Realistic Grass - Lawn

[DS4646]

I've been using Forest pro for years now and stills struggle to get a realistic-looking grass.
I recently started using Fstorms geo pattern for grass and it looks pretty damn good.
It mixes the ground surface texture with the grass texture blades.
Is it possible using Corona and forest pro to blend between the surface material and grass blades/patches material?

[Rokas]

Hi. Forestpack can sample surface texture at the pivot point- so if the clump is used, whole clump would get the same sampled color. This might be enough but in some cases not enough. So You can use smaller clumps, or individual grass blades.
We have a video tutorial showing this feature.

[alexrecentspaces]

Hijacking this for a sec. Is there any way to use a larger clump of grass i.e. a larger geometry object but have the grass tinted by the underlying map on a per-element basis rather than the whole object taking the same colour? This would solve huge issue's regarding scattering 100+M objects when doing super fine scatters where each fine blade needs its own colour from the underlying map.

[Rokas]

There is a workaround for this scenario. I understand it requires a bit of setup so I can't advertise it as recommended workflow. Hope this helps

[alexrecentspaces]

Thanks Rokas, but I don't seem to have access to that part of the forum for some reason?

[Rokas]

ah yes. it is in the archived portion. Apologies for that.

This link should work.

[alexrecentspaces]

Cheers. I'm not sure how that post relates to my particular issue though, unless I'm being a dummy (which is totally possible!!)

[Rokas]

Attached max file for Your reference. JPG texture used from this tutorial.

[alexrecentspaces]

Thanks will look into this and see what's happening. Cheers!

[alexrecentspaces]

Hi Rokas,

Had a look into that max file and it doesn't look to be set up any differently than how you'd expect. So basically it's still just tinting the entire object/instance based on a sampled pixel from the map on the surface, instead of doing what we really need which is tinting the individual elements within that scattered object based on the pixel colour beneath that element.

Does that make sense?

Basically if it worked on elements within instances rather than whole instances only it would allow you to scatter huge complex areas and still have tiny level of detail from underlying surface maps.

[Rokas]

Interesting that You say so.

Here is zoom view to one clump:

[alexrecentspaces]

I don't suppose you'd be able to switch that file to Corona and re-save it for me please? The version I opened was vray and after converting maybe something broke. Becasue that looks like it's working spot-on! Unless this is a vray-only feature... in which case that's still super interesting.

Edit: Looking again when i open this file and do nothing else (leaving it in vray) the grass object doesn't have any material applied at all.

[Rokas]

works with corona as well.

Edit: Looking again when i open this file and do nothing else (leaving it in vray) the grass object doesn't have any material applied at all.

I left to tie up some lose ends for You

[alexrecentspaces]

Ok this is working! Thanks so much!

Now to figure out why it's working and what we need to change in our workflow exactly.

Thanks again

[Rokas]

feel free to post Your results and promote this technique