My new grassclump shader! :)
I didn't want to really show this until it was finished and time to upload my new library volume but, truth is, I'm kind of excited about this shader myself and I probably won't get near an internet for a while yet...
Here are a couple of screenshots of a couple of variations of the grassclump shader, they won't all fit this post so I'll reply shortly, aswell...
Density = 0.25:
[attachimg=#]
Density = 1:
[attachimg=#]
...
...
...
Bigger...
Density = 1. No blendshader:
[attachimg=#]
(bucket render errors all along the halfway mark, a noticeable horizontal cutoff...)
...
Density = 1. Powerfractal blendshader:
[attachimg=#]
Shader preview shot (2 metres scale):
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I assure you, each and every grassblade is unique, with translucency, changeable colours, editable seed, density, scales, etc's.
These shots are from just under a 2 metres high POV(about eye level). It's really not heavy on the renderer, far less intensive on memory aswell than a population on a global scale, and not a single object needs instancing, this is just a surface shader.
It isn't as pretty, of course, as some of the beautiful grass models that the modellers here are producing but for me this is a kind of milestone. My old Grass shader is really ugly when you get too close up, looks nice from further above or in the distance. This new one holds up well to a scale of millimetres, is far less uniform in displacement terms(not just upwards, I mean) and is a lot less complicated.
Now to try it out on distance shots to see if it works there, too...
More as it happens, I'm still working on this one...
Very interesting results so far, looks good!
How about the rendertimes?
Cheers,
Martin
waahoou..awsome dandelo...it's just incredible for a surface layer.
maybe you find the way for grass animation ;D can we distort, warp or transform the grass clump shader ?
Remarkable. This looks very good now. If it was at mid distance, it would be totally convincing.
Render times are difficult to say here. My pc is crap, I mean REALLY! - 1.33ghz SINGLE CORE, 1gb RAM. The bigger shots are taking me about 3-4 HOURS!
I must say, though, this is much faster than when I populate objects for rendering.
Anything I render takes an absolute age. For instance, a completely seperate scene I rendered on my computer took me 25 hours+, and it hadn't even finished when I aborted it, I had my mum re-render it for comparison, I think it was around 1 hour 45 minutes on her machine!
I'm confident that this is fast because I can render it, at all! ;)
I'll share when I can...
Hi
Great! Very usefull...
ciao
Naoo
dandelO, you are a tg2 wizard ;D this looks great!
Very cool work!
Is there a way you can bend the blades a bit? There all straight.
Sadly, you can't bend the blades, no. :(
*** EDIT:
Sadly I can't bend the blades, no. :(
I'm pretty positive they cannot be bent individually, though.
If I could do that then there would be so many things I've wished for in TG that I couldn't achieve in the past.
So when stones explode they can be given life again as grass clumps ? :)
Very creative and useful, thankyou :)
Richard
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...
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.
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
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
;D
Or maybe crystals?
http://www.minresco.com/display/djpg/mi1154.jpg
Regardless, very cool. :)
- Oshyan
Looks very intriguing - look forward to the finished article.
Perhaps the "fake stones shader" should be renamed to "fake stones/sand/grass shader" ? ;)
Interesting approach! Keep tinkering!
Quote from: domdib on September 01, 2009, 04:55:19 AM
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!
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...
QuotePerhaps 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! :D :D :D
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!
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
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! :)