Up your grass

[bigben]

[attachimg=#1]

Thought I'd share something positive amongst all of the trouble people are having with objects 

A worm's eye view of a  "mown" grass object using only TG surfacing. I was just checking out reflectivity and translucency (0.28 and 0.3 respectively on this model), and fractal breakup scaling... with the quality settings turned right up.

Now I have a few more ideas for fine-tuning my trees

[twistednoodle]

LOL same kind of thing happened to me except I was in a palm tree - when the piccy rendered I thought "what the?" - hope your experimentation yields some interesting results.  I'll make note of your settings! (What are you using for colour? - my grass tends to look a little stuck on and after giving it a little thought - there's more to grass realism than colour - its the translucency etc.)  I look forward to hearing what you have learned.   

[Will]

Neat, your exparments are always intresting and come up with cool resalts.

Regards,

Will

[bigben]

Here's a preliminary tgo with just some basic surfacing. 

http://www.path.unimelb.edu.au/~bernardk/tgdemo/cut_lawn.zip (900kb)

I can't remember whether the scaling's screwed up on this or not, but there's a good chance the object is as big as an XFrog tree   It's pretty easy to change anyway.

[Mandrake]

1.305.828 Man your ticken me off!! You have much more time then I do to investigate this stuff!! Arrgghhh!! Don't Stop!

[bigben]

Here's a low quality render of one of my cube faces.  TG crashed after saving it , but that's OK at the moment 'cos the grass is too green and waist high ;-)

The tree spacing still needs work, but I'm just getting a feel for render quality at the moment. I'll fix those things later. High quality render started.... finishing some time much later.....

[moodflow]

Here's a low quality render of one of my cube faces.  TG crashed after saving it , but that's OK at the moment 'cos the grass is too green and waist high ;-)

The tree spacing still needs work, but I'm just getting a feel for render quality at the moment. I'll fix those things later. High quality render started.... finishing some time much later.....

It still looks great!  That could never be pulled off in Bryce without alot of pain      Just knock back the green somewhat, add some translucency (which will bring that living green back), and it would be very realistic!  I've been spending the past few days tweaking the translucency on trees and plants (as TGO files) so they look even more realistic.  It does make a difference.

[nvseal]

Out of pure curiosity, would share some of your results moodflow?

[bigben]

It still looks great!  That could never be pulled off in Bryce without alot of pain      Just knock back the green somewhat, add some translucency (which will bring that living green back), and it would be very realistic!  I've been spending the past few days tweaking the translucency on trees and plants (as TGO files) so they look even more realistic.  It does make a difference.

It does seem to make a surprisingly big difference. We'll have to swap notes on trees later. I'm running some more tests on replacing image textures with surfaces and will post a tgo of my modified birch tree when it's finished.

[moodflow]

Out of pure curiosity, would share some of your results moodflow?

Well I had a bunch of before and after renders of some trees (as I was testing the lambert shader) but I've since deleted them.  The effect is subtle, but makes the foliage more realistic overall as light can go 'through' the leaves.  Otherwise it looks too dark.

[bigben]

Here's a partial render of my panorama (QTVR, 250kb) It's a progress render so the file size will grow over time. Fully stitched image is 3600 x 1800 pixels.
http://www.path.unimelb.edu.au/~bernardk/tgdemo/tetons001.mov

There's some grass at the bottom, and I think it looks pretty good. It's still a little too green (I hadn't changed it yet) although the higher quality render settings toned things down a bit as the child layers come into play more.

I didn't have a surface to provide variation at the leaf level and this will help as well.

[old_blaggard]

It's looking pretty good so far.  I can't wait to see the final product.

[bigben]

...  I can't wait to see the final product.

Oh yes you can 
http://forums.planetside.co.uk/index.php?topic=954.msg9310#msg9310

10 degree tiles, render time 6min to 4hr per tile, 614 tiles.