Nice grass with a displacement

[Chucky]

I am trying to get some nice grass with a displacement map for some time. But unfortunately I did not get a nice result so far.
Dit anybody manage to get a good result with a reasonable render time ?
I have seen some realy nice examples of grass with a displacement in Vray. Should be possible with Mental Ray.

[richmondlu]

I use paint effects and then turn them to polys and you get pretty good results...

[morph106]

I came across a thread in cgtalk a while back from a guy who did his grass with fur, using the grass preset and tweaking a lil here and there. It was a really good step in the right direction and he deliberately avoided using displacement because MR ain't the best when it comes to displacement. I think people suggested for him to try using the sss fast shader for a lil translucence aswell. sorry I can't find the thread but it was about exterior renders and in the maya > rendering forum.

[Chucky]

Tnx!
The problem with the paint effects is the number of polys you get in the model. Aspecialy when you have something like a larger area with grass (lawn). So that is why I prefer the displacement.

I read the thread about using fur in CGTalk. I also tried it and it worked quit well. Disadvantage is that fur does not work nice with final gather and raytracing. I takes ages to render.
Then you have to render a seperate pass for the grass and composite them later. For my architectural visuals I do not prefer to render seperate pases.

[mymental]

Give Fur Grass a try i had got amazing results using Fur grass, Start with basic default and start painting a lot of control, and if use ctrl_fur even better

Example :
http://www.mymentalray.com/mymr_tutorials/francesca/ctrl_fur/furry004muhhair2er.jpg

Cheers

[Chucky]

And how did you render it ?

[TheNeverman]

Here's some (fur) grass I've been experimenting with (rendered in MR). I kinda like it, but don't have quite as much control as I'd like over the shape. I may play a bit with SSS but am trying to keep the render times down at this point...

http://www.freewebtown.com/n8skow/3D/grasstest3.jpg

[Aenarion]

and how did you add the flowers? I guess you add multiple furs and you mapped some flowers with alpha or something similar some more information will be helpful

Also I wanted to ask wich MR render type u use? I get better result with rasterize, dont know if it was just a matter of luck when i experimented with fur grass.

thanks

[MaNdRaK]

and how did you add the flowers? I guess you add multiple furs and you mapped some flowers with alpha or something similar...

I think he converted Paint Effects flowers to polygons and rendered them with mr.

Also I wanted to ask wich MR render type u use? I get better result with rasterize, dont know if it was just a matter of luck when i experimented with fur grass.

Master Zap said that Rasterizer is way to go with fur and hair.

[Aenarion]

he posted the same screenshot in cgtalk forum and he said he used 3 combination of fur. I see the 2, being the green grass and the dried grass. I m sure that you can map textures on the fur as well.

I m guessing he attached on the 3rd furdescription a texture of a flower with an alphachannel. That's why the flowers look like the coming from the fur. But i could be wrong, I tried to find a way to do it but nothing so far.

I have read MasterZap's post somewhere and i always use Rasterizer on fur renders. The only problem i have is that raytracing gives better results in most cases on other surfaces. The only solution is do 1 raytrace and 1 rasterizer and blend the 2 layers together to get optimal from the scene.

[giobon]

Trying to get some nice architectural grass, those nice soft lawns, but not too perfect, where you can feel the leaves of grass although you dont really see them. Fur is the way to go i agree, and the grass preset is ok, but when you scale the global setting down (in my case) you have to increase density and that adds too much render time, and actually im not very satisfied with the result, anybody have some advice? is there a nice arch grass shader for mr in maya?