Ground Cover?

[Chad Warner]

Anyone have any good methods for portraying groundcover? (low plantings similar to grass but with more dimension)

 

Thanks,

 

Chad

[David Barbarash]

I usually try displacement using a nice big map of the proposed groundcover as long as it's not supposed to be over too large an area or an overhead view. The overhead view can still work if you use a little bit of post processing to clear up any tile lines you may get. I haven't tried using v-ray's dispacement for this as I usually use max's standard material level displacement as part of a mix map. For that amtter, you could also add them in in your fav. photoediting program as long as you remember to allow the models shadows to lay over your painted ground. Good luck with it and please post pictures!

 

David Barbarash

[Chad Warner]

That's kind of what I was thinking...my next question would be, what type of textures do you use? If I have an image ivy for example, does that make a good texture for displacement?

 

Thanks,

 

Chad

[David Barbarash]

Ivy prob. wouldn't look too good unless it's a very dense and old growth so you cant see any of the leaders, just leaves. Even then its going to be tough to create a good displacement map for that... Things like Juniper, Cotoneaster, or other semi-low growing, solid canopy groundcovers work best for this. If youre planning on using ivy, I suggest creating an opacity map for your leaves and extruding it a very very slight amount, then placing it above your ground plane, this will give you an illusion of leaves above the ground as well as a slight amount of bump. Other than that and/or post processing, I still don't know of any decent way to show groundcover in 3D. Any othe rsuggestions?

 

David Barbarash

[mbr]

This probably doesn't help much, but Xfrog has an Ivy model and some ground cover models for sale. I'd guess that the polys would be too high if you used too many, but for details they look nice.

RPC has some basic small bushes, but not enought to really 'cover'.

 

http://www.xfrogdownloads.com/greenwebNew/products/plantlibStart.htm

 

I am having the same problem. Here's what my client wants (disregard the house - it is just a sample photo for the site). Any ideas? I'll probably post a new message in a few days, but thought I'd include it here as it seems to be a common issue.

Ideally I would like to animate it, but I don't have to.