Simulating a forrest without 3d trees

[davidb45]

I'd like to create a forrest as viewed from about 5,000 feet. I would imagine that there are better ways to do it than use 3D trees. Can I use a heightfield shader with some kind of textural procedure to simulate a conifer forrest? How would I do that?
Thanks in advance.....
 

[old_blaggard]

Some people have used fake stones shaders to simulate bumpy forests.  That's the only way I know of that's been tested, but I'm sure that there are other ways to do it.

[swiftstream]

I've had decent luck simulating grass--it may also work for a decent forest--with a surface layer with a color function and displacement. YMMV, however.

[Njen]

I did use the Fake Stones shader to simulate a forest:
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=285.0

Turned out pretty well for what I wanted. Just make sure you displace the stones laterally a little using a fine noise, to make them appear more bushy.

[neon22]

I found yet another way to do it. :-)
Playing around with the function based shader test someone else submitted earlier in the forum.
   (Can't find original post now :-( )

I used "intersect underlying" in the surface shader.
Look at the "Green 01" surface shader. All the action is in here.
Play with intersection zone and shift to get more or less "grass"
If you don't have fractal breakup on - then you won't get any "grass"

but I'm not actually sure why this is working.
Its all to do with the breakup fractal. changing its scale and warp is interesting
as well as the fractal breakup factor changes the shape/distribution of the "grass"
mmm....  succulents...

clarification anyone ?

[Will]

neat that would be useful.

Regards,

Will

[Oshyan]

Nice idea. You're just using the Breakup Shader to also breakup the Displacement, and with enough displacement at a fine enough scale it looks remarkably like (very straight) grass. Cool effect.

- Oshyan