Whats the Best way to Scatter?

[Alex Abarca]

I havent used scatter. And I have some questions on best pratices. In the image I have several sizes of grass clumps, the largest being 24" inches diameter and the smallest about 6" inches.

1. Which is the best size for scatter?
2. Do I need to proxy the mesh?
3. What do you guys do when the scatter goes outside the predetermined plane, how do you chop and slice this?

[Alex Abarca]

What do guys handle this? how do you make clean cuts with scatter?

[peterguthrie]

forest pro can do this by keeping the grass models as much smaller objects but grouping the whole clump. It will then use the clump normally but use individual objects closer to the edge.

Mind you, if keymaster can think of a way of clipping the edge without needing to do this he'd be on to a winner ;)

(although short term stay focused on corona essential features!)

[Utroll]

Very simple but true statement !!
Having to seed smaller instances around edges is sometimes a repetitive boring task, a element/object clipper would be really amazing.

[jjduncs]

forest pro can do this by keeping the grass models as much smaller objects but grouping the whole clump. It will then use the clump normally but use individual objects closer to the edge.

Mind you, if keymaster can think of a way of clipping the edge without needing to do this he'd be on to a winner ;)

(although short term stay focused on corona essential features!)

Peter, do you mean instead of creating a few clumps with forest and converting them to meshes or edit polys (with each blade within as a element) then scattering them, you would do the same but detach all the grass blades from each other then group them again into clumps? Does this mean forest will use the clump group normally but then use the individual blades within the group at the edges? Sorry if thats way off but thats how i read it. If correct, it sounds interesting!

[johan belmans]

have a look at this
http://www.itoosoft.com/tutorials/tutorial_grass_edges.php

cheers

belly

[Alex Abarca]

Thanks that forest pack is serious business. However I cant afford it right now.

I used the smaller clump as illustrated above. It seems to work OK. not perfect but just Ok. Here are some renders. i guess for those of us that dont have forest pack, stick with smaller clumps of grass.

[jjduncs]

Thanks Belly, that pretty much summed up what i was wondering.


Alex, how is your grass material set up? Looks great!

[Alex Abarca]

Alex, how is your grass material set up? Looks great!
[/quote]

Thank you. This is what I did...Note I don't have a good grass model, nor the best maps. Any one have a good grass clump they can share?

[jjduncs]

Sweet, thanks.
I tried a similar mat but the frontbackmat didnt work too well for me. I think its because my front and back bitmaps were too different so it looked weird.

PS. sorry this is in the wrong thread.

[Dervish]

You could use forest pack light.  Good for small areas.

Off topic but VrayPattern cuts or gives sharp edges. See Xoio guys for that. http://xoio-air.de/2013/product-feature-vray-pattern-tutorial-and-production-insight/

[Alex Abarca]

Sweet, thanks.
I tried a similar mat but the frontbackmat didnt work too well for me. I think its because my front and back bitmaps were too different so it looked weird.

PS. sorry this is in the wrong thread.

Sometimes I do it like what shown in your mat editor, and it works fine. I also see it didn't increase rendertime too much. Also, you have six shades of color variance. Anyhow it looks good. Refraction is what kills your render time, stay away from that.

[Caue Rodrigues]

Hi guys, this is my grass test.
I took a base that already had, and added the front / back materials.
I would like the opinion of you, what did you think?

[Alex Abarca]

I think its good, I like the variation of grass blades that you have going on. The edges look clean and the sporadic spiky grass blade just makes it read better.