Grassy area - scatter test

[xte]

I believe this method kinda defies the purpose of proxies.
When using proxies the idea is to store an object as a separate entity and then use it many times. Then, when rendering, the computer only has to store the object once in memory and can discard it when it's not needed. When you convert such large objects as proxies and only use them once you don't gain any benefits because the whole object has to be loaded into memory regardless.
The only real plus of converting them to proxies is it speeds up the viewport.
I'm not fluent on the technology so someone else please correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me in this case converting to proxies would slow things down instead?

The images are really good though and proves this technique can be used.
As for the pointing the wrong way thing, you can change the way objects are aligned in PFlow. Just use world space instead of surface normals.

I agree that it is not as efficient as duplicating small chunks of grass in terms of memory.

My goal here is to be able to to get the best possible result, even if it takes more time.

The benefits of using proxies here are indeed in the viewport performance and in the fact that proxies automatically use dynamic memory.

The point is that it would be impossible to get a clean max scene with that much geometry in it, saving times would be extremely high and max would crash a lot. It also allows to manage the different proxies easily.

[beestee]

Another rough test using the same geometry as before, only broken into smaller clumps and scattered using VrayScatter. 5 different clumps/proxies scattered maybe 100-200K times.

Rendered pretty quick as I recall but I did not note the actual time.

b

p.s Don't mind the airborne grass, that is just me messing up the distribution settings.

That looks great! I would like to see some short clover in place of the taller grass...then it would be perfect.

[xte]

@simmsimaging: that result is pretty nice!

I'm testing with density by material and multiple maps:


I can't go further with my home pc (1.5GB of ram, xp32). I think it could work with xp64 and 8GB ram, but it would probably be better to scatter small chunks.

[simmsimaging]

That looks great! I would like to see some short clover in place of the taller grass...then it would be perfect.

Agreed - I'm just working with what came with that free model, but it could be much improved with some clover etc. Eventually I will find/make some more options for it.

b

[voltron7]

All of these tests are looking good. It's pretty cool to hear others' ideas and techniques, too. I'm going to use my grass (or a slight variation) for my upcoming airport project...

[RemcoNL]

Agreed - I'm just working with what came with that free model, but it could be much improved with some clover etc. Eventually I will find/make some more options for it.

b

Hi simmsimaging, that was a really nice pict of the rough grass field..... maybe it's possible to share some of the basic techniques/ models since you mentioned it is to be a ''free model''? thanks anyway for the nice experiment....

[Fekta.studio]

here is my test with grass provided by Herve with some flowers and material tweaks

[raistlin]

incredible ... 3d pictures could now become really interesting...

[bluediablito]

wow

wow great work
is there any chance any one can make a quick step by step how to achive beautiful grass?

[voltron7]

wow great work
is there any chance any one can make a quick step by step how to achive beautiful grass?

lol, is this directed at me, simmsimaging, Fekta.studio, xte, or MikeeMax? PG has a great start-off grass tutorial on his blog. Otherwise, there seem to be several good steps in this thread...

[voltron7]

1200 mb is nothing! well atleast not much more than what the old displacement would use... great!

how does vray scatter work? Is the grass scattered only at rendertime? Or do you constantly have a couple of thousand proxyobjects in your viewports?
Are there any limitations on how many scatter objects it can handle? sorry for the slightly offtopic...

again - beautiful grass!

@skogskalle, The proxies are scattered at render time...no noticeable viewport performance loss, so far.

[Karba]

My grass test

[cs_sean]

Here is my first run at scattering grass. It was a very quick job so I didn't have much time to test things. The meadow grass and the grass roof / wall are scattered. I think there are about 1 million blades for the meadow alone. Also, all the background tree are scattered.

[Da_elf]

oh crap that's nice. i think the foreground trees are the only weakness

[muoto]

Here is my first run at scattering grass. It was a very quick job so I didn't have much time to test things. The meadow grass and the grass roof / wall are scattered. I think there are about 1 million blades for the meadow alone. Also, all the background tree are scattered.

what were the rendering times ?