Grass looks flat & 2d.

[yasickzagaria]

Hello guys, ive been practising alot of arch viz lately with vray. Im getting the hang of the lighting part however one thing that ruins all my renders is the grass.

 

I use vray 3 and the grass that comes with vray is excellent and simple to use, however when i render with it, it just looks flat, you cant tell the difference between any grass strands. It just looks 2d, so im thinking its the material, from my understanding i have to create a translucent material that lets the light go through?

 

Any tips at all would be muchly appreciate it, its been days of working without any progress.

 

ps, are there any programs out there that can create photo realistic grass with great materials for you? Maybe like AutoGrass? What would be the best software, because they all cost the same so im deciding which to go for, however i think that vray grass can also achieve a great results maybe im just doing something wrong.

 

Thanks guys.

[Corey Beaulieu]

I think that your render is on the right track. If you add a bit of AO or just a dirt pass to it I believe you will get the pop you are looking for.

 

As to the translucent material.... That would enhance the realism, but add a lot of render time. I would only suggest that for close up scenarios.

 

Lastly, I have used Forest Pack Pro to generate grass. You take a few objects that are modeled as grass, and let the plug-in randomize it over your terrain.

[yasickzagaria]

hmm thanks, close up its starting to look ok, not best but ok. But when i render it from far away all colours just blend into one constant colour, this grass issue is driving me nuts

[Janwalli]

I like to mix in real 3d grass, simply because most grass hair solutions tend to scatter single blades of grass - which is not the case in reality.

So I often mix those memory efficient hair/grass tools and then scatter some real 3D geometry "on top" of that.

[SkylineArch]

Ideally you want an actual image of grass in the diffuse of a Vray2Sided material "front" slot. I'm not sure what control you have over the Vray3 grass. I use modeled grass scattered on the mesh.