Any better way to do grass?

computersandmore

Hey there guys. I'm working on a scene that utilizes a camera with a wide-angle lens and is shooting out across a forest. There are several characters standing in the grass near the camera and then you can see the forest behind them from where the tree trunks enter the ground to over their tops so you can see the sky.

The issue I am running into is that not only do I have to load quite a few trees (something like 20 or so pines I believe) but also that in order to get all of the characters (four of them in separate locations) to look like they're standing IN grass and not ON a flat plane with a grass texture (which I tried, it looks HORRIBLE) I am having to load 30-40 instances of tall grass. this is upping the polygon count of the scene tremendously and it is now taking something like 40+ minute to render a 200x120 preview image. the final image will be 4000x2400 so that could easily take over a whole week to render, if not more.

I'm no stranger to 2-3 day renders but this is insane. Usually I am working on interior scenes so it's not so bad. Is there some better way to render grass that actually looks like grass other than using an actual physical grass model? I'm in the process of playing with lighting, which usually takes me at least 30-40 test renders to get right and it this rate it'll be a month before I'm even ready to begin the final render...let alone how long that will actually take.

computersandmore

I should also mention that I'm working on a system with a Core i7 processor and 8gb of RAM so while it may not be a total beast it's definitely not a slow computer. It's what I use all of the time for editing multi-camera HD footage and it handles that no problem. The issue really seems to be the grass (and to a lesser extent the trees). I could turn off shadows for test renders but then I don't actually get a preview of what it will really look like so that's pointless. I'm a photographer, so light and the way it interacts means a lot to my scenes.

WendyLuvsCatz

Displacement is one way
there are several grass shaders in store using displacement
Also Dimension theory's Ecomatics has quite good grass planes using lowpoly grass cutouts
another way is LAMH or Garibaldi using Renderman curve fibres as grass instead of hair

WhiteFox

Personally I use "Grass Shader for DAZ Studio" here's a demo. Also it is quite adjustable. One down side I have found is it tends to give a look of 'lines or rows' in the grass at certain camera angles.

Fishtales

Some things to try.

1) Sink the characters feet into the grass plane slightly so that the bottoms of their shoes are hidden.

2) Only have the long grass around the feet of the characters and trees, cuts down the number you need.

3) Increase the bump and displacement on the grass ground texture.