manipulating grass to appear as mosses. lichens & fungi too.

[TheBadger]

Would you guys mind sharing some images where you used grasses to look like mosses. If you would also explain how to do it that would be nice too. Also, I was really hoping to know how you guys have dealt with lichens & fungi (perhaps from a short camera distance) Images as examples and methods would be sweet.

Any and all help is gratefully received.

[choronr]

A snipping from my image, 'Steering Clear'. I used NWDA's Grass 3 and placed it in the rocks (individual clumps). You could also make a population using the 'painted shader' to position the moss where you like. Two things - make the grass clumps a lot smaller; and, for the population, make a very tight spacing; like maybe 0.1 or 0.2. Consider also of re-coloring the grass (moss) to more of an 'olive green' color.

You could also try the Grass Clumps that come with TG2.

Note: Dune's 'Fast Water' was used here as well as FrankB's 'Hero Rocks'.

[Dune]

That's a nice snippet, Bob. But please, don't mention my 'fast water'   I did that using a reflective shader + a non-transparent water shader for fastness, but it's much easier to just slide the transparency of the water down to zero.

I used some high contrast billowed fractals to make the lichens on this rock (internal object). I believe I added them through a surface layer, blended by the same main billowed pf, and smoothed, so the displacement of the rock is flattened where the lichens are. Can't find the tgd, sorry.

[TheBadger]

@choronr.
Thank you It looks good, do you have any other images where you did something similar I would like to see more if there is more.

@Dune
Thank you. I think what you showed is just what i'm looking for for the lichens. I especially like the patchiness of the distribution, very real-ish. Could you expand on your description of your process. I'm afraid it was a little hard for me to follow (these things always are the first time around, for me).

No one else has done something like this?

[AndyWelder]

No one else has done something like this?

This reminded me of something: Did some testing trying to recreate moss-like vegetation quite some time ago but I didn't save the images.
What I did was lowering the Y value of the object scale, in this case one of lightning's lush grasses, to 0.1. It did look good but because I wasn't as experienced in handling objects/populations as I am now the whole thing was put on a shelf to collect dust. Think I'll dust it off...

[Dune]

Did a little doodling, as I couldn't find the old tgd anymore. Check this out, guys. Dune rocks once again  

[AndyWelder]

Never seen rocks like that in the dunes....

Those look good! Thank you for the file!

[FrankB]

Dune rocks once again  

nice one

[TheBadger]

@dune

Hi Dune,

So I downloaded your lichen-encrusted file and was able to figure out what was going on
However, I wanted to try and get the file to look more like the original image you posted. If you look at your post we can see that there is more variation in the first image, the lichens also have some soot or dirt around them which make them look even more real on the rocks.
So my question then is, can I just add more colors to the node structure you already have, and they will distribute like the first image. Or will each color need to be distributed on its own? I hope my question is clear if not just say so.

Thanks Dune, this is a real good start.

[Dune]

You can add as many color fractals as you like, but only use one color! If you use two, all previous ones will be 'overwritten'. If you add them through an uncolored(!) surface layer, you can diminish their impact by setting coverage to a lower number. Use small fractal sizes, and no extra displacement, or be careful with extra displacement. If you don't want the colors or displacement to get into the lichens, blend them inversely by the main lichen PF.

[TheBadger]

Thanks dune! This is working well for me.

This stuff works really well as mold, too!

[TheBadger]

With regard to my OP, i went into the node of a plant object (ND01_Grass3 #6) to look and see how I could change the plant color. I could not find how to do this. Anyone feel like telling me, that would be great. thanks.

[dandelO]

Right-click the node, select 'internal network'. You should now see a 'Parts shader', right-click that and, again, select 'internal network'. There are all your shaders for each object part.

[TheBadger]

Thanks Martin,

Yes, I was able to get that far on my own, but then what? I see the tabs with-in the node (color specular and so on) but the colors represented in 'diffuse color', for example, is not a primary color of the plant object. So if all Im trying to do is make the green of the plant a different shade of green where do I do that at?

[dandelO]

You'll probably have an image applied in the diffuse colour field, if not fine, it's easier to just change the diffuse colour when no images are used.

At default the colour of an image map on an object is usually applied at 0.5(grey), you can change the diffuse colour there to anything you like but if you have, say, a green image being applied then changing the colour of the diffuse will change the hue being applied because it is multiplying the green image by the new diffuse colour. An easy way to ensure you apply the colour you choose would be to use a greyscale version of your image map and apply it via the diffuse colour of your choice.