Engine 2.23
Community Forums/Showcase/Engine 2.23
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We've gotten good results making grass that actually looks like grass: |
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| Looking good. Not sure I understand the grass looking like grass bit; surely that is all down to lighting or using multiple diverse shades? EDIT: Ah, I just read your blog: I finally found some grass I am happy with, and I am doing some shader work to improve its lighting. |
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| Well, it's a combination of rendering technique and good artwork. I wasn't satisfied with what we had in previous versions. |
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| The problem with a lot of foliage is that it is stock standard and most people use it as stock-standard. A lot of people in the past have just shunted a texture onto a quad and say I have grass. Then they wack that sucker in all over the place - but they have the same texture. With a lot of the stuff I use in Blitz3D, I use different shades of the texture for plants etc that are in different areas. I just lighten/darken several copies. At build-time, I know where a tree is - therefore in placing grass/flowers, I know their proximity to the tree (baring in mind this is build-time), so why wack a standard texture in? I know if the grass/plant is going to be in canopy shade. This also means the lighting can be dynamic - as the player approaches the tree (or whatever casts shade), you can alter the lighting and ambient lighting based on proximity to the trunk - taking into account the canopy. This is my way as it is not exactly the norm to have shaders in Blitz3D. |
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Mmm, water is also looking good: Of course, there is a loss of reflection; however, you will find a co-existance for that. |
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| Well, the shadows obviously are no problem. I am going to add something to colorize the grass by the terrain color, but that will have to wait until later. Crysis has an option like that, and the results are pretty good. |
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| I think most the engine shots you post are pretty darn good, but I have to disagree with your taste on this one. I think that grass is too bold , looks really fake to me, but it doesnt reflect my opinions of your engine, wich are very positive. maybe if the grass were scaled down alot, and multiplied |
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| Multiplied? I think I got the camera too close to the ground. Try this:  |
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| Multiplied, meaning just more of it. if you scale it down it will cover less area, and you would need more. Hm, that shot is a little better. I guess the grass is just to sharp, to well defined as an object , as you can notice the tiling pattern of the same object over and over, looks more like a planted crop than grass or weeds to me. Not sure, but dont stress over my opinion. My artistic eye is legally blind |
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| I think the blades are too thick on the texture. |
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| ..Leadwerks..topic said Engine 2.23, does that mean that its ready for download(licensed users) or just development shots from v 2.23? |
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| It looks nice - but why don't you get an artist to adjust the scene for you? It's hard to tell what time of day it is in the screens but the ambient looks too dark - too much dark shadow in my opinion, too harsh...a few different hues of green in patches for the grass would sort it out...wild foliage tends to grown in loose clumps. |
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| There's lots of different appearances a grassy field can have, yet I'm not sure I like the look of it in either of the two pictures above. It looks a bit like the type of grass you get when an empty sandy field has many small saplings planted all over it. Aside from the lighting issues (it looks a bit too dark, not enough indirect illumination - shadows too well defined - especially with a bright sunny day like that ) I prefer grass to be a little shorter, not like overgrown weeds, much like you'd see if you took a walk across a suburban footy ground or reserve. |
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| I think what is needed is extra foliage dotted about - ie more bush-type things, ie those rubber-plant things that you have used before that you see used in so many computer games that feature a tropical environment. This will then visually break the image into chunks or grass areas. I think another factor is this is a still image - like so many computer images, it can look worse when it is a static image. Doom 3 looked better in play than it did in images. |
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| Looks pretty good but a) I dont buy why there is so much `grass` growing in such rocky-looking soil, b) it looks more like large-leafed plants than fine-bladed grass (too big). Lighting looks good though. |
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| I am very impressed with the grass, great work. |
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| If I was a customer of yours and you were spending time making the grass the correct color I may be worried, can you not do all this via your editor anyhow? |
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| There's a technique Crysis uses that is automatic, and the results are good, but it will take more time to implement. You won't have to worry about coloring the grass to match the terrain, it will just be an option you enable. |
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| It looks strange and I have had to keep looking at it again and again to try and work out why. I ended up with this, grass tends to be very sparse i.e. it's in a hard to grow area, it clings to pockets that are out of the wind or scorching sun, somewhere that retains a bit of moisture. On the other hand it can be very dense i.e. it's in an area that can support alot of grass because the enviroment is forgiving. With the terrain texture of gravel and rocks I don't think you would see that density of grass, it almost looks like someone planted it there. @Snixx, in order to show off the engine one needs realistic artwork and since the engine is at an advanced stage this is why Josh is working on the eye candy. The fact that the engine can cope with this amount of grass is testament to that =) I would like to see more variance in the scale of each grass mesh if possible, render a batch of a certain scale then the next batch interspersed at a different scale in order to add variety. |
