Does AoA Grass Shader work with Iray?
Eva1
Posts: 1,249
in The Commons
Hi, as the title says, I'd like to know if it's possible to use the AoA Grass Shader in Iray. I suspect the answer will be no as it looks like it's a custom shader, but thought I'd ask in case somone's found a work around.
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No unfortunately it doesn't work. I haven't seen any mention of a workaround.
I'd love someone to produce something like it for Iray, the same with the snow shader Let it Snow, I really miss not being able to use these when rendering in Iray.
Thanks very much scorpio, that's a shame, I would have bought it as it's in fastgrab today.
Yeah. :/
For what it's worth, you can do something VAGUELY similar by putting in a noise map into displacement and cranking subd up. However, I've run into problems with this approach. First, ideally you have white pixels with a little more black around them (so you get grass 'blades' with some space around them), second, by the time you get subd high enough for it to look right, your computer might EXPLODE.
yeah, that's a quick and dirty way of getting something similar, though probably not as good - I love my computer though and don't want to torture it:)
It's weird how poorly the machine can render high subd displacement when I'm pretty sure I can fill the thing with ACTUAL grass models and it runs better. I'm a bit baffled by that.
(To that end, I can't recommend http://www.daz3d.com/g3d-da-grass-and-plant-pack highly enough!)
Another option is to render the grass in 3DL and the rest in iRay, as was mentioned in a different thread. I have thrown together a quick example to demonstrate it, not the greatest, but may work in some cases. In this image the long thick grass and the rocks are 3DL using the AoA shaders, V7 and all her clothing are rendered in iRay.
Yeah, here's a test using displacement, at SubD6 it rendered tolerably fast. Subd7 (which I will post whenever it gets a decent completion) looks better but OMFG so slow.
Another option is using LAMH. I'll post an example later.
And now at Subd7. After 30 minutes was only at 4% convergence...
Working on a LAMH example.
This actually hurts my eyes. This is not good.
And here's LAMH.
I continue to be impressed with fiberhair export -- the file is only 263 kb, and I got to 30% completion in 10 mins with 5 million 'hairs.' It was slower doing the previous stuff, and the results with LAMH are (IMO) much better.
(5 million 'hairs', thickness is 5000 - 100)
The length needs a little more variation...even a lawn isn't quite that uniform. And a little more taper wouldn't be out, either. I'd probably break it into a few of parts...one longer, one shorter and a mid length one, then mix them, maybe varying the blade width for each one (like make the longer slightly wider, too). And a really good grass texture/shader preset, because hair shaders make grass look like fur/hair...
And then dropping a couple of mesh or billboard clumps/tufts of grass or 'weed' type flowers (dandelions, clover, ect) would really pull it together.
But over all, that is a great start on a good Iray grass...
Right, and LAMH has a decent ability to randomize length, though not width.
This was a quickie. ;)
I have a grass/plant pack which is awesome for getting close-up, realistic plants.
Working on a better test.
What I'd want to do in a more common scenario is use the LAMH for medium 'fill,' the grass instances for foreground, and then some simple green textured hills further away. Hmm.
That's why I said break it into parts...it's easier to make several smaller parts that have different widths than it is to do much variation of width in on large one.
When using LAMH for grass, use multiple shavegroups for the different widths. Shavegroups can overlap creating a nice coverage of both grasses. Also, random "bald" spots should be added using density maps with the denisty set to 50% red in splotches.
Kendall
Ok, my advice?
If you are going to be using Iray a lot and want grass, http://www.daz3d.com/g3d-da-grass-and-plant-pack or maybe the 'grass megapack' (I don't have it yet, so I don't know, but it looks interesting).
Here's an example in the same base. Now, mind you, the grass/plant pack consists of flat instanced sections, but I was able to layer things reasonably well. It comes with Iray settings, including dirt. The sections are usually a dirt plane with grass coming up, but I hid the plane and transferred the shader to the 'sandy pit' object I had been using.
Best of yet, this rendered in a fraction of the time the other stuff was, and looks way better. So... yeah. That's my advice. The grass/plant pack and the megapack each are priced only a little more than the AoA shader, so it's at least in the same consideration.
indeed, that looks far better than either of our efforts. The AoA pack does come with some rolling terrains and various rocks, so is a bit more than just some 3DL shaders. However textured grass, particularly close up, will never match that you showed in your last render.
btw: what did you mean by "grass megapack"?
This: http://www.daz3d.com/grassy-grounds-megapack
It looks intriguing because it mentions magnets to make hills, which is one limitation (I THINK) of the other pack.
If I end up getting it, too, I'll regard it as cool because the grass/plants pack has flowers and some other stuff that the megapack does not.
Thanks for the info, I have wishlisted both products
...so how does the G3D-DA Grass and Plant pack handle uneven terrains? That was one of the nice features of the AoA shader as you could have grass on any contour (used it a lot with First Bastion's Rolling Plains and Hilly Surround).
Welcome! They have been on my wishlist for a long time, grass/plants was on a decent sale recently (not a crazy sale, just... decent), and I sort of got it on a whim. Glad I did.
Because, frankly, all my previous attempts to render greenery suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck so much comparitively.
(Usually I have to keep the ground out of frame and rely on random grass bits from other packs to create the illusion of fields and... enh)
This was one of my better recent attempts to use a shader, using bump/normals. It's not super close up, and it looks more like some other ground cover, maybe a moss or creeping thyme.
http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Balt-Runner-Farmhand-574101397
The Grass in that shot looks mowed, and the lizard did a good job of running the lawnmower over the high ground in the background.
You might also want to consider Predatron's older pack with DSA texture and mesh grass:
http://www.daz3d.com/pred-pack-grass-one
http://www.daz3d.com/grass-poppies-and-tall-weeds-bundle
I think it might be possible to convert the DSA texture to DUF texture and apply the iRay uber shader to it, but I could not tell you how.
It may be on sale today with extra discount for Holiday Punch buyers.
I did not know you could overlap shavegroups. that is quite helfpul.
...those still only work on flat surfaces. I need grass that can be applied to uneven ground planes.
I too miss the 3DL AoA shaders ! Yet, like Will, I turned to http://www.daz3d.com/g3d-da-grass-and-plant-pack and find it really, really great.
As an aside question, Havos, how did you do to mix Iray and 3DL in the same render ???? Learning this trick would do magic for me !
Can you use instances and in LAMH for hills use the lowpoly grass instead of fiberhair?
there is a prop option in export
It was nothing high tech, I render the full image in 3DL first, which ensured that the shadow cast by V7 is seen on the grass. After that I hid the hills and rocks and rendered in iRay, with the background transparent. I then took both images into GIMP and placed the iRay image on top of the 3DL one (note you can also use Photoshop or any other image editor that supports layers). I lowered the opacity of the iRay image slightly to help it blend into the 3DL one, but I think I could have improved the way the two images merged, plus I could have spent longer on the lighting set up to get a better merge. This was just a quick and easy render I did to prove the concept.
Yes. With the caveat that with 4.8+ something in DS changed to cause problems with instancing in LAMH. I've got a completed fix for it already, just trying to get the rest of the new thing in and tested. Instancing does work in 4.8+ but the behavior is somewhat unpredictable. 4.7 is the best for instancing ATM.
The new code has been tested to add in excess of 100,000 instances in a realistic period of time.
Kendall