-Model Grass as an object, group it. Weight paint the base.
-Apply as particle system to a plane.
-Convert the particle system to a mesh, make the mesh a soft body physics.
-Add a wind field.
-Voila.
My problem is that the grass flops over like wet spaghetti and I can’t figure out how to stiffen it up. Any ideas about what setting I should tweak? What I’ve tried without success:
-Increasing strength goal. Effect does not look right - the tip seems pinned, very unnatural.
-Decreased mass. No effect.
-Varying strength of wind.
-Played with stiffness, damping, bending, etc.
-Viagra jokes.
Any ideas? In the file I uploaded I just used a single, very basic plane, to troubleshoot the settings.
The first difference I notice between your floppy blade of grass and Andrew’s well behaved grass, is that his grass has a line of vertices going up the center of each blade, and his blades aren’t flat. His blades are also tapered, which might also have an effect, since the tip has less sail area to catch the wind force than the lower, wider sections.
Since simulations work on vertices, the actual mesh probably has a much larger influence on what the model does than any of the slider values.
I’m just posting a follow-up if the topic of modeling meshes for wind interests anyone else. I tested four different mesh profiles to see the types of effect that has on performance. These two images speak for themselves. Wind is at 0.5 strength.
Thanks for posting this. Looks like that last, closed manifold model would work for a reed. The second and third look like a good fit for grass blades and grass stems, respectively. I’m not sure what the first one might be used for… maybe seaweed with gravity turned off ? (Seaweed is generally neutral bouyancy or slightly positive.)
I hope Andy Price takes a look at this for when he updates his grass tutorial. This is the kind of thing that just does not show up in the documentation anywhere.
