Brian Ridout had asked on the Imagine Mailing list about methods to
make the appearance of dried mud on a lakebed. I couldn't pass up the
temptation: I used Essence II to produce a dried mud appearance on a
flat plane. The mud is made with two textures; Vein3 (an Organic
texture) makes the random cracks, and Pitted adds a slight eroded
effect to give the surface some small scale roughness.

-Steve
spworleynetcom.com