Grass on planes - distribution in scene

[marque_pierre]

Hi there,

Grass... For an outdoor games environment. A wild one. I am working in Max. So I need to plant a lot of grass, you know a single polygon with an alpha mapped texture on. Man, it sure takes A LOT OF planes to get something that remotely looks like grass.

I have worked a bit with the scatter tool to do the distribution for me, but I am not too pleased with the limitations of that. Do anybody here experience with that?

[ReNo]

Sounds like something you would procedurally generate if you ask me. Just make several varities of grass model (eg. billboarded, alpha masked polys), and get the programmer to place them at random if the ground is using a certain texture. Placing them manually, as you suggested, sounds like a helluva lot of work. Won't get a better LOOKING result of course, but as my modelling skills are lacklustre I'm in no position to suggest how best to go about that.

[BioPulse]

so i'm guessing the grass sprite days are over hehe, good luck, i've tried making grass in 3dsmax, i gave up haha, ittakes alot of work and patience

[Hourences]

You arent really supposed to do that in Max or Maya, engines most of the times have specialized tools or settings for it that can help you

Scatter or some type of particle effect would be only option i see in max

[von*ferret]

I was looking into the same thing yesterday man. Scatter is your best bet for a QUICK fix. I'd suggest using both. For instance use a small polygon version with alpha textures. Than use scatter to move that around to get some real intensity.