Eyestabba / Tom Truyens - Sketchbook

Decided to open up a little sketchbook for my side projects because, well, I’m working on one now and could always use feedback :stuck_out_tongue:

I’m developing my own little grass system which I can then use in future projects.
I’ve also been inspired by Andrew Price’s Grass Essentials, but I don’t feel very comfortable using someone else’ work and telling people “look at the awesome scene I made!”. I’m also a cheap bastard.

So here’s my first entry in my sketchbook, the current state of my first grass system. I also have a first question: for grass that won’t be seen in close up, is it neccessary to apply actual textures to it? Thanks.



(you might want to click this one open for some better quality)

And the current, simple material applied to the grass:


So far there are 16 different grass models in the system. It’s absurd to see how much grass looks better every single time you add a new different model.

Next will be some short cut grass, after I make some flowers for "pretty scenes :stuck_out_tongue:
Feedback is always appreciated.

Hahaha. You are not alone. My thoughts exactly. I am also planning to create my own collection for the exact same reasons.

Yours looks great so far, it will look even better with weeds and flower types. Keep it up.

Sorry that I cant give you any advise.

Looks pretty convincing to me so far, great job! I’d say, if you’re 100% sure you’ll never use it for close-up renders, you won’t need textures but on the other hand, how can you be so sure about that now? If you’d ever decide you’d need close-up grass, you might be sorry you didn’t use textures in the first place. My guess is that texturing them right from the start might save you a lot of work later. See it as an investment, one you’ll never know whether it pays off, until some day it suddenly does.

Just my 2cts…

Like Kalinaki, I can totally see why one would make his/her own “grass essentials” and I too plan to do something similar. I wouldn’t mind using Grass Essentials if I was sure I could hand craft my own vegetation with similarly convincing result. And there’s only one way to find out: make my own pack of plants. And if that succeeds, there’s no reason anymore to use GE :confused:

The Grass Essentials, like any model pack, is only meant to save time for people who need to deliver results. Developing this on our own however would take ages.

That said, this is a pretty awesome job you’re doing. Please continue to share node setups or anything you find fun in this project :slight_smile: I was thinking about making a similar pack for myself too, sadly I have time constraints… :frowning: but I may be able to learn a lot from your experiences, along with a ton of other users.

Great going and cheers!

Pretty much, yeah :stuck_out_tongue:

Thanks guys, I’ll post an update soon.

I think the same thing too. I feel like cheating or stealing when using other’s models and claim it’s ‘my’ render (but I understand why some would do so, especially with Andrew’s pack which looks so great)
I look forward to your progress too and plan to try to make my own too (someday). Like for architecture renders when you see the garden through the window.
Anyway yours looks good, we’ll done :slight_smile:

A little update: I’ve been working on some simple daisies to make the grass less boring. They’re a seperate particle system ofcourse, so can be tweaked at will.

The basic models; made one starter model and twisted it around, removed some petals here and there and added some leaves:


A closer look at the model:


And what they look like when added to the grass:


Now this is someone that speaks my language. :slight_smile:

Nice looking grass you have here, keep up the great work.

The daisy model looks very good.

To me, they seem a bit odd. Perhaps if you reduce the number per grass segment or scale them down a bit, they might look better. But that can be fixed easily, just test until happy. My personal view.

Problem is a daisy, growing in the field, has a bunch of leaves as part of the plant. It’s not just the flower on the end of a stem. Each daisy plant has eight to ten roundish leaves on short stalks, surrounding the root (below ground) with two, sometimes three flowers growing up from the plant. So you should see those rounded leaves at the base of each daisy or two, not grass blades.

Haven’t really worked on the grass lately, but you can see the current grass being used in this pic (though I kept it quite short):


I’m currently trying to finish an entry for the Blender Guru competition. I won’t win, obviously, but you can only learn by practicing. I am suddenly suffering from a LOT of noise though… It isn’t my real render yet, but still. Any advice on noise reduction, especially with a lot of volume absorption going on, would be much appreciated :slight_smile:


A one-evening-quicky (raw):


Little Griff, did you eat the neighbours again?
My quicky for the weekly CG challenge on facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/weeklycgc/?fref=ts)