Architectural Renderings

Gus R

Dave,

What sort of problems are you having with Skatter grass?

In general I think it's best to use either the tall or medium grass. The default setting for the composition from 3D Bazaar should work fine. You might also want to distort the surface a touch using a variety of plugins. Also, apply some kind of dirt material to the surface.

Skatter Composition.JPG

I also changed the proxy material for the grass in Thea Render to tone the grass material down because under light it's too bright. This should give you an idea of those setting which I assume can be done with other render engines. Lower right under "Tone Mapping."

Gamma at -33 and saturation and brightness at -12.

Grass Material.jpg

ntxdave

@gus r said:

Dave,

What sort of problems are you having with Skatter grass?

In general I think it's best to use either the tall or medium grass. The default setting for the composition from 3D Bazaar should work fine. You might also want to distort the surface a touch using a variety of plugins. Also, apply some kind of dirt material to the surface.

Don't forget to also add "border grass" to your grass surface.

First of all I should say that I am using Twilight Render which I think might be part of the problem (not sure that is the case and I like TR).

Where do you get your grass, trees and bushes from?
How do you add the “border grass”?

I think there is real potential for using the plugin (even though I am a hobbyist and right now only working with the trial version). Right now I am kind of frustrated because many of my trials have not worked correctly with grass being the worst.

Gus R

Dave,

The grass is from 3D Bazar which is the right most icon in the Skatter toolbar. From there you find tall grass for example and in the lower right click on import. The drop down gives you an option for the main grass and border. Import the main grass from there and it automatically opens up the composition editor window where you can pick the host groups. You can then go back to 3D Bazar and do the same for the border grass.

3D Bazar.JPG

3D Bazar 2.JPG

You might need to update your update your Twilight Render.. Also check the Lindale forums. I'm not sure of Twilight supports Skatter. See if an update helps.

I mainly use Vizpark or Globe Plants trees and shurbs. Flowers from Vizpark and Vimage.

Skp files for plants can get rather huge. I typically import them into skp and run Cleanup and then create a proxy with Thea Render. I think Fredo has a proxy creator of his own which I don't know how to use.

ntxdave

Thank you sir.

Some of this I have had working. Pleas look at my Q building in this thread and you will see what I am working on and trying to improve. You will see some vegetation but I do this the had way.

Gus R

Dave,

You're welcome.

I can't seem to be able to get Skatter proxies to work in Twilight. It will work with components. I know before I finally got Thea Render I was using the Fur plugin and came up with some nice looking grass using a grass png component. It's cumbersome and slow work but it accomplished the task. I was also using some free trees from Xfrog. That requires some importing of models. Before that I just used plain old Sketchup grass materials.

Gus R

Dave,

You might want to give D5 Render a shot. The free version is pretty good and they have grass there that doesn't require any special plugins. Other than exporting your skp file to D5 which can then be updated from the Sketchup model. The grass is show in the Snowmass Rodeo rendering above. The pro version is $35 a month which you can try for free first but you might not need that. The free version also includes trees and other landscape elements.

Gus R

Dave,

Try experimenting with the attached skp. I was able to render these with Twilight and Skatter. There are two grass proxies. I think the one for Scene 3 looks better.

Grass Test 02.jpg