Textures for large areas

[ashleyclarke]

I'm in the later stages of completing a model of small housing development which covers around 6 acres.

 

The problem is there are large areas of flat grass around the houses across the site, I'm talking like football pitch sized fields and they want some aerial style shots showing the whole site.

 

I'm currently using an areal shot of a field what I've made tillable but it's not that great. Even worse is the gravel, large areas like roads, open areas and drive ways are gravel and my texture there tiles really badly whatever I do.

 

What solutions do you guys use for this? Do you think it's realistic to use forest pack grass over areas this large?

[Scott Schroeder]

To combat the obvious tiling, you can take the texture into PS, run an offset filter on it and paint away the seams. It also helps to have large maps that run on 40x40 - 80x80 UVW maps. The smaller ones just tile no matter how much you try to avoid it.

 

Another tip is to take the texture in Max and create a mix map. Put the original texture in slot #1. Make a COPY of the texture, put it in slot #2 and rotate it some random degree, say 55. (I generally avoid 45 degrees as it's too obvious) Set the mix amount to somewhere in between 40-60. This effectively "blends" the two maps together which can help eliminate some tiling effect. Though, if you have a very obvious tiling effect, this technique won't work as well.

 

Forest Pro is overkill for aerials and you'll end up not really noticing it. If you need some grass depth, good ole vray displacement works well for aerials.

[Mario De Achadinha]

If they static images, why not paint in Photoshop a grass texture over the current layer to clean up the tile. It's a quick fix but won't assist for animation

 

 

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[Tommy L]

mix map with procedural texture to drive the mix then use a different texture in the other channel, with a different UVW. There will be no tiling apparent. You can go several mixmaps deep if needs be.

[ashleyclarke]

I've had a play with using a mix map with noise as the mask, seems promising, thanks.

[blank...]

Try applying any grass texture on those flat areas, doesn't even need to be tillable. In bitmaps settings there is a noise rollout. Set the amount to 100 and size to 0.001.

Maybe this will work in your case.

[Ernest Burden III]

Why use a map at all? Nature works as noise, so use a noise pattern, or better yet a layered set of noises, as your texture?

 

I assume you are working in Max (because why not) and that may mean you don't have as many good noise choices as you might, but by combining one for close, one for mid and one for long, you should have a pleasing, non-tiling result.

 

Besides, in a six acre shot, it is not about blades of grass. It is about lawns and fields. How would you describe that? Now, convert that to a material.

[Peter M. Gruhn]

For the noise as a mix map, you may want it mostly black and white. If you leave it soft grays you just get cloudy green, the detail is lost and it doesn't look like grass any more. Move thresholds close to each other, say 0.49 and 0.5. I like the noise to be fractal. If the two maps are the same source, I like to scale one just a little - somewhat to just toss in some wanton variety but mostly as a final hedge against repeats. And it's good if the major lumps in the noise are in the same vicinity as the repeat on the maps or smaller. Too small and the character of the maps can be lost.