How to create life-like grass?

[bjulius21]

I have created hundreds of renderings but one thing I always struggle with is the grass. Is there something within chief to make the grass more life-like? Or is there a recommended second hand rendering software to help assist in making the images of grass seem more real? Attached are a couple of photos that show what I am dealing with. Any suggestions are appreciated. Thanks in advance. 

[Chopsaw]

I think chief has slightly better grass than that.  Have you tried any of these ?

 

https://www.chiefarchitect.com/3d-library/index.php?r=site/detail/1058

 

You can also create your own seamless textures or get them from other sources.

[mattyt12]

Agree with Chopsaws statement plus use of shadows from 3D trees from behind the camera is effective at breaking up the monotony, Chiefer is an expert at this.

 

https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/gallery/image/2618-chief-architect-x9-3d-exterior-rendering/

https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/gallery/image/2616-chief-architect-x9-exterior-rendering/

https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/gallery/image/831-residential-architectural-rendering/

 

[TheKitchenAbode]

You might try 2048 Grass - Thich with Leaves, it's in the Bonus Library "Materials High Resolution Grass". Needs some adjustment, I add some bump, just copy the texture into the bump file box and adjust color to suit your lighting. Here's an example in X11 PBR. The other thing is to add some elevation points to your terrain so it is not just dead flat.

[Westlanedesigns]

Grass Glorious Grass. This drawing is still in preliminary stages but I wanted to share. I have been searching for a way to get more realistic looking grass in CA since I first started using the product 10 years ago. I finally figured it out last night by accident. There is still some work to do to make it better, but at least it is closer to what I want grass to look like than all the other terrain images.

 

Create a garden bed where you want the grass to be, then add this "plant" to the garden bed. I have never done this before, but if you add this grass to your library, select it and then place it in the garden bed it will distribute the plant. I turned off show objects, reduced the distance, changed to alternate grid, random angle and object scaling to 25% and 50%.

 

There is still some work to do to make it look better, but I wanted to get this out there and see if anyone else has tried something like this.

 

I should add that I am still using X11.

 

Grass.calibz

Edited June 18, 2020 by Westlanedesigns
I wanted to add that I am using X11

[Chrisb222]

On 11/5/2019 at 11:56 PM, Chopsaw said:

You can also create your own seamless textures or get them from other sources.

 

The above is what I do. I have seamless shingles and seamless grass I downloaded from a texture website.

 

Just do a search for online textures, there are tons.

 

I have also made my own seamless brick from a photograph of a brick house where I wanted to use the same brick. Turned out great.

 

[Westlanedesigns]

1 hour ago, Chrisb222 said:

 

The above is what I do. I have seamless shingles and seamless grass I downloaded from a texture website.

 

Just do a search for online textures, there are tons.

 

I have also made my own seamless brick from a photograph of a brick house where I wanted to use the same brick. Turned out great.

 

 

I have had some success with things like that too, on building materials. Not so much with terrain. I guess it is because I don't like the look of the grass in the seamless textures I have found. The grasses that I do like, aren't seamless. For the "Front Elevation Grass Issue" I found a grass I liked, but kept having issues with how the texture repeated. Have you had any success with that? I have circled the parts I don't like about the grass in this picture. 

 

One of my issues has always been the hard lines between grass and sidewalks, or other terrain. This is just a way to potentially deal with that if other people have the same issue. Here is a ground level view of the same picture I previously posted. The "Ground Level" picture is just a standard render. I have circled the two areas that this plant distribution thing fixes. In my eyes anyway. 

 

[Chopsaw]

8 minutes ago, Westlanedesigns said:

The grasses that I do like, aren't seamless. For the "Front Elevation Grass Issue" I found a grass I liked, but kept having issues with how the texture repeated. Have you had any success with that?

 

The more variation there is in the photo the more difficult it is but did you try making a seamless texture out of it ?  You can do it in Photoshop or Gimp.

[Westlanedesigns]

3 minutes ago, Chopsaw said:

 

The more variation there is in the photo the more difficult it is but did you try making a seamless texture out of it ?  You can do it in Photoshop or Gimp.

No I guess I have never tried to make my own seamless texture. I have GIMP, but I have not played with it very much. I have use it to touch up photos after creating them in CA, but only a few times, and each time it is like learning a new software all over again. Thanks for the tip, I will give that a try.

[Chopsaw]

6 minutes ago, Westlanedesigns said:

No I guess I have never tried to make my own seamless texture. I have GIMP, but I have not played with it very much. I have use it to touch up photos after creating them in CA, but only a few times, and each time it is like learning a new software all over again. Thanks for the tip, I will give that a try.

 

Here is a short tutorial I have that likely originally came from the forum here somewhere.

 

Seamless textures with GIMP.txt

[Westlanedesigns]

2 minutes ago, Chopsaw said:

 

Here is a short tutorial I have that likely originally came from the forum here somewhere.

 

Seamless textures with GIMP.txt

THANKS!!!!

[robdyck]

1 hour ago, Chopsaw said:

 

Here is a short tutorial I have that likely originally came from the forum here somewhere.

 

Seamless textures with GIMP.txt

You can do that in Chief as well. You'll lose a bit of photo quality but not much and the only editing needed will be cropping.

[Kbird1]

On 6/20/2020 at 9:08 AM, Chopsaw said:

 

Here is a short tutorial I have that likely originally came from the forum here somewhere.

 

Seamless textures with GIMP.txt

 

 

Thanks Chopsaw , I had not seen this before and had been meaning to try it out.  

