Somewhat realistic grass

Hey folks,
trying an outdoor scene but i’m not happy with the grass.

The best result I got so far:


It’s “OK” but not as good as it could be I think.

3 Particle Systems:

  1. small grass brushes (15000 with 15 children)
  2. “big” grass brushes (1500 with 25 children)
  3. small plants (800 with 7 children)

The geometry doesn’t match the HDR exactly, but it isn’t used in the final render anyway.

I want to have the grass finished before I go to the next part, so it’s just the grass ATM.

Someone any advice on that?

Hey, it’s not bad, as a matter of fact, your grass is looking nice. If you push it a little further, it’ll look great IMHO.
Few quick tips that may help:

  • I’d take some plants off the scene, there’s too many of them I think,
  • grass blades on your picture go like straight up, try to add some curvature to them,
  • diversity is your friend, model some more different grass brushes (I don’t know how many you’ve already modelled, but some more will surely push your piece forward),
  • a thing I like to do creating nature is giving few materials to many models (using for example only 3 textures), and differing their colour/saturation with an random value for object (this may require to duplicate models you created, to add more diversity in colour),
  • try adding some common small flowers here and there (not to many),
  • try modelling just a few more plants (small ones), and spread them all over the scene,
  • well, this is just me and many may disagree, but I’d desaturate your grass a little.
    Hope this helps, I’m looking forward to seeing teh final result!

Thx,
well…yes there are too many (identical) plants on that picture. I will model some more different ones, that should be better.
Regarding materials, I use only 3 textures for the complete scene (+ HDR) so…I totally agree with you :slight_smile: small grass, big grass, plants…the variation is build in.

The final render…well…it will take a while to get it, the grass is just ~5% of the scene :slight_smile: But I’ll post from time to time.

Any further advices are still welcome.

to me the grass looks quite to saturated.
maybe an idea is to use the random output in the (object info or geometry node ?), and plug that in a color ramp with some variations of green color. Could be some brownish yellow, yellow-green, green blue,
That will help to bring more variation in,
I think

But besides that the grass looks great

Ok I was experimenting a bit, I’m not 100% happy with it but I think I go with it as it is now.


I already used random values in the grass material but ye, I had to rework that part.
I may model some more different flowers (it’s actually just one ATM) and some more different “big” grass brushes, but for now I’ll go for the next part of the scene.

Maybe some better lighting will do it (it’s a cheap HDR with …well…not THAT high dynamic range :slight_smile: )

(The background Photo ©2012 by Blake Maybank - it’s not the HDR I used)

The perspective doesn’t match and it’s very obvious. Also the colors don’t match with the background. Searched for the top half of the photo and found this:


You should match the colors and perspective better or use the first background - that matches a lot better.

Well yes it doesn’t match, I’m not using it in the final render I just needed something to set in the background for the testrender.
I just wanted to have feedback on the grass itself.

A very, very, very slight bit of mist in the scene might help. This can be accomplished easily in the node editor by multiplying in a bit of color using Z as the blending factor. In the first image, the biggest hint as to where the grass ends and the backround image begins is that those mountains are clearly being affected by the atmosphere, whereas nothing in front of them is. In fields this large, I’d expect some subtle effect in the distance.

What about the materials you used? You add some Translucent BSDF (with a lighter color) on the outer edges of the grass (Layer Weight > Facing as Factor in Mix Shader)

Add a color variation to each grass strand. The tip must be drying which is colored light brown and yellow green to green as you approach the middle. The end must be brownish green in color

I think lighting is half way to make realistic grass, and your scene seems very bland, so maybe you should try to put a couple of lights in different angles (key, fill, etc) with different intensities and colors… imo it doesn’t have to be realistic, it just has to look realistic.

Here’s my favourite tutorial on making grass: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eshOzshjt90

Andrew Price has a good explanation on grass and weeds. http://www.blenderguru.com/tutorials/make-grassy-meadow-scene/

It needs more color variation.

A quick color variation made in ps:


I like this one, some reason i see a lot of grass going the same way in multiple areas or heck i don’t know maybe im seeing weird lines in the grass. This one is the best though.

I’m not saying you should do it, but if you have some extra money then visit Blender Guru and buy their Grass Essentials pack. The results are worth paying for and it alleviates a lot of this type of frustration.