Flying grass

[Costaud]

I don't know if somebody have the same problem (if it's a problem), take a close look at the test image below, some of the grass fly above the ground, the grass was made in Bantam grass, look like the grass clumps are too big and only a part of them touch the ground in some place at the top of the hill (or any area with peaks). 

[bobbystahr]

I don't know if somebody have the same problem (if it's a problem), take a close look at the test image below, some of the grass fly above the ground, the grass was made in Bantam grass, look like the grass clumps are too big and only a part of them touch the ground in some place at the top of the hill (or any area with peaks). 

Yup that looks like the problem...when I run into this I play around with Fractal Breakup and Coverage in the Coverage Tab and sometimes that fixes it, maybe try that..good luck mate...too bad TG2 doesn't have the ability to conform square meshes to the terrain, might I request this as a feature for the future? Nicely done Bantam Grass by the way...did you colour it in Bantam or TG2?.. ...

[joshbakr]

Try attaching your grass pop to the last shader in the shader network. In the terrain tab of the pop it is assigned to the compute terrain by default. Just change it to be assigned to whatever your last shader is like I already mentioned. Hope this works

[sonshine777]

If you are using the grass that came with TG2 try reducing the diameter of the grass patch and move them closer together. The TG2 grass is very flat on the bottom and it doesn't do well on sloped terrain. I have a grass model that I created that takes slopes very well, it doesn't however look as manicured as the TG2 grass. Here is the link at Terranuts.

http://www.terranuts.com/forums/downloads.php?do=file&id=505

Hope this helps.

[Costaud]

Thanks guys for the replies I'll try some of your ideas. @Bobbystahr no I didn't colour it with Bantam I used a Default shader in TG2 with an image of real grass in "Colour image" and a yellow green color in the "Diffuse colour" simple but very effective, try it.

[Oshyan]

This problem is inevitably going to occur whenever you use a large, flat object on a bumpy terrain. Making an object conform to terrain is much more difficult than you'd think. A basic approach might not be so hard, but making it look good - and not highly distorted and unrealistic - is another matter. The simple solution is to make your grass model/clump smaller in area (though at the same scale of grass model, just covering less area). This way it can conform easier to smaller variations in the terrain.

- Oshyan

[Cyber-Angel]

Could in future Terragen have an automatic (With an option to disable on a per-object basis) equivalent to the "Land Objects Down" feature in Bryce which forces floating objects down onto the ground plane or terrain but work in a more elegant way then its Bryce forebear?

You could select with some kind of area selection or other selection box the floating objects/ or population/s and have an context sensitive option (Could be via right mouse click menu) that is called "Conform object/ population to surface". This user intervention method would be used where the automatic process did not work.

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel

[Oshyan]

When populations are set to "sit on terrain", they do get "forced" onto the terrain surface, provided they're referencing the last major displacement in the shader network. Individual objects do not yet have that feature but that should be added in a future release. *Conforming* objects to a surface is a more difficult thing, and I don't think Bryce does that, nor is TG2 likely to do that any time soon.

- Oshyan

[Costaud]

Thanks Oshyan, yes it's not too difficult to make grass clumps smaller. Another problem with object (Individual or poulation) is the selection of them, exemple if you have more than one object in a scene sometime it's difficult to click on the right place to select it why not a simple approach like if you select the object in the list of object this object is automatically selected?

[bobbystahr]

*Confirming* objects to a surface is a more difficult thing, and I don't think Bryce does that, nor is TG2 likely to do that any time soon.

- Oshyan

Actually Bryce can Drop to Grid, Land, or Ground Plane..as of the ver. 5.5 that I use at least....big square patches of stuff ar always going to stick out unless you can get stuff to Conform to the 3 choices above...D'oh...*Confirming*= Conform to...that's what y meant? but spelt it wrongishly..LOL.. ...

[Oshyan]

Erm, yes, I meant *conform*. Sorry about that. So are you saying Bryce can *conform* objects to surface?

- Oshyan

[Cyber-Angel]

It can, but it is a manual user operation that has to be performed on a per-object basis in Bryce, Bryce V.5.0 has this feature. What Terragen could do is look at the instances and cheek their position relative to the terrain surface if any instances are detached (I.e. Floating) it would fix them automatically: or if it couldn't then some user intervention would be required but the automatic process should be sophisticated enough to handle most cases.

Regards to you.

Cyber-Angel