FSX Volumetric Grass Testing

[jtanabodee]

But I need to know how to do this from the start..... step by step and NOT using Gmax.

I don't use FSDS, so I don't know how to help you.
Sorry about that.

 

[jyarddog]

thanx anyway. post here if you hear of anyone who does. On the other hand let's give it a try. I do have Gmax on my machine, and do have a friend you might be able to help me.

In fact I helped him with FSDS. Doing so help him learn Gmax better. so there must be some similarities which may be able to help.

In my old esample above you see how far I got. Some didn't look too bad.

Is there a process where I would lay a large sheet of this grass on a background and then cut out pieces I didn't want? Bob

 

[bmart]

thanx anyway. post here if you hear of anyone who does. On the other hand let's give it a try. I do have Gmax on my machine, and do have a friend you might be able to help me.

In fact I helped him with FSDS. Doing so help him learn Gmax better. so there must be some similarities which may be able to help.

In my old esample above you see how far I got. Some didn't look too bad.

Is there a process where I would lay a large sheet of this grass on a background and then cut out pieces I didn't want? Bob

@jyarddog There is no need to do any scaling of any kind. The 29P tutorial does not mention scaling the size of the stacked planes. They should all be the same size, with the same texture mapped to them in the same way, only the planes themselves should be separated vertically by a distance of your choosing (the tutorial suggests .01m, but different intervals create different effects, and this is ultimately up to you).

As far as cutting out the areas of grass/non grass goes, you have two options:

1. The easy way: after you've stacked and textured your GPs, export them as the lowest layer in your scenery. This will place all other GPs above it, which is the logical thing with grass. It will, however, produce the visual effect that there is no vertical growth of the grass where it meets the overlying GPs. In all other areas, though, it will generally trick the eye into thinking it is 3d.

2. The smart way: after you've created your first layer of grass, but before you've cloned and stacked the other ones on top, use the boolean tool to remove from your grass plane any area that should not be grass (runway, taxiway, ramp). Then clone and stack from there and you will have neat intersections between grass and concrete where the grass brilliantly jumps up above the overlying GP something like it would in real life.

I see that you are using FSDS and that you have gotten yourself 75% of the way to proper 3d grass using it. I have never used this tool, but if it offers a boolean option, it probably functions somewhat similarly to GMAX's. It might help for you to check out the GMAX tutorial available in the wiki area. Here is a link. Ideally, the whole page should be read top to bottom, but the boolean section can be found in chapter 7.6.

Good luck.

bmart

 

[jyarddog]

Bmart- thanx- this should point me in a good direction. Yes- boolean operation cuts out this or that. It is tricky and has its problems but it might work. Thanx again- will get back to ya on progress. Bob

 

[Dayou]

Hi guys,
The grass looks very real and fantastic. In my airport, the satellite imagery that I'm using to make the ground in 3DS MAX looks like the desert, I wanted to create grass to let it look more real and better. I hope you can share the texture you've used in the work and i also want to say I didn't understand anything from the tutorial here : http://www.webdesign.org/3d-graphics/tutorials/low-poly-grass-and-hair.543.html
So please put in the WIKI a tutorial step by step using images to better understand.

Dayou.

 

[Flusianer135]

Hi Guys,
I have a problem with the volumetric grass in Fs2004.So I have read the tutorial from Thunderbolt and have tried it.So then i tweaked the asm set the layer to 8.
And this is how it looks in my Fs2004 any ideas what is wrong ?
I use 3DS Max 2013
PC Specs: I 7 3770K @4,2GHZ,GTX560 2 GB,8GB,1Tb hard drive

regards Julian

 

[jyarddog]

To all, here- Yes a step by step tutorial would be wonderful. I have a guess... the farther apart the white dots are in your noise layer the thinner the grass will look and vs. Why I had bigger and bigger stacks is because that is what I saw on the tutorial. the author said he did that only to show the stacks better. He never explained that in the tutorial. Anyway now my stacks are the same size. But I am getting thin grass too. I understand that the farther apart the stacks are the longer the grass looks. Something to fiddle with to get the grass length you want, I guess.

A question I have is do I make all this as large as my airport or at least as large as the general area is where I want the grass? Then do I Boolean cut it where I do not want grass to show? If this is true, then I will need to get a backdrop picture of my area, scaled, and cut as is needed. bob

 

[jtanabodee]

I am thinking about that. I am making the tutorial when I'm in the stage of making it in my project, jyarddog. But I'm not sure if it works for you. Since I only use Gmax.

 

[Luis Serrano]

It is possible to export this with the GPW to use the option to not exclude the autogen, im trying to use this grass along my runway but it is causing autogen exclusion if i use the mdlcommander method and the other alternative that is use mdlcomader and then tweak the asm files and then create the bgls using bglc9 and then import those bgls to the GPW and use the not exclude autogen feature it causes that the ground polygons on top of the 3D Grass (My runway) start to flickering from the above. It's not flicking on ground just at 1200 AGL starts to flick. I think is related with the Exclude Autogen feature of the GPW but this only happens with my grass BGL, when i use the Not Exclude autogen from GPW on a model created with FS2004 or FSX gmax game pack this flickering does not occur at all, but using the exporting method described above causes this flickering. So i am wondering if i can export the grass using fsx game pack and then place it using GPW maybe i can use the not exclude autogen feature without the flickering issue.

 

[jtanabodee]

I would say you have to try it. I once exported it as an animated grass and it worked. I exported as FSX mdl. But you have to set up the material to fit to FSX properties unless you will have problem with alpha layer. See thread #24

 

[Abo7JR]

Used this method with our scenery planning to release it as an update .. Never been so satisfied .. :

At first i did the object placement tool, i got some annoying flickering. didn't like it .. next i did it using the groundpolygon method by unchecking the first two tick boxes. And i got it without flickering..

i got the texture from CGTexture.com with noise alpha channel

The grass in the back is not yet finished that's why the color is like that..


Thanks guys for the method you saved us a lot of FPS ;P

 

[jtanabodee]

Glad to know that this method works for you.

 

[riccardo74]

Hi to all, can someone please reupload the tutorial and model for volumtric grass provided by 29 Palms?

The links above are broken.

Thanks in advance,
Ric

 

[Thunderbolt]

Hi Ric,

here you go: 29palms.de/files/29PTutorial_VolGrass.zip