Spreading Grass (scatter)

#1

Well, I recently aquired 3D Studio Max from one of my dads collegues that uses it at work, and I’ve been using it these past few weeks, I particualry like making outdoor scenes. Well the problem is, I have some good grass going on, and I apply it by using scatter. Well I made a landscape with some materals that have opacity settings, to create texture blending. For example I have a landscape that has grass, and sand together, and when I try to apply the grass (the brushes/splines) onto the grass material that is only showing in some areas, I get grass all over the sand aswell. What I want to know is how to use the scatter meathod or some other to only apply grass to certain areas of a visable surface, not the whole thing.

                           Arkon
#2

Select the individual polygons of the surface you want to apply the grass to in sub-object mode, then tick apply to selected faces under the scatter dialog.

Hope this helps

#3

I did a little tutorial for you, I hope this will help you.
First I made a one plane, then I scattered another one over the first. I set 10000 duplicates.
It is not enough but I did this quite quick, I just want to show you my way.Here it is what I have done so far.

Than I convert the scatter object to editable mesh(no reason to editpoly), I applied the vol.select modifier to it.
I made a noise map for this modifier and assigned to it. All settings are on the next picture.


Then I applied another vol.select. I made other noise map(you can make your own maps-not just noise)
for this one and important is to check subtract in this modifier.
Look at following picture.

Then I aplied the edit mesh modifier - switch to polygon subselection and delete those polys that are selected. Than I played around within edit mesh modifier with soft selestion and lower some vertices. Finaly I applied a texture map(and opacity map) to grass and other map to ground.You should make your own maps in ps for vol.select to get what you want.You should have more vol,select modifiers etc. I hope this will help you. And this is the result. I isnt perfect - but I did it very quickly, be tolerant. This is very rough version what you can get :slight_smile:


and close up(dont look at that ugly ground texture:,
and there should be raytrace shadows etc - but I didnt have time for that:)

#4

Wow, thanks alot guys, and I give a special nod to radoxist for the wonderfull tutorial. You guys are going to make the next generation of Max users as great as the current one.

                      Thank you,

                             Arkon
#5

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