does anyone have any ideas on how to make a large area of grass seem somewhat natural looking through vrayblend materials or composites through multiple bitmaps
i hate the tiled look from a far when using grass textures or any image that is overly tiled
thanks
Have you tried adding displacement to it? I apply a VRayDisplacement modifier and find that it helps a lot in breaking up the tiling effect and making the grass look better.
Use a mix shader for your displacement, have one slightly lighter version of your displacement map mixed with a darker one, with a third grassy map in the mix amount. The 2 main ones map at sizes which dont go into each other, like 750x750 and 830x830, and then map the mix bitmap at something much higher like 7500x7500.
edit: Gets you a result something like this, with reasonably natural looking clumping in areas. Ignore the trees, it’s an old test.
grass
nice grass!
thanks for the tip! awesome grass
any way to do this without displacement? could you do this in the diffuse slot?
i will play, thanks for all the help here
I tried an interesting variation of this technique. I don’t have the images but I will walk you through the process. I used 2 maps for the mix maps but then I created a mask with using vertex paint. It was a fun way to play maybe overkill for many things but worth looking at if you haven’t. Main problem with it is you have to have a small sub divided mesh to get clean painting.
Cubicle-do you get flickering when doing an animation of your displaced grass? (which looks killer btw)
Cubicle, what is your displace amount if you don’t mind. I usually use something like 1.5" for the vraydisplacement modifier, which I take it you aren’t using, but if you have any advice for that it’d be appreciated.
About 250 mm - but I used two displacement maps without much contrast and mixed them with another map, so in any one area it’s probably only between 30-70mm for the blades.
And no - no flickers at all, it was made with the intent of being used in animations.
tptnshp - I’ve not tried without displacement, it just relies on using a combination of maps in a way to add constant variation, I guess you could do it with just a diffuse.
cubiclegangster:
nice grass!!! do u use standandard UVW or world coordinate one? as far as i remember 3d displacement would not work with the world one…
Cheers man - It’s standard UVW maps, just stack them up. And 2d displacement, never got good results with 3d in an animation.
Cubicle, care to share your render settings that yield no flickers? We always have scintillation in our displaced grass…
Outstanding, Cubicle. Would you save your grass material as a .mat-file? -- Since I’m doing ArchViz, this would be great. V-Ray Fur is not really usefull, if rendering big areas.
What did you use in the Diffuse slot? Just a random picture of grass?
Your results look great.
Yes…I would also like to request the mat as well…I always struggle with grass up close or far away. Thanx
Same setup - 2 textures, one slightly lighter overall, and a mix between them mapped quite large. You’ll end up with 4 UVWmaps in the modifier stack overall.
100%indifferent - my precision tends to be on 12, resolution that of my main displacement map, DMC AA around 1/10 and i’m not sure what else contributes to the lack of flicker.
hi 
why 4 uvw?
one is for light texture.
one is for dark texture.
one is for the mix map.
what is 4th one?
One is for light and dark versions of the diffuse
One is for the mix between the light and dark on the diffuse
One is for the light and dark shades of displacement (the detail maps, that actually gets displaced)
And the last one is for the mix between the two shades of displacement.