Rock Grass and Dynamic Nature Shaders For DAZ Studio (Commercial)

Tarina Kivi

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jaebea

I originally had a grass and dirt map in the difuse and used displacement to give it some dimension but this shader is just so much better!

Dkgoose

Age of Armour said:

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No. Either one should cover it. I would go with the zip. The exe is for installing a macro which the shader uses to allow flagging with the Advanced Lights. The zip has it also but the exe is better at ensuring that the macro is installed to the correct location. If you have the latest update of the advanced lights then the macro is already installed on your machine.

I would only install the exe if you have the advanced lights but flagging doesn't appear to be working with the grass or rocks.

Ok thank you

Spit

Age of Armour said:

Wow! Such great images everyone! I mean really really great!

Spit said:

Oh, I have a question on the grass. I'm assuming there's an underlying 'noise' for the displacement? Is there any way (or is it even possible) to change the noise density?

Do you mean like more spacing between the blades themselves? Like a ground with sparse grass, only a blade here and there?

Yes, exactly--being able to change in a range from dense to sparse. I don't know if that's possible procedurally?

Spit

jaebea said:

Here is my submission. I add the shader and tweeked it to one of the scenes in the animation I am working on. The woman is only in there for perspective. The shader is fabulous! What would have taken me days to do, this shader did after a few tweeks. Definitely one of my favorite tools now!

This is wonderful! That's Forest Mysteria, no? One could never guess how old that set is and it's always been one of my faves though I haven't ever made it look even half as good as yours.

MelanieL

@Tarina Kivi - thanks :) I was planning to do more today but finally decided to spend the time on an RRRR entry.
@jaebea - that's a lovely scene - great stuff!

RAMWolff

jaebea said:

Here is my submission. I add the shader and tweeked it to one of the scenes in the animation I am working on. The woman is only in there for perspective. The shader is fabulous! What would have taken me days to do, this shader did after a few tweeks. Definitely one of my favorite tools now!

Beautiful and inspiring. WOW!

jaebea

Yes, it is Forest Mysteria and I love it too. Thanks everyone!

Tarina Kivi

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jakiblue

Age of Armour said:

Wow! Such great images everyone! I mean really really great!

Spit said:

Oh, I have a question on the grass. I'm assuming there's an underlying 'noise' for the displacement? Is there any way (or is it even possible) to change the noise density?

Do you mean like more spacing between the blades themselves? Like a ground with sparse grass, only a blade here and there?

The Rock shader…...it says to use it on a subdivided cube…..my cube still looks cube shaped…as in square…it doesn’t look anything like a rock or boulder shape. What on earth am I missing??

When you go to Create - New Primitive, make sure the cube settings only use 1 division. After subdivision, and before the rock shader is applied, the cube should render as a sphere. The rock shader will then distort the spherical sub-d cube to look more rock like.

You can use a sphere primitive too but that uses more polygons and spheres have too many edges coming together at the top and bottom poles which can sometimes cause wobbles or artifacts. They aren't really any big deal, it is just that a sub-d cube is cleaner and more efficient.

Let me know if that works. Oh and to be clear, you can use the shader on anything you like... It is just that a sub-d cube makes a quick, easy, very low poly rock.

Thanks for sharing all the excellent renders everyone.

AHA!!!! Thank you, that was it!! For some reason, my cube had 6 divisions! LOL. Don't know how i did that. Heh. NOW I have rocks. Thanks AgeofArmour!

selias19

These shaders are so great. Finally my deer and horses have a place to rest and to munch on. :-)
Sigrid

Age of Armour

Great renders
Great renders jaebea, selias19 and Tarina! I'd love to see the animated version if you end up uploading it somewhere jaebea.

Spit said:

Age of Armour said:

Wow! Such great images everyone! I mean really really great!

Spit said:

Oh, I have a question on the grass. I'm assuming there's an underlying 'noise' for the displacement? Is there any way (or is it even possible) to change the noise density?

Do you mean like more spacing between the blades themselves? Like a ground with sparse grass, only a blade here and there?

Yes, exactly--being able to change in a range from dense to sparse. I don't know if that's possible procedurally?

You know. I hadn't really thought of that when making the shader but there is a semi round about way of doing it. Try either setting the minimum displacement at -1 or move your geometry shell down a bit. This causes just the tips of the grass to poke through and look less dense. You will probably need to adjust the length also to compensate.

In addition, you can disable the limits of Length Variation Frequency and set it to something like 500% which will bring it about to where every other blade is short.

AHA!!!! Thank you, that was it!! For some reason, my cube had 6 divisions! LOL. Don’t know how i did that. Heh. NOW I have rocks. Thanks AgeofArmour!

I've done it several times myself which is why I thought that might be the cause :)

One thing that bothers me in this render is that where the water meets the bank it turns black and I do not know what’s causing it. : ( Can someone help me resolve this issue? Thanks!

Off the top of my head... Maybe Refraction Bias. I'll try to look over the shader here in a bit and see if I can get the same effect.

Spit

Age of Armour said:

Spit said:

Oh, I have a question on the grass. I'm assuming there's an underlying 'noise' for the displacement? Is there any way (or is it even possible) to change the noise density?

Do you mean like more spacing between the blades themselves? Like a ground with sparse grass, only a blade here and there?

