Grass

I started on some grass today. I'm not entirely sure how well it'll work out, but I'm trying a technique whereby I bake the grass to generate both my grass alphas and also my grass terrain texture.

The benefits of baking this from geometry rather than using a photo are mainly to ensure correct normals and height. This will be particularly important when I start to build up snow and leaves using the height, but will also help with the blend between grass and rocks and grass and dirt.

I started by creating some grass pieces and a couple of small weeds:

I then assembled these on top of a square using the scatter compound object:

I had a few problems with the bakes, but they were resolved in Photoshop.

Here's the result:

I'll be placing grass planes on top of this, and breaking it up with dirt patches and loose rocks etc.

Tomorrow I'll be baking for the grass planes.