Easy and best render engine for Grass?

[cotty]

Most render engines are able to use instancing, so you can use simple geometry proxies to reduce model complexity in SU.

[andybot]

Hey Kalu -
I'm curious what you found difficult about Thea or Maxwell. Since you already know vray, I can imagine most of the knowledge about rendering can transfer fairly easily. Especially I found maxwell to be very easy to pick up, and it looks like the grass texture seems pretty cool (see: http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=80&t=46053 ) There are some things I don't like about those engines, but nothing that has to do with ease of use. Maybe try some tutorials and see if you like them more.

Andy

[novena]

hi Kalu,
to complement andybots comment:
Maxwell grass feature is really easy to use (even with standalone plugin), here you can find some examples and parameter values for grass:
http://support.nextlimit.com/display/knfaq/Grass+Examples

of course if you want to render a golf club then probably the solution is what cotty suggests, use geometry proxies...

or you can try with make-fur plugin, see this thread (http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=333&t=47858) where I explain briefly grass making with make-fur and geometry proxies

best
V

[notareal]

Thea can handle huge amount on instances... so probably you just need to get more familiar with the UI and instancing tool. You can find new Thea render viewport and instancing tutorials from Thea render resources.
Next version of exporter plugin will be a integrated with SU; Thea for SketchUp. You can take a look on a preview video from BaseCamp 2012.

[dale]

Here is an example of instancing grass in Thea. The grass may seem a little coarse, but I wanted to turn it into a an old looking black and white photo, so I made it this way.
There are about 4 different grass models from SketchUp made into an instance. The terrain model group was chosen as a canvas, and the amount and type of populations for the instance chosen, and presto! there it is.
It is extremely simple.

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[pbacot]

Wow, Dale. Why isn't this in the "Gallery" Gallery? The B&W works great. Although it also reminds me of a ca 60's B movie grading, and that could be a graveyard, and it is that time of year...

[dale]

Thanks Peter.
This was my entry in the Thea "Seasons" contest. I don't often get the pleasure of just playing in SketchUp, but I made a point of doing it for the contest, as like with the SketchUcation Forums, I want to be a contributing part of another great and helpful community.
Your right, I should add a few ghouls!

[kalu]

@andybot said:

Hey Kalu -
I'm curious what you found difficult about Thea or Maxwell. Since you already know vray, I can imagine most of the knowledge about rendering can transfer fairly easily. Especially I found maxwell to be very easy to pick up, and it looks like the grass texture seems pretty cool (see: http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=80&t=46053 ) There are some things I don't like about those engines, but nothing that has to do with ease of use. Maybe try some tutorials and see if you like them more.

Andy

Hi Andy:

thank you for the information. It take me a couple of months to learn Vray for Sketchup most learn at the beginning with Fernando Rentas videos from rhino plus the forum before Chaos take over Asgvis. Now we have tons of videos tutorials to learn quickly. The forum is kind of dead after Chaos take over. I still want to render in Vray the buildings and the grass just render in a second render engine and combine all in PH. I do not want to learn a new render engine again, and the option of use fur in sketchup is almost prohibited since it take forever to render. I am still looking for good options integrated to Sketchup as possible so I keep the same viewport.

Kalu.

[andybot]

Hi Kalu,
If you are still needing to do post-processing, then it seems adding in a grass texture in post (use a material-ID mask of the grass plane) is much quicker than having to render a whole extra render - especially if the other engine is unbiased like Maxwell (so it takes significantly longer to render... plus it has a whole different texture to the image, generally more "grainy")

Andy

[dale]

Hi Andy:

thank you for the information. It take me a couple of months to learn Vray for Sketchup most learn at the beginning with Fernando Rentas videos from rhino plus the forum before Chaos take over Asgvis. Now we have tons of videos tutorials to learn quickly. The forum is kind of dead after Chaos take over. I still want to render in Vray the buildings and the grass just render in a second render engine and combine all in PH. I do not want to learn a new render engine again, and the option of use fur in sketchup is almost prohibited since it take forever to render. I am still looking for good options integrated to Sketchup as possible so I keep the same viewport.

Kalu. [/quote]

Sorry Kalu, I was under the impression that you were looking for other render engines judging by the title of the post. Didn't mean to hi-jack you.
Cheers

[kalu]

Hi Dale:

Thank you for your comments. i really want to learn a quick way to do a grass in HQ but I already love Vray, and take me more than 6 months to learn that. I looking for any way just to make grass quick and real instead to Photoshop. thea and maxwell are awesome render engines but I already know how render in Vray I just do not want to start over again.

thank you for your info.

kalu.

[kalu]

Hi Andy,

Thank you for your comments. You are right, this is some that I always forgot.

Kalu.