Ground shadder not properly scaled
So, I'm applying a ground (lawn/grass) shadder. Unfortunately, it doesn't look the slighest bit natural, and it seems to be caused by the shadder not being at the same scale as the surface it covers. What I mean is that the shadder covers a relatively large surface with elements that are in reality very small. I attached a picture where I replaced the shadder by another which includes dead leaves so that it would be more obvious. As you can see in the picture, each individual leaf covers a large part of the lawn, so the result basically looks like a painted mural of very large leaves, definitely not like a ground covered by actual leaves. In reality, I'm using a shadder with grass, but the result, though less obvious than with the leaves, looks essentially like a carpet.
How can I solve this scaling issue?
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Nevermind, I found the answer to my question in a previous thread about the same issue : changing the tiling.
I still have two questions, though. In the tiling tab, there are a "vertical offset" and an "horizontal offset" control. What purpose do they serve?
And : the lawn still looks terribly flat,especially with a low light. Is there a simple way to make it look more....ruguous? Irregular?
The offset controls allow you to move the texture around without scaling it.
The shader should add normal-, bump-, and/or displacement maps to deal with thickness, check those channels and possibly adjust the strength values!
OK, thank you. I'll try to come back to this thread next time I'll have something looking "flat" and see how those settings work.
There are a few products in the DAZ store that come to mind. For a quick example the morphing terrain that is included in Maclean's Everyday Morphing Primitives set is a flat sheet sort of object that can be dialed a bit, to add some irregularity - like for water or a grassy slope say.
Another item is the Grass Shader for DAZ Studio. Like the Whitemagus grass evolution set, this one is supposed to add actual geometry.
I have these but I have only used the first one for the most part. I'm not sure where to find the second one, in my Content Library and I only just now found out that there is a user guide. The Whitemagus grass evolution renders really nicely but takes forever on my old computer.
Since all tiles will appear to "repeat" if you zoom out far enough, I will sometimes render a piece of ground twice, moving the offsets a bit in-between renders. It's a cheap way of getting in some variety, into part of your render if you will.
Offset is useful when you have 2 surfaces next to each other where you're tiling the same texture, but maybe the seams don't quite line up. Say for example you were using two planes next to each other at slightly different locations, but you want the texture to appear seamlless between them. You can adjust the horizontal or vertical offset so that the patterns on the two planes line up properly.
As for the flatness, faking it with bump / normal / displacement mapping can definitely help. True shader sets and other tools like Philosopher's Ultimate Grass & Meadow Worldbuilder are much better if you want grasslands.
I also try to keep track of other sets that I may have purchased with have good ground props and shaders and re-use just that part from other sets when necessary.