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Author Topic: old tutorial on grass and edges  (Read 1502 times)

grue

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old tutorial on grass and edges
« on: September 27, 2018, 10:19:54 PM »
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-IvNfcW1e0


hello. in the above tutorial which is great by the way...  it mentions that this technique is only available using spline areas and not surfaces.

this technique is that you add the spline area twice and have two clumps of grass, one larger and and smaller, then use falloff curves and pick the larger or smaller grass clump to have cleaner transitions from grass lawn to a pebble walk path or sidewalk.

my question is - he mentions that it's only spline area now but maybe it would be available on surface areas in the future.  is that the case?

i can't use edge mode because the render engine i use does not support it.  but i like this technique.  i was able to get fall off with a surface (edit poly) but got lost when trying to add a 2nd/duplicate of the surface area to invert the falloff curve and use only the smaller clump of grass.

thanks!

steve

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Re: old tutorial on grass and edges
« Reply #1 on: September 29, 2018, 08:47:45 AM »
Hi, although Falloff options are available both for Surface areas as Splines, Forest uses an unique area for all surfaces.
Therefore it's not possible to apply the technique described in the tutorial directly with a surface.

Anyway, there is a simple process to extract a spline from a surface:

1) Convert the surface object to an Editable Poly.
2) Set "Border" selection.
3) Select All->Edit Borders->Create Shape from Selection.

Now you can use the generated shape, to create new spline areas in Forest.
In fact, internally Forest uses all areas as splines, and applies this process to get a spline from the Surface area.

Just remember to disable Areas->Surface Area->On, if not items will be duplicated, because they are created both from the Spline and Surface areas.

Carlos Quintero
iToo Software

grue

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Re: old tutorial on grass and edges
« Reply #2 on: October 15, 2018, 03:49:08 PM »
thanks!  yep i create spline areas like that all the time!  mostly for excluding.  although i did just learn about using geometry as object exlusion which is great!!!  i just select the border of a sidewalk and pull it down a few inches and then use it as an exclude object.  way easier to update the shape of the sidewalk without having to create a new spline area!

anwyay, i'll give this a try but i don't think it will work in all cases.  the reasosn i asked about this working with surfaces is that spline distributions can't be 3d - only xy, not z.  unless that's changed?

Rokas

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Re: old tutorial on grass and edges
« Reply #3 on: October 15, 2018, 03:52:24 PM »
spline distributions can't be 3d - only xy, not z.  unless that's changed?

That is how it works. Not likely it will ever change.
Rokas

grue

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Re: old tutorial on grass and edges
« Reply #4 on: October 15, 2018, 04:15:27 PM »
i suppose i could create an edge loop around a 3d surface where it meets the path, say the first 2 - 3ft of elevation change and oh, that's where my question of the idea of using this on surfaces comes from ha.  ok i'll find a way to make it work. otherwise that's a great tutorial since my renderer won't work with edge mode.