Creating grass

#1

Hi there, I’m looking for any sort of advice for creating realistic grass and wheat fields in xsi, I have several options and associated concerns right now, and would like to know your opinion - or if anyone has experience with this:

  • Hair:
    Can I control where the hair scatters with a texture or weightmap? Can I randomize the scattering/placement and thickness? Can I control the overall color with a weightmap?

  • Instanced Hair:
    Can I have both instanced and non-instanced hair, to get better performance? Any disadvantages of using instanced hair?

  • ICE:
    Would I be able to get similar or better results with ice?

I’m open to any other idea too… I’ve got the shrubs, lumps etc covered, I just need the base grass.

Here’s a reference pic:

http://www.thewalnutgroup.net/pic/Farmhaven/rollingHills.jpg

Thanks

A-

#2

“- Hair:
Can I control where the hair scatters with a texture or weightmap? Can I randomize the scattering/placement and thickness? Can I control the overall color with a weightmap?”

Yes.


“- Instanced Hair:
Can I have both instanced and non-instanced hair, to get better performance? Any disadvantages of using instanced hair?”

I dont think you can turn instancing on and off with a map. You can however use multiple hair systems, one with instances and one without and control them both with an on/off map (and it’s invert)


“- ICE:
Would I be able to get similar or better results with ice?”

For something like basic grass ICE may be overkill. If you want lots of control or need better performance then it may be worth looking into.


“I’m open to any other idea too… I’ve got the shrubs, lumps etc covered, I just need the base grass.”

Do you even need ‘real’ grass in that scene ? Are you going to get up close with the grass ? Walk about in it with realistic deformation ? Cause if not, then you could do some of it with a shader/displacement, along with texture mapped planes for the larger clumps. This may be faster then hair or ICE.

#3

Thanks for the answer, from what you are saying, it seems like I’ll have enough control with hair :}

I didn’t realise you could create several hair generators on a single surface!

Now, when I try to connect something to a property in the hair panel, it goes to the explorer and shows me the hair object - am I supposed to create a custom property with the values I want in them, and connect that?

The reason for using hair is that I’d like to be able to animate it with wind. Also stuff like wheat fields are kinda too much for displacement.

EDIT: Found out how to control density with weight map.

A

#4

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