Realistic Grass Evolution and Iray
kyoto kid
Posts: 41,924
...so does Realistic Grass Evolution work in Iray and does it follow ground contours like AOA's grass shader did in 3DL?
Post edited by kyoto kid on
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I am pretty sure the grass is geometry, not a shader like with AoA, so the answer would be, no it does not. Remember that this works in both Poser and DS, and that is only really possible if the grass is geometry.
Given that there are single grass plants included, then using the plug-ins UltraScatter or InstancesPlus would scatter those instances over a contour, but that could be done with any grass prop, not just the ones included in this package.
or to quote the entire description on the store page
Details
Grass Props for Daz Studio and Poser, both in high poly and low poly versions. It also includes flowers and materials for the flowers. It is structured as a Base, Grass, Flowers, and there is a folder with the low poly version. It is versatile enough to mix with other props or scenes.
For Daz Studio -There are several ready to render scenes, both in the low poly and high poly models, these scenes are for the Iray render engine.
All the props are with Iray materials, to render with 3Delight it is necessary to load the 3Ddelight materials. The 3Ddelight materials are included.
For Poser -It includes all the props and respective materials.
Description of the product :
http://www.daz3d.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/p/o/popup_16_rge_daz017_whitemagus-daz3d.jpg
I'm excited to see this product! It looks beautiful and versatile, and might make doing Midwest landscapes a bit easier. Perhaps I can put some corn in those fields with an instance script...
Of course this product is not completely "new", it was previously on rendo, but it appears this is another vendor that has moved.
Edit: I should mention that the iRay shaders for this are new (I think), I am pretty sure the Rendo product had Poser shaders only.
Nope the one at Rendo has both 3Delight and Iray shaders. I've got it. The prop tho does not look exactly the same as the promo images (the one I have from Rendo is completely round, not a semi-circle), so not sure if it's been "tweaked" or not. Would be nice if the vendor would clear that up ;).
Laurie
Looks like a good product. Does it have a mechanism to prevent grass from growing through the glass Buddha in the promotion image, or the feet of any character standing on it?
...I was looking more or something to use with existing ground planes in an outdoor setting. Kind of defeats the "realism" in Iray when the "grass" in many sets I see looks like there is a sheet of non glossy plexiglas on top of it pressing it down. Hoping someone will release a "real" grass shader for Iray that works like AoA's 3DL one. We have one for snow that works really well.
In 3DL it was nice to actually have "real" looking grass in sets with uneven ground like the Woodland Playsets or First Bastion's Hilly Surround.
Well you have to do alot of instancing nodes and convert the geometries to UberiRay but Traveler has a Lawn Grass Volume 1 that I used in a render here : (look under the people's feet and the rest of the grass is actually Mech4D's iRay Shaders Vol 2 Moss Preset upscaled to x45).
Here is one I did where the lawn is from the grass from this pack http://www.daz3d.com/g3d-da-grass-and-plant-pack. To me at least, it looks a lot better than a textured grass lawn.
How are you, Havos and nonsuch00, keeping the grass from penetrating whatever is on top of it?
...however those are flat gound planes. I'm looking for something that works on uneven ground like in this pic (3DL render using AoA's grass shader and Woodland Playset 1)
I was not doing anything to stop that. I am sure if I had zoomed in close to the trampoline legs some poke through of the grass would have been seen, but from the distance in the shot it would not have been noticeable. However, if it was noticable, that grass consists of a very large number of instances, and I would simply need to locate the piece of grass causing the issue, and move or hide it.
...well spent some time researching and the only "hyper real" PBR grass materials I can find are for Vray. Instancing would bloat the polycount for a scene like the one I attached to the point it could choke my system. Also it would not follow the contours of the ground so it would involve a tonne of tedious adjustment of the individual instances..
I would think if a material with the proper characteristics of grass can be created for Vray, there has to be a way to do it for Iray as well.
