Pursuing Hi-Def Grass

[scubakobe]

I've been trying for awhile to create realistic, and high-resolution grass for airfields. Haven't came across a solution that meets my expectations, but I have come close. I've also seen others who have come close as well - but stop short of grass that looks like grass when you are right on top of it.

Here's an example of some nice work with grass, by Joerland -


However, from one of his videos I can see that it does not look as great when viewed up close.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=P5Z3vpJNYOM

I recently came closer to finding the perfect solution, but even at a resolution of 0.1 meters/pixel it was blurry up close. The bitmaps required to achieve such resolution were ridiculously large, in megabytes; I crammed enough into a 2048x2048 bitmap to make its' size over 20 MB. Not reasonable when you have to use several of them.

To reduce the file sizes I came up with another solution:

-Layer 0: Noise
-Layer 1: Base, low-res grass
-Layer 2: Runways, high-res grass (+ Misc)
-Layer 3: Photo overlay


I have yet to try this, as it requires quite a bit of work in Gmax and Photoshop. Working with document sizes 10,000+ pixels in Photoshop slows the whole process down. If it works as planned I will post pictures of the result.

That's all for now!

[scubakobe]

I think I've come pretty close! The runway looks like grass when up close, and the surrounding grassy area does not become blurry when you are on top of it. When you are in the air, it still looks like a field and not a huge green patch. That balance is hard to achieve. Might not be the best, but it's close. Maybe with each new attempt it will improve.