Grass geometry

General Discussion
1

This is very interesting…



http://www.kevinboulanger.net/publications/thesisKevinBoulanger.pdf



Seems like they use a system of grass geometries close by, that changes into impostors at a distance. Very sophisticated.



There are some things that are over the top for grass in normal games I suppose, but the idea of using geometry close by is kind of intriguing. Also using dynamic density maps to reduce grass count further away etc. Lots of good stuff in there.



The grass geometries could be easily generated like blender does hair, but simplified with some pseudo-physics, maybe some simple Brownian motion etc. Looks like that’s how they do it too, shooting particles out of the ground under the influence of gravity.



I don’t want to make any promises, but this seems like the natural path forward (once the basic grass and tree stuff is done).

2 Likes
2

Wow what a treasure trove. :slight_smile:

3

Yeah this is basically all the stuff I use, but more advanced. And its explained very well - from the bottom up. Wow…

4

Here is a link to some pictures and stuff: http://www.kevinboulanger.net/grass.html

5

Wow! I don’t believe this is real-time rendering :o



6

Its pretty heavy on the computer tho, as it seems. Tho its a few years since they wrote the article, it seems the park scene he shows has like 40 fps or something… and that’s with only graphics, no animated models or game logic of any kind etc. (and i assume a very good graphics card). There is lots of awesome stuff in there tho.