Couple of previews of...

[dandelO]

Well, almost, Richard. Except these stones aren't the exploded fake stones.

I believe that exploded fake stones come from incorrect blending of displacements at blendshader cutoff points. The blend shader for the base stones layer here doesn't use 'blend as stone density'. I unchecked it before I even started building this, so they aren't the 'exploded' stones, as we've seen as problems here before.

I've purposely made every*** stone explode without letting TG explode 'some' of them for me by accident.

*** Here lies a problem... In the first preview image, the one at 0.25 density, you can see the base stone layer in some parts. Notice in the bare patches... You can see some stones that don't have enough height to accept the blades properly.
When the density is lowered further it becomes more apparent. I need a way to limit the clumps to the 'best' displaced stones according to the values I type. The fake stone shader gives a very unreliable scattering of stones, some high, some too low.

As I said, still tinkering...

[dandelO]

The 'blades' are also fake stones, 3 different coloured stones in series, with a single translucency value/colour following them through a Lambert shader. The blades aren't blended in any way at all, they're simply set as a surface shader to the parent-node, the main grass clump shader.

[Mandrake]

Ok D' I was making plant's with exploding stones 3 years ago, what took you so long to refine it?
Looks great, I'm wondering if it's a monster drain on resources? I'm guessing it's not..
As long as I have your attention, Could you point me at the best node to add more texture to your cave?
Is there a node I can pile fake stones into? Or might it wreck the whole cave affect.
I was wondering if I could bubble (might be a bad word) out the smoothies and the jaggies a bit.
Kenny

[Oshyan]

Grass clump or.... succulent clump?
http://www.danheller.com/images/California/Marin/RodeoBeach/ice-plant-2-big.jpg
http://www.jungyul.com/photoblog/wp-content/uploads/2008/05/ice-plant.jpg

Or maybe crystals?
http://www.minresco.com/display/djpg/mi1154.jpg

Regardless, very cool.

- Oshyan

[domdib]

Looks very intriguing - look forward to the finished article.

Perhaps the "fake stones shader" should be renamed to "fake stones/sand/grass shader" ? 

[j meyer]

Interesting approach! Keep tinkering!

[Tangled-Universe]

Looks very intriguing - look forward to the finished article.

Perhaps the "fake stones shader" should be renamed to "fake stones/sand/grass shader" ? 

Ghehe indeed It once proves again how flexible TG2's features can be!

[dandelO]

I have some shots of this shader on terrain, near middle and far distances. It looks quite like my original grass shader in the mid/far distance and looks really nice close up aswell. Can't upload shots as I'm not online on my own pc yet, will do soon, though...

Perhaps the "fake stones shader" should be renamed to "fake stones/sand/grass shader" ?  Wink

Yes, very flexible shader. I have a new route for it, aswell, the render(I can't upload just now) is called 'Eezcoca-Yeena'(or, 'It's Cocaine'! ). Lines and a wee pile on a mirror!

So, 'fake drugs shader' can be added to this list, too!

[Njen]

Wow, I am very impressed by what I see happening here.

The grass blades can probably be bent by a careful use of a displacement on top of another displacement that has had it's terrain already computed, I do something like this in some of my own scenes here and there.

But the amount of extra time used to calculate and render that type of effect is almost prohibitively too long to use widespread in a scene.

Keep up the great work!

[Matt]

This looks very good! I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the horizontal cut-off you saw at bucket boundaries shows a problem with using extreme displacement instead of actual geometry. You'll potentially see these problems at every bucket boundary. It also means that shadows from this extreme displacement won't be rendered correctly. You can fix these problems with very high values for "displacement tolerance" on the planet node, but that will result in insane render times. In theory, using high displacement is a good way to generate complex surfaces, but the reality of rendering such displacement often makes it impractical.

Matt

[dandelO]

Thanks, Matt. That answers that question for me.
I think I've only came across this issue the one time I posted above. The near exact same scene with different colours is rendered beneath it, this one had higher AA settings but there are no cutoffs where those buckets meet. These shots are a bit too close for real comfort, mind, just to show how they actually were made.
Good to know what's caused it, though, cheers!