have depressions, cracks, fissures, breaks, chips, stratification, variation in color, mineral leaching, etc.. From 99.9% of all the custom rock backgrounds that I've seen on this and other herp fora, nobody ever takes these important diagnostic characters of what makes up real rock, into consideration when designing and creating their own.



I always get a kick out of the people who say "look how naturalistic my enclosure is", and they have random rectangular shelves or platforms(covered in grout) protruding from the walls every now and then... not 'naturalistic' by any means. Usually the coloration looks very fake, or the rock is uniform in color...



There are many different techniques you can use to achieve an authentic look, but it all comes down to studying and visualizing what real rock looks like in person(or from a photo), and not what you think of it being off the top of your head...



Like I said before, materials are not what's important, as a good looking background can be handcrafted using many different materials, it is the technique and approach which determines how it looks in the end.



Good luck!



Bob




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Treemonitors.com

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