What do you think was used to create this vegetation?

[danb4026]

One thing that always seems to hang me up is creating realistic grass and vegetation like in the attached "great grasses sample" image. The second image, "my grasses sample", is grass that I created for a past project. No comparison.

 

How do you think the grass in "great grasses sample" was created? What about the flowering vegetation?

[David Arbogast]

I purchase the HQ Plants at iToo Software and really like them. One of the packages is just grass. Here's the link: http://www.itoosoft.com/hqplants.php They may or may not suit your needs. (These are also available at the CGarchtiect store: http://shop.cgarchitect.com/models/plants-and-trees-models/hq-grass-1.html). I'm not trying to be a salesman for iToo, but I also really love using their Forest Pack for plant placement.

[danb4026]

I use Forest Pro all the time as well. Have yet to buy the HQ Plants or grasses though.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

I am not 100% sure the foreground grass in that image isn't an opacity mapped photo comp. The 'grains' look a bit flat, but some of the stems in the peak middle, and far left look as though they might have been cut out in Photoshop. They seem to have a bit of a black halo which is often the problem when an opacity map is not set up and created cleanly.

 

In the background, the bushes certainly look 3d, but I am not as confident about the flowers themselves being 3d. Thy also may have been cut out, and then comp'd onto the bush to create the rose bush.

 

Maybe I am wrong?

[danb4026]

Travis, you seem to think most of it was comped in PS. I'm really not seeing the halo'ing that you are seeing.

[Justin Hunt]

I'd also say the grass and flowers are comped in the halo's are more noticable on the brown grass on the left. For your grass the grass isn't self shadowing. If you look at the example, notice how its quite dark near the base of the grass, yours isn't

 

jhv

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

Travis, you seem to think most of it was comped in PS. I'm really not seeing the halo'ing that you are seeing.

 

I should stress that I think a photo comp is usually the right way to handle grass at this distance.

 

...but the reasons I think it was comp'd, or a combination of 2d and 3d.

 

1) I see a slight grayish line around the areas where the red arrows are pointing. This would be the case if someone cut out grass in Photoshop and then matted it against a black background. The 1 pixel or less area where the transparency map is meeting the edge of the image and transitioning to black could create a gray line like this.

 

If they painted out the color of the planting for the matte instead of placing it on top of a black background, this probably would not have happened.

 

But this is what I am seeing.

 

2) The areas inside of the blue circles. The angles where the stems overlap are not crisp. The look as though they have a slight roundness to them. This would be expected if something was cut out in PS with a small circular eraser brush, or something of that sort.

 

If this were a model I would expect the angles created by the overlapping stems to be rendered crisp.

 

3) I haven't made up my mind about the items inside the red circle. They are different than the rest of the planting. They are either rendered, or another plant comp'd in to mix it up a bit.

 

At first I was leaning to them being 3d, but look at where the green arrow is. It looks as though the stem just disappears when it crosses the other stem. This is something that might happen when entourage is being cut out.

 

4) The yellow area are somewhat different than the others. If this were completely rendered I would guess the person would have used a ZDepth image for the depth of field, or rendered the depth of field into the image.

 

It looks to me that in some cases the items closer to the camera may be sharper than the items further from the camera. This would make me think the depth of field is painted by hand for effect.

 

Also, the blur is rather uniform, rather than the blades closest to the camera being twice as blurry as the ones they are matted against.

 

 

 

The one thing I can't decide on are the grains. To me they look to flat to be a photo. ...so maybe I am wrong about the whole image. I don't have any problems with being wrong, I am just describing what I see when I look at the image.

______________

 

EDIT: As for the roses, ..look at the green leaves around the roses in my marked up cropped image. They are less saturated than the green leaves that make up the rest of the bush, and they have quite a bit more specular than the other leaves. The look quite a bit more real than the rest of the plant.

 

This makes me think they were comp'd on top of the green bush to complete the image.

 

The one part of the roses that are leaving things in question to me are the reflection. I am thinking that they may have rendered the roses as a 3d model, and then composited actual pictures of roses on top of the image, and left the 3d models show in the reflection on the glass.

 

Unfortunately I cropped the reflection on the glass out, so reference will need to be made back to the original image for that.

Edited February 14, 2011 by Crazy Homeless Guy

[danb4026]

Travis, thats quite a detailed analysis. I would think comping in all that grass would be a pain in the butt.

[Bruce Hart]

Perhaps you're already across this - I tend to drop the GI generate per object (Vray) down to zero or 0.1-0.2 on dense plants, grasses and trees to stop the light bouncing around so much. Otherwise you tend to get a glowing effect on the foliage that makes it lack contrast in the shadows.

 

As far as the picture - I think it's a 3d bush in the background and comped grass in the foreground that has been blurred. The giveaway for me is the top right of the grass. If this were true DOF the bush behind in the distance would be crisp I think.

[Crazy Homeless Guy]

I would think comping in all that grass would be a pain in the butt.

 

Maybe, but I tend toward a fair amount of comping on my daily workflow. I would give the comping of that grass 30-40 minutes time to complete if everything was cut out and ready to go. They didn't do much more than duplicating layer, rotating, maybe a mirror or two. Then dodging and burning, finished with a blur to imply depth.

 

After yo do it a handful of times and customize a few keyboard shortcuts in Photoshop it can be quite quick compared to building everything out and doing test render after test render.

[Nic H]

stupid use of teh extreme dof craze - but yep looks like a 3d/2d combo

 

if you want good 3d grass i would recommend this:

http://rendering.ru/ru_en/models/igrass.html

 

in conjunction with multiscatter or some scattering software

[beestee]

Add a strong(er?) gradiant map to the length of your grass sample and you would be getting closer minus the flowers etc.

 

EDIT: Also the contrast in the lighting is quite a bit different between the two images, which will affect depth.

Edited February 14, 2011 by beestee