Yes, exactly--being able to change in a range from dense to sparse. I don't know if that's possible procedurally?

You know. I hadn't really thought of that when making the shader but there is a semi round about way of doing it. Try either setting the minimum displacement at -1 or move your geometry shell down a bit. This causes just the tips of the grass to poke through and look less dense. You will probably need to adjust the length also to compensate.

In addition, you can disable the limits of Length Variation Frequency and set it to something like 500% which will bring it about to where every other blade is short.

Thanks! That should work just fine!

Spit

Terina and Selias. Love the animals. Nice rural scenes with, altogether now!, wonderful grass! :)

scorpio

I Used the rock shaders in this image for the sand and the buildings.

Tarina Kivi

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Spit

scorpio64dragon said:

I Used the rock shaders in this image for the sand and the buildings.

Simple, dramatic, perfect.

btw What are those buildings if I may ask?

Spit

More experiments.

1st we have sparse grass. This is actually what I want though I'm still curious about the underlying basic displacement noise map math that Shader mixer/builder uses.

Min Displacement -1
Length variation frequency 50
Length doubled to 40
Length variation strength 100

Reducing clump stuff to zero made no diff.

2nd We got Salad!

All I added to above was upping the Clump Strength to 10. Put this one on your windowsill!

Note: I discovered that with more clumpiness I have to reduce the x and y scale of the shadered surface by at least 10% so grass doesn't poke through the container. That's probably related to the -1 displacement?

TJohn

Thanks, Spit! Knowing what settings do what is great info!

scorpio

Thanks Tarina and Spit.
The buildings are something I threw together in hexagon really just primitives with little windows shaped in.

amroczka

I just snagged the Rock & Grass Bundle, but it looks like some files are missing :(

There is nothing in the Age of Armour > Grass or Rock folder except the Bonus folders. And I'm getting an error message when trying to load the bonus terrain props.

Richard Haseltine

Did you install manually or with DIM? I have three zips in DIM - one for the Rock Shader, one for the Grass Shader and one for the Rock & Grass Bundle.

amroczka

Richard Haseltine said:

Did you install manually or with DIM? I have three zips in DIM - one for the Rock Shader, one for the Grass Shader and one for the Rock & Grass Bundle.

In DIM it just gave me one file and came up blank when I tried to find it manually.

Finally figured out how to find all the files manually and downloaded them. Will install them later and see if everything is resolved.

Thanks for following up!!

Kerya

In DIM: click on the little gear icon in the right corner and make sure you have everything applicable or not checked ... I hope this helps

Age of Armour

Arrg! Once again I missed the thread update notification. Sorry all.

Very dramatic image scorpio64dragon! I love it!

Kerya said:

In DIM: click on the little gear icon in the right corner and make sure you have everything applicable or not checked ... I hope this helps

Yes that may be it. I'm actually not sure but because of how one of the files needs to be installed, DIM might consider the shaders a plugin so be sure that option is enabled in DIM.

1st we have sparse grass. This is actually what I want though I’m still curious about the underlying basic displacement noise map math that Shader mixer/builder uses.

The noise that produces the grass is a "Spots" brick with the threshold locked at 0. This creates a randomized egg create like pattern. I used it instead of noise because it anti-aliases better and is less tied to the shading rate than noise (It's still affected by shading rate but not as much). The blade thickness setting is reversed internally so that a higher value causes the humps of the egg create like pattern to scale to be closer together but not shorter.

Note: I discovered that with more clumpiness I have to reduce the x and y scale of the shadered surface by at least 10% so grass doesn’t poke through the container. That’s probably related to the -1 displacement?

You are correct. It is related to the negative displacement. What is happening there is that the grass begins displacing below the surface. since it is growing at a wide range of angles some blades are coming straight sideways from below the surface and appearing through the sides of the pedestal.

I love the lettuce by the way!

Tarina Kivi

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Daniel Barnett

I'm trying to create a basic rock. I create a cube and then convert the cube to sub-d and then apply DT-Preset and nothing happens to the converted cube. What am I missing?

Thank you,
dbb

Age of Armour

Great Tarina Kivi. I'm glad to hear that got it working well for you. The render looks wonderful!

dbbdaniel said:

I'm trying to create a basic rock. I create a cube and then convert the cube to sub-d and then apply DT-Preset and nothing happens to the converted cube. What am I missing?

Thank you,
dbb

Hummm...

Oh, is are you selecting the cube's material zone also (in the surfaces tab)? If not that is probably the cause. If you are and it is still not working, let me know what preset you are using and I'll look into it.

Tarina Kivi

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Daniel Barnett

Age of Armour said:

Great Tarina Kivi. I'm glad to hear that got it working well for you. The render looks wonderful!

dbbdaniel said:

I'm trying to create a basic rock. I create a cube and then convert the cube to sub-d and then apply DT-Preset and nothing happens to the converted cube. What am I missing?

Thank you,
dbb

Hummm...

Oh, is are you selecting the cube's material zone also (in the surfaces tab)? If not that is probably the cause. If you are and it is still not working, let me know what preset you are using and I'll look into it.

The process I'm using is to create a cube then change geo to sub-d and then try to drag and drop one of the DT-Presets onto it.
Thanks for responding!!!
dbb