Forest Setting, Long Grass

[Jackson_cg]

Mostly a test to see how billboards would work for long wild grass. No photoshopping (other than Gamma adjustment), all trees and grass are clipmapped face-me billboards, ferns are extremely low poly (around 20 faces) with clipmapped texture. Around 1 hour render time (clipmap grass takes up about 90% of the render time) on 1.83GHz Centrino Duo. Buildings were just quickly put together and copied as a focal point. C&C welcome.

[thomthom]

Re: Forest Setting, Long Grass

That's interesting. Looks nice.
What billboard resources do you use?

[Jackson_cg]

Re: Forest Setting, Long Grass

"interesting."

"nice."

Two words you never want to hear in a critique! LOL (Well, actually there are worse words!)

All texture bitmaps in this image are from my own photos or Google and flickr and lots of PS work.

[thomthom]

Re: Forest Setting, Long Grass

I'm a man of few words.

Didn't realise it was a request for critique - more a demonstration of method.


The thing that I noticed though was that the grass looked a bit uniform. Maybe some slight variation of the size. As to represent the various length long grass will have and as well indicate non-flat surface which while grass rarely grows at.

And I can detect a halo around the trees towards the right, if I'm nit-picking.

Do ferns appear that scattered lonely?


Apart from that I can't put my finger on anything else. At least not at that resolution. Looks like a good method of adding greenery. Inspires me to go out and take more vegetation photos. (Though, I'm not sure when I'll have time to process them...)



(Looking at the wireframe, did you model the tree trunks to give more depth?)

[Jackson_cg]

Re: Forest Setting, Long Grass

Didn't realise it was a request for critique - more a demonstration of method.

Bit of both.

The thing that I noticed though was that the grass looked a bit uniform. Maybe some slight variation of the size. As to represent the various length long grass will have and as well indicate non-flat surface which while grass rarely grows at.

Agreed, haven't tried this method on topography yet, might be tricky as face-me comps will disappear into sloped faces.

And I can detect a halo around the trees towards the right, if I'm nit-picking.

Guilty! I'll try running Flaming Pears's Solidify PS plugin on the diffuse bitmap to fix it.

Do ferns appear that scattered lonely?

I originally had loads of them in dense patches, but render times went through the roof, hence the lonely ferns!

(Looking at the wireframe, did you model the tree trunks to give more depth?)

Yep, there's about 12 faces to make a semi-circular trunk on the young trees so the trunk shades properly and the bases appears round against the ground. The big trees are just a single face as they're only good for backgrounds.

[thomthom]

Re: Forest Setting, Long Grass

Agreed, haven't tried this method on topography yet, might be tricky as face-me comps will disappear into sloped faces.

Not sure if you need topology. Adjusting the scale of the grass might be enough to give the impression.

How do you place the components? Do you use Component Spray? Doesn't that have an option to keep component vertical when placing them?
I think you can have face me components without having them glued to any surfaces.

Yep, there's about 12 faces to make a semi-circular trunk on the young trees so the trunk shades properly and the bases appears round against the ground. The big trees are just a single face as they're only good for backgrounds.

I got to try that.
Have you seen VBvisual's low poly trees? Max 8000 polys. Saw Micha mention them in the Rhino section. http://www.vbvisual.com/shop_content.php?coID=9

[Jackson_cg]

Re: Forest Setting, Long Grass

How do you place the components? Do you use Component Spray? Doesn't that have an option to keep component vertical when placing them?
I think you can have face me components without having them glued to any surfaces.

I used component spray for the trees (this file actually started out just as a test of component spray), but found that the grass face-me comps have to be placed and adjusted individually, very carefully so that they appear random, but also as sparse as possible (to save RAM and render time), but dense enough to hide the bases of the those behind, if that makes any sense. I then made groups of large sets of grass comps and scattered those groups around in front of the camera.

Have you seen VBvisual's low poly trees? Max 8000 polys. Saw Micha mention them in the Rhino section. http://www.vbvisual.com/shop_content.php?coID=9

I had a look at their site, but to be honest the previews didn't look very good IMO- not very realistic foliage, lacking gravity.... and for 8000 polys (low??!) I'd want very close to perfect. Then again, I put great faith in Micha's advice so maybe I should take another look!

[thomthom]

Re: Forest Setting, Long Grass

Yes, the examples at their site where not that good. I'll see if I can find Micha's post. He'd used them in a render.
I had a quick look at the sample tree, and I'm not sure if it was because it was a sample, but I wasn't too impressed by the textures. But I was thinking that it might work better if the textures where replaced with some other textures.

Might be ok for semi detailed. Not too far up close, but an intermediate distance.

(8000max, there was a lower version for each plant. Yes, low - in general CG terms, don't find many packages that low. And compared to XFrog which is often talked about here...)

[Jackson_cg]

Re: Forest Setting, Long Grass

(8000max, there was a lower version for each plant. Yes, low - in general CG terms, don't find many packages that low. And compared to XFrog which is often talked about here...)

Yep, it's all relative. Personally, if I can get away with it I prefer working with 1 poly max. LOL

[thomthom]

Re: Forest Setting, Long Grass

Yea, in my first real test of Component Spray I had a model of a large plan. Mostly birds eye views from high up. I then used a couple of thousands rectangle billboards to populate teh forest area. Worked fine.

[edonk]

Re: Forest Setting, Long Grass

I actually think this looks very good for clipmapped entourage. The foreground stuff looks especially good, like ThomThom says you can only really tell on a couple of the large trees.
Good enough for most clients needs!

[nomeradona_cg]

Re: Forest Setting, Long Grass

i just love it jackson... excellent.

[chillrender_cg]

Re: Forest Setting, Long Grass

Wow nice Clipmapping. Keep Posting Sir

[Earthling]

Re: Forest Setting, Long Grass

Hey Jackson, stellar job! What immediately gave it away as being a render to me, was the ferns. While they look awesome (care to share?)......those type of ferns don't typically grow in the full sun. I also agree that a variation in scaling would add a lot more realism. Overall the greens are the perfect tone. Is that a raw render?

[justinj1023]

Re: Forest Setting, Long Grass

I might be dumb asking this. But, what is component spray? If this is what I think it is, this can be useful.

Justin