3D Grass:

[Zeraph]

Ok, well I do not really know if CS can handle 3D grass or not, but I modeled some grass with 3tri per blade. You can see a Shockwave 3D example of it here:
http://www.geocities.com/zeraphsimagehost/SwF/?3DGrassTest.dcr
I cant get Shockwave 3D to make a free camera orbit yet?

What do you think of it? I could try to make 2tri grass, but it may not have the same effect?

[Wedge]

Unless it\'s a small patch, you would never use individual models of grass blades.  It would add up pretty quickly to get any serious coverage.  The simplest way is with an alphaed plane and an image of a clump of grass, however I\'ve see a \'V\' shaped dual plane work even better.  I know there are tools in MAX where you can place a bunch of an object over a surface, so you could lay grass over terrain like this.    I\'m not sure if you can use this and get it to export from a single static mesh into CS though... I don\'t know if it could be animated though either.  Also you might want to have them be billboard type objects, dunno if CS supports those

Someone wrote a system in this for Torque that has all sorts of LOD and culling optimizations too, along with some nice built in animation and lighting effects.  I threw this together in a couple minutes, so it doesn\'t look great, but just so you have an idea what that method looks like.

[Cirque]

Aaarghh my eyes!!!

[Dyari]

Seems the grass patches are rendered as sprites they follow you when you walk.. but unreal has a great idea for that sort of problems.. just make a crossed section of a sprite inside the other one.. like a big X, or even 3 sprites.. that way it looks more real

like to be seen here in a screenshot of Farcry..

[Altharion]

ehm grass can be made in many ways it mostly it takes alot of recources. i have managed to lower that demand but not enough for a detailed area. FC really is quite bad on system demands.

[Dyari]

Originally posted by Altharion
ehm grass can be made in many ways it mostly it takes alot of recources. i have managed to lower that demand but not enough for a detailed area. FC really is quite bad on system demands.

Indeed it is, but just had to get an example of grass crossings or maybe just placing them at random order, with some big bushes between.. maybe that works.. but still grass is hard to render.. takes a lot of poly\'s..

[Zeraph]

Ya, but it does make the world look more real & immersive?
It ads perspective to the game & unless it cuts you fps pretty bad, it will make the experience more believable then just plain 2D grass textures on the ground?
By the time this game is finished, most everyone?s PC should be able to handle it?

Oh, & it would look really nice on a large grassy plane with animals & a cople of trees here & there?

[Wedge]

Yeah like I said, ideally you use V planes, cross-planes, and maybe airplanes.  But those are still using alphaed planes, you wouldn\'t model out every blade of grass just like youl\'d never model out every leaf on a tree.

[Altharion]

i would go with 2d grass for now

[Cyrandir]

I repeat:
/me agrees with Zeraph

I repeat because the last time I posted this, it got deleted... super weak.

[Cirque]

Damn thats a cool game, (FarCry).