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bgdave39
04-06-2004, 05:33 AM
HI folks....me again :thumbsup:


I am making a field for a wilderness type seen. Basically it is an uninhabited meadow, with grass, weeds, and other things you might see in a pasture or field that has been left to grow wild. Camera views will be medium range for most of the grassy stuff, no closeups, but some of it will be surrounding one of the main structures in the field which will recieve some close-up attention. I have my scene lit using a point light, global illumination, and a sky hemisphere.

This is my first attempt at grass that would cover a larger area and i am sort of lost as to how to go about this task. THis is also my first attempt at making grass that isn't too uniform, or hasn't been mowed well.

So after doing a little searching and researching here, I didn;t find too much talk about this. The thread I did find seemes to say that paint FX was good but mental ray won't render that. Looked like Fur would be the way to go but from what I can gather fur is pretty uniform, not much randomness?


WHat would be the best way or process to achieve this? Thanks in advance to anyone who can offer me some advice.

Dave
FiendishVegan
04-06-2004, 08:08 AM
Unfortunately, mental ray won't render maya fur either... so the only option is to convert your paintFX strokes to polygons by using the Convert > paint effect to polygons in the modify menu. In my experience, the best way to do this is to set the "Poly Limit" setting in the convert options menu super super high... then do a poly reduce and history delete to get the whole thing down to a reasonable poly count. If you don't set the "poly limit" really high maya will leave out grass blades, tree branches, leaves, etc... in the conversion. Hope this helps you.
Pixero
04-06-2004, 08:20 AM
Why dont you render the grass with Paint FX and the rest with MR and comp it after in AfterFX or Photoshop?
Bonedaddy
04-06-2004, 03:44 PM
With the right settings, Maya Fur is usable for this sort of thing, but it takes some tweaking.
PFX compositing is a bear, due to z-depth channels.
Why not try a 3rd-party plugin, like Shave and a Haircut? I understand the pricing's pretty reasonable, and it works with Mental Ray.
bgdave39
04-07-2004, 12:53 AM
Originally posted by Pixero
Why dont you render the grass with Paint FX and the rest with MR and comp it after in AfterFX or Photoshop?

I htought about this, but wasn';t even sure if paint FX was really the way to go.

SHave and haircut is outta the question because this is just a school assignment, not worthy iof any money spending.


Are paint FX or fur my ONLY two options?
mark_wilkins
04-07-2004, 12:59 AM
They're the best options.

Do it in paint effects and composite. You'll be much happier you did.

-- Mark
bgdave39
04-07-2004, 04:24 AM
Yeah I have decided to go with paint FX> Bout to get started now on laying some grass and stuff down. I have very little experience with paint FX but right now they trees and grass it is creating aren't quite large enough to fit with my models. IS there any way to increase the size?


Also if anyone could reccomend a useful tutorial it would be greatly appreciated. I have found a few but sometimes it is just easier to ask cuz you guys often know which ones are the most useful.


Thanks.
Bonedaddy
04-07-2004, 05:57 AM
I never read any PFX tuts, I just cracked open the Maya help and figured it out myself. It isn't that hard.
As for scaling the foliage, there should be a "global scale" attribute at the top of the Stroke Attributes. Just muck with that. You can also use the normal scale if you convert it to polygons.
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