A test in progress.
I hope you don't think this is an easy way out of adding projects to my library but this scene will be one of the new vol.2 ones, once a couple of minor details are fixed.
Yes, I've already included the planetary grass shader in vol.1 but, I've now nailed 2 major parts that were, in the first version,
not working at all and not working correctly.
Firstly, the mud layer that I claimed was beneath the grass was not working at all. Basically the fractal used for mud
wasn't assigned to a surface layer and as such, didn't work as it should. This is now fixed and is an essential part of this grass shader, the realism it adds is so much more apparent.
Secondly, the light/dark patchiness setup I had made wasn't working as efficiently as it could, a point that Matt had drawn my attention to that I thought I'd gotten around but... Hadn't!
I have now though, with the 2 patchiness layers feeding a new merge shader to blend them together(Colour merge = difference) and then feeding that into the last shader's luminosity function(final grass surface), which all other shaders now treat as their target shader, instead of the more complicated node-links I had wired up before.
I have a little 'fuzzy zone' issue at the moment with the blade displacements still appearing slightly where they shouldn't be, on slopes of certain angles, but it's nearly there.
Compare this fullsize new image's grass to some of my previous grass shader images in the small attatchment, a vast improvement, I think.
In a sentence, this is nearing the grass surface that I have been trying to make all along but hadn't quite got there.
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Thanks for looking!