Here is the woodland playset 1 with grass scattered over the whole ground so that it follows the contours. I used ultrascatter to place the grass, so it was no work on my part, but it took the computer some minutes to create all the multiple instances needed to properly cover the ground. Below is the result. I personally think the grass looks more realistic than the AoA 3DL grass shader (which makes the grass look too much like a well tended lawn, and thus less suitable to wild outdoor shots, rather than gardens), however I am sure others prefer the AoA look. The AoA shader is however easier to use, and needs less system resources, but the scene I rendered here fitted comfortably in my GPU (It needed 1.4GB of my VRAM) and DS needed 3.3GB during rendering.
I have his older product, grass clumps, and it looks pretty good in iray (just applied Uber Shader to it).
Below are the iray renders of one of his grasses scattered around the terrain created in Blender and then imported to Daz Studio as .obj
To scatter the grass clump, I have used UltraScatter - http://www.daz3d.com/ultrascatter-advanced-instancing-for-daz-studio
I attach a quick renders of terrain itself with one of Alien Rock Shaders - http://www.daz3d.com/alien-rock-shaders-for-daz-studio
settings for UltraScatter and then two different renders with scattered grass, with Lucian 7 added on the second one.
The first render of scattered grass I cancelled after 6 minutes and the one with Lucian - after 20 minutes (22%).
All renders were made in CPU only mode on the computer with i7-860 2.8 GHz and 8 GB of RAM.
I think, that using of scattered instances on uneven grounds, gives the best results and also do not have big impact on the computer resources involved.
Looks much better than the texture alone, but I am guessing that you had the option "Align object to normal" under the rotation tab clicked when you did the scatter. This is the default option and makes the instance rotate to match the angle of the slope it is placed on, where as in reality plants grow upwards regardless of the steepness of the slope they are growing on. As such I would advise you to unclick this option when scattering plants (if scattering small rocks or pebbles, then the option should be clicked)
One key thing to remember when using Ultrascatter (or similar) with 3DL -- do not use high resolution on the models.
If you use high resolution instances, the instances don't cast shadows. (This is a bug that's been around for at least a year and shows no signs they'll ever fix it)
Do you mean SubD? Have you reported this?
Thanks, Havos, for the tip about the option "Align object to normal". It was checked by default and I have forgotten about unchecking it,
but frankly speaking, that option adds a bit to wilderness of the vegetation.
I have redone the render and added one of the skydomes from the Skies of iRadiance
http://www.daz3d.com/skies-of-iradiance-high-sky-hdri-bundle-for-iray
It is always amazing for me, to discover how changing the light affects the overall look of the render.
Now I need to find another grass shader - it does not look so nice anymore.
Thanks, Will, for the info about 3DL issue. I do not use 3DL so often nowadays, but it is good to know about the problem with it.
Richard: I believe I read somewhere that it had been reported 2 years ago. I reported it 2 months ago.
I have very little expectation of a fix.
Instances are mostly for smaller, low-def background objects, so the vast majority of times these will not be sub-divided. As such I imagine the developers did not see this bug as a priority.
I didn't to anything. I suppose their feet are too thick.
That was my estimation, too.
Just pointing it out so people don't get confused by lack of shadows, and prepare to do 'close figures' vs 'far figures' if necessary.
I have changed the skydome and the settings, so it looks a bit better now, I think.
No, he means that you need to have everything at Base Resolution not High Resolution with instancing in order to get shadows and/or reflections in 3Delight. I raised the ticket back in June 2015 - when I chased it up in September (2016) I was told it was "sent to our team" but I've not heard any more.
ETA: I think the problem does exist with SubD too though - I seem to recall trying it with a primitive plus SubD and it still not working.
I raised the ticket because it was happening with Genesis figures (and sometimes their clothing)
It's not a hugely bad bug, the biggest problem is not even knowing it's there and being confused.
Grassy Grounds Megapack has always been my favorite. Uber Based it and added believe it or not, a lace shader texture, and it looked good. Can't remember what the render was named and can't find it at the moment.