 

Thought this info would be good for Others too so I made a Tip out of it too :

 

 

https://chieftalk.chiefarchitect.com/topic/26855-seamless-textures-using-gimp/

[Chopsaw]

5 minutes ago, Kbird1 said:

Thanks Chopsaw , I had not seen this before and had been meaning to try it out.  

 

I guess that did not originally come from you then.  Not sure as I have not done it in a while but one of the newer versions of Gimp may even have an automatic seamless feature, but it is good to understand the theory as well.

[Kbird1]

7 minutes ago, Chopsaw said:

 

I guess that did not originally come from you then.  Not sure as I have not done it in a while but one of the newer versions of Gimp may even have an automatic seamless feature, but it is good to understand the theory as well.

 

I've had Gimp on and off over the Years but never having owned Photoshop , I never found it very intuitive to use , so I am hoping the new version released this month , has some nice useabilty changes too. I have mainly use MS Paint to make textures for Chief from screen grabs in the past , some look good , some not so much but it largely depends on the initial quality of the pic too , eg subdued flat lighting is important.

 

M.

[Ridge_Runner]

7 hours ago, Chrisb222 said:

I have also made my own seamless brick from a photograph of a brick house where I wanted to use the same brick. Turned out great.

I do this also while I am at the remodel site, or at a house with the brick a client wants to replicate; works great. Just make sure you are as square and plumb to the brick as you can be. I usually take several shots on multiple walls and vary the number of bricks in the shot, just in case I may like one shot over another. Photographer's rule - take lots of pictures.

[Chiefer]

 

On 11/6/2019 at 11:11 AM, bjulius21 said:

I have created hundreds of renderings but one thing I always struggle with is the grass. Is there something within chief to make the grass more life-like? Or is there a recommended second hand rendering software to help assist in making the images of grass seem more real? Attached are a couple of photos that show what I am dealing with. Any suggestions are appreciated. Thanks in advance. 

Try Twinmotion2020. It's Free for non-commercial use and pay ($189 in the Philippines, less than $300 in the US). It's user-friendly than Lumion.

[Westlanedesigns]

I have played with the concept a little more. Changed the image file I was using. Here is my newest preliminary rendering created using the method I described above. 

 

My goal is to find a way to make CA do what I want it to. This is the closest I have gotten to something realistic grass. I actually used the same strategy on the rocks in the landscaping at the front of the house. No post editing of this image. Everything done in CA X11.

[mattyt12]

On 6/28/2020 at 1:29 PM, Chiefer said:

They are all nice renderings but this one... wow, nicely done

[Renerabbitt]

3 hours ago, Westlanedesigns said:

more

The method you happened upon has been around in other softwares for a while, and kudos to you for your natural discovery. Take it a step further by using materials instead of images. Create a symbol and apply a material with bump, normal, roughness maps and your grass will look even better, albeit taxing on your CPU.

[Chiefer]

19 hours ago, mattyt12 said:

They are all nice renderings but this one... wow, nicely done

Thanks!

[davidstvz]

On 6/18/2020 at 5:04 PM, Westlanedesigns said:

Grass Glorious Grass. This drawing is still in preliminary stages but I wanted to share. I have been searching for a way to get more realistic looking grass in CA since I first started using the product 10 years ago. I finally figured it out last night by accident. There is still some work to do to make it better, but at least it is closer to what I want grass to look like than all the other terrain images.

 

Create a garden bed where you want the grass to be, then add this "plant" to the garden bed. I have never done this before, but if you add this grass to your library, select it and then place it in the garden bed it will distribute the plant. I turned off show objects, reduced the distance, changed to alternate grid, random angle and object scaling to 25% and 50%.

 

There is still some work to do to make it look better, but I wanted to get this out there and see if anyone else has tried something like this.

 

I should add that I am still using X11.

 

Grass.calibz

 

Thank you for posting this.  This works quite well with a bit of tweaking and also works in HD Pro not just Chief.

 

Even without a grass "plant", using garden beds can be helpful because you can set an exact shape and thickness so that the simple grass rises above the sidewalks properly.

[Lakeside-E]

Saw this topic today and found a pretty cool tool as a result so i thought i would share... I was searching for a seamless picture generator to make the process easier when the need arises to use a picture for a texture. I have made some seamless textures before but the process is overall pretty time consuming, especially if you dont have gimp or photoshop. Here is the base image I downloaded from Provia's Website this morning.

 

 

First I came across this website: https://www.imgonline.com.ua/eng/make-seamless-texture.php

You upload an image, make some selections, and it spits out a seamless image. I didnt spend alot of time playing with it but The best result i got was setting the method to NO 3, Pre-Cropped to 2 pixels each side, Pre-Averaging Intensity 25, and I used the PNG-24 output option. Here is the tiled image it generated (2x2)

 

 

Not too bad for about 2 min work. If you have tried to make stone seamless you would know how inherently difficult it is.

 

Best option I found was a download called PixPlant. It can operate as a standalone program or can be used within photoshop (it says). It has a pretty easy to use interface and can generate options quickly. Once you have one you like, you can get into a little finer editing using some familiar tools (paint, clone, blur, flatten, and sharpen) It did take a bit longer, but the use and display of the texture tiles while editing made it pretty simple and the added bonus of being able to generate some maps was cool. This function can use a bit of work but it is something...

 

 

Here is a side by side comparison of the two stone walls generated today... imgonline on left and PixPlant on the right.

 

 

 

Enjoy

Provia - Terra Cut - Russet.calibz

 

[Lakeside-E]

1 hour ago, solver said:

https://www.pixplant.com

forgot to post the link, thanks

[Kbird1]

3 hours ago, solver said:

https://www.pixplant.com

 

$99USD unless you are a 1 man band operation , then it's only $37 --- Nice !