Ladscape/Nature Scene

# 1 21-05-2012 , 09:25 PM

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Hi all, I am relatively new to maya (have used blender a fair bit) and I have decided to try and create a nature scene based apon a mongolian esque setting. I have made farly good progress but I am a little stuck getting my river texture to vary over height of the bank :S

Any help and comments would be great user added image

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Last edited by dustykhan; 22-05-2012 at 10:33 PM.

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# 2 21-05-2012 , 10:39 PM

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Sorry but were is your texture for the river.............dave

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# 3 22-05-2012 , 02:48 AM

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Sorry but were is your texture for the river.............dave

Originally Posted by daverave

I am a little confused about the river texture too. user added image

Maybe dustykhan needs to post more images about the work.

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# 4 22-05-2012 , 08:11 AM

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Thanks daverave and oxygenfish for your responses. It is the section titled mud at the bottom of the node layout. I have two image textures connected to a ramp one for the muddy river bed and one for the sides of the river bank. The whole landscape is textured with the layered texture connected to a lambert named ground.

In the image below i have marked in red the current direction of the ramp texture but i want it changing up the slope of the bank marked in green and I am usure how to go about this. Will update later.

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Last edited by dustykhan; 22-05-2012 at 06:45 PM.

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# 5 22-05-2012 , 10:13 PM

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Ok a small update, I realised I dont realy need to worry about the riverbed texture too much as it wont be seen, but will still try and figure it out (im probably missing somthing realy simple). I have added a river and changed some of the textures to get a more summery feel probably due to the lovely weather.

user added image

If anybody has any suggestions/changes to make or ways to improve the texturing please comment as I just want to learn as much as i can! (also dont mind sharing file for you to rip apart, just ask)

I have played around with the maya fur grass preset but not sure on how to get best result so any sugestions would be helpful user added image

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# 6 23-05-2012 , 06:29 AM

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With such kind of a close up you need to use pfx grass systems in there. I dont think a texture is going to much for you

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# 7 23-05-2012 , 07:50 AM

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Hey murambi, thanks for the suggestion. I think I will use either paint effects or maya Fur grass preset and adjust accordingly. Any opinions on what yields better results..?

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# 8 23-05-2012 , 04:23 PM

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They can both be tweaked to suit the user needs accordingly .What I usually do is create grass using maya pfx and convert to polygons so that they can render in mental ray. The downside is that when you convert maya pfx to polygons is that the polycount will be extremely high. This is where mib_binary proxies will become your friend. let me know if your stuck with this method I can help where I can

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# 9 23-05-2012 , 10:48 PM

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Ok I have tried both paint effects and Maya Fur and the results are below.

I have to say It was a lot easier to use Maya fur and add baldness and length maps to controll the grass near the rivers edge then it was to use paint effects, but still it needs adjusting to actually look like real grass, but I could render in mental ray with out having to conver to polygons or anything which is nice.

With paint effects it took a while for me to familiarise myself with the settings but i feel with a small patch of grass its fine, but over the hilly parts of the terrain bits start floating and it all gets a bit messy. The grass its self i think looks better than when using fur. I guess when paintng with my wacom i can set the density and length to be pressure sensitive and paint respectively in the ares that need longer and more sparse/dense grass, but that would require more time then I spent doing thease tests.

I also couldnt use mental ray for all the grass because when I converted into polygons half the grass dissapeared and when i set the poly limit to unlimited maya crashed. So only the small patch of grass i mangaged to rendered with mentalray and im not sure I like the result. The texture seems to have changed... Any ideas? :S

user added image

I am not realy sure about mib_binary proxies as I never used them before and unsure how to set it up, so any information or pointers/links would be cool.

One other thing, is it me or do my mental ray renders look slightly out of focus?

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# 10 24-05-2012 , 06:42 AM

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Check out this great tutorial. Then simply use a small patch of pfx grass and spread it out once you have used it as a proxy. you will have the capability of rendering millions of polygons while using very little RAM

https://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgiUqrZU6Cw

make sure you go through part two

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# 11 24-05-2012 , 07:59 AM

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Thanks for the link that looks like a really good way for doing my grass! But once I have my patch is there an easy way for duplicating it across the terrain with varying scale and baldness, or would i just have to create multiple smaller patches of grass and place accordingly and if so how is the best way to go about this?

Also when changing from paint effects to polygons, do I have to create a new shader as it seems to have changed form the paint fx!

Last but not least the maya software render is a lot sharper then mental ray why is this?

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# 12 24-05-2012 , 08:30 AM

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This is all the information you will need to know about maya and doing vegetation. I know that there are alot of pages but take your time and you will get all the answers that you need.

https://forums.cgsociety.org/showthread.php?t=804892

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# 13 24-05-2012 , 04:15 PM

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Here is a screen grab of a quick mib binary render. This are millions of polygons only swallowing up about 300mb RAM

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# 14 24-05-2012 , 05:02 PM

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Last but not least the maya software render is a lot sharper then mental ray why is this?

Originally Posted by dustykhan

render settings?

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# 15 24-05-2012 , 08:15 PM

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Yeah, proxies are the way to go and spPaint3D helps tons with object placement. When you convert paintFx to polys you do have to do some tweaks as the pfx textures are transferred over to maya materials with transparency, reflectivity, translucency and such channels.

- Genny
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