physical grass

[Sawyer]

Here is a little scene for testing your physical grass techniques on. I thought that the main needs with grass were to be able to avoid objects and that its not flat. Its pretty basic.

 

 

And here is a quick grass test using proxy painter. I have 4 grass blades as vray proxies and painted them on. I am pretty happy with the render times.

[louis.cho]

prretty useful, thanks to share.

 

I'll post the result of my tests

[blowback]

here is the particle grass. Thanks sawyer for settting up the scene.

[Tim Nelson]

here is the particle grass. Thanks sawyer for settting up the scene.

I noticed the camera angle isn't the same here. What about setting up two cameras to test - one close in, and one further out, something that would be pretty typical of an eye level architectural view? For me, it would be more valuable to see the overall view and time vs. just a detail shot.

[Ky Lane]

Heres my attempt using Hair and Fur with MR... Took about 3mins to render.

[alrawli]

Was going to show grass with hair and fur but that one looks pretty good. I used it recently for a project and it worked really well. Good control of grass length and easy to modify and cut. I was rendering with v-ray so had to convert to mesh and then used as a proxy.

[Claudio Branch]

I was rendering with v-ray so had to convert to mesh and then used as a proxy.

 

I remember someone mentioning in a previous thread that this isn't possible.

 

I have used V-Ray's H/F, but never tried to convert to mesh/proxy.

 

How did you do it?

[blowback]

I remember someone mentioning in a previous thread that this isn't possible.

 

I have used V-Ray's H/F, but never tried to convert to mesh/proxy.

 

How did you do it?

 

 

Me too, an explanation would be great.

[Chad Warner]

I think he meant he used Max's hair and fur, and then proxied that

[alrawli]

Yeap used max hair and fur which doesnt render with vray but in the options for the grass you can convert to mesh then turn this to proxy.

[Claudio Branch]

Thanks for the tip...

[blowback]

ya .thx man. I will have to try that.

[SgWRX]

i was playing the other day and tried scattering a triangle and it worked pretty well. but i found that 60000 duplicates is the most i could scatter. don't have any sample renders off hand.

[Ky Lane]

I guess the thing with using hair+fur is the ability to change anything, dynamically and easily. You can trim, grow, style the grass however you like etc. And also the dynamics (which i need to learn) would be devine.

[blowback]

i was playing the other day and tried scattering a triangle and it worked pretty well. but i found that 60000 duplicates is the most i could scatter. don't have any sample renders off hand.

 

my particle grass has 850 000 instanced "particles" I think the particle system is designed to handle excessive repetitive geometry. the last time I scattered geometry It seemed to have a lower ceiling. a little tougher on the system in higher numbers. Post your scatter results.

[SgWRX]

the close up isn't very good. certainly not like others do. but the aerial view kind of looks ok from a wild-field point of view.

[blowback]

what r your render times for that?

[SgWRX]

on the aerial view, 1min15sec. 920k polys (most of it the tree ha! onyx) 362mb used ram, 1/4 - 4 render samples, draft FG. the planes are 240"x180" with 24x24 segments for the noise modifier. and i was incorrect earlier, the max scatter is 65,000 on the dot (coincidence?). laptop with 2gb ram, win xp 32bit, core two 2.0 ghz.

[blowback]

I guess you get it to where you like ..... and proxy it. I like it. I like having options.

[SgWRX]

well, here's one major draw back. i revisited an old practice scene. the grass plane was 580x580" so i had to break that up into 4 smaller planes after applying a noise modifier and then converting to editable poly. then create a scatter object, reapply the settings 4 times. so it's mostly tedious.it was the same settings as above, and took 1min10sec to render.

 

even with splitting up into 4 smaller planes, you can still see the dirt noise map under the grass. which, might not be all bad.

 

did i mention that i use the rotate transforms in the scatter, 10-10-10 xyz.

[Claudio Branch]

you can still see the dirt noise map under the grass. which, might not be all bad.

 

In alot of situations this is desirable.

 

Not every site has perfectly manicured grass. I am working on a test render at present with just that in mind...

[SgWRX]

well. i've been looking at grass everywhere the last couple of weeks. it's really an underlying "flat" mix of colors (ie, a map or noise mixture) with some fuzzy stuff on top. further, most grass does not stick strait up, rather it's matted down. at least up north, i think in florida the grass blades are so thick in comparison that it tends to stand more.

 

i was thinking, how could you make a dual-layer that has an underlying 2d map and then something that sticks up every now and then. one thing this does too is hide repeating patterns or tiling of whatever is underneath.

[blowback]

I think this is where the particle system has the potential to would do well. The fact that you can have geometry as emitters ... etc. I will set something up and post later. I think a dual layered 2d/3d grass would be a nice to have

[Claudio Branch]

Here is a test scene with a rather industrial type building. I wanted the grass to be a bit more unkempt as you might find it in nature. The left side shows this well, but the right appears to be denser because of the camera angle.

 

The ground is a simple plane with some procedural dirt mapped onto it. The grass was created using Advanced Painter and distributed using Forest Pro 3.

 

I put alot of variation into the scale and orientation transform values trying to get the effect of thinner areas of grass.

 

Rendered with V-Ray (less than 30 minutes) and a touch of post work.

[Ky Lane]

Nice claudio - maybe add some yellow/lime glossys?