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| Theres far some things about the grass's properties you could adjust on terrain material, aren't? --> Grass Density & size --> Grass Color --> Grass Spread (maybe on a rocky ground, you will have small 'islands' of grass), should be procedurally adjustable, shouldnt it? --> Grass should tend to appear around trees and water first if Terrain material allows? Can you link the grass placement with a terrain mat? I reallly like the procedural approaches you got for terrain height editing in lesandbox, now couldnt there be something like that for grass? Hence we all (most) are private developers, with little resources in time and personal, the procedural functionality saves us the work we else couldnt effort to do, so we can concentrate on the game details, thats what i really like about le; its great results with little work. Now, the engine actually (could) know(s) far better then me about how to place grass realistically, couldnt it? |
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This is the technique I was talking about that Crysis uses. This will be in 2.24: |
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| Oh my god.. u should have posted more of this earlier, not always just these island'n ocean pics .. THIS looks amazing, nice lighting and color compositing, good usage of fog, cool! uhm, the grass. did you improve lighting? looks so. viewing range is still too little, so grass density is. grass should fade out in density and size about 50 m more far; eventually terrain material could get a little bumpy there? grass color is really better now, indeed reminds me on crysis, [o_0, also level design^^] good job :D |
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| Very nice, I agree much more natural use of colour. its really coming on |
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| Funny what a difference that makes. |
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| Thanks by the way for supporting the community framework competition. Your engine was selected as the first prize by Jesse. I have no doubt he will enjoy it. |
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| i still think it looks too structured, its still very easy to tell its the same upright structure over and over. Imo , it looks like the blitzgrass system, or even a little worse because the model you chose for grass is so rigid looking. This is what I think of when I think of good grass in games today.  Im sure they have a small library of grass textures/models they use.. but im also sure they have designed them well enough that they can place the same texture/model over and over in the same small area and you will have a hard time telling where one model starts and another begins.. I think its an art form , that one could relate to making a seamless texture, but for models. So they can be sprayed all over without causing that repeating look you have above in your shot. I'm no artist, but it looks like thier grass blades go up and hang over in one direction alot, where yours are up and down almost without any hang/tilt at all. I would wager if the more horizontal curve a blade had, the more it would blend with neighboring grass models. I know crisis is a very high bar to compare to, but I went to your forums and it appears its your comparison of choice, thats why I used it here. For what is posted on this site usually, your shots are very nice. I just wanted to toss out a real comparative opinon against a next gen engine. |
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| Not all grass grows like the grass in crysis, I think the main issue for me is that grass tends to, if left uncut, grow unevenly. It will have patchs of much longer grass where it maybe gets more sun etc. even though his grass is naterial colours and the lightings nice its still a little too uniform. there also should be a few weeds etc. But saying that it still looks very good. |
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| Not all grass grows like the grass in crysis true enough, but I couldnt really post shots of the oodles of games where grass looks proper. I chose a shot from a game that Leadwerks compares his engine tech to, wich I explained in the above post so that I wouldnt have to explain it again here :) And I think his shot looks good too,i wouldnt say very good. i think it looks like lazy artistry(i was going to say poor artistry, but the grass model is good looking, if it were used sparingy here and there it would be a good addition to a scene, but its not made properly for mass coverage) I basically said that its a matter of getting the artistic method down, I think more so than any technical issue with his engine, also consider his engine is spoken of as next gen, or current gen. Wich puts higher comparisons on the output than say Blitz3D. I'm not trying to push anyones buttons, I think LeadWerks has come far enough to show that he can take critics with the best of them. Hopefully mine can help him, if he doesnt agree with them thats ok too. overall one grass model is not going to impact much anyway. |
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| Well, I don't try to provide game content, I just try to make yours look as good as possible. I think what you're really getting at, even if you don't realize it, is you don't like the broad-leafed weeds that are mixed in with the grass. I tend to agree. |
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| Just a little more configurability and procedural options, and its enough of perfection, i think. I think its _VERY_ ok developing with cryengine in sight, hence this commercialism is what we all should fight, isnt it? And visions are a rare need to software developers these days, arent they? Your engine, Leadwerks, has proven to be competetive towards many others. And i must admit, that i really admire you for your persistancy in development. So far. |
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