Rendering Realistic Grass - Groundcover
I want to share a simple method for adding realistic grass to your SketchUp model. Grass is a nice enhancement because it softens the project along the ground, receives shadows well, and enhances the realism of your renderings.
I want to provide you with an image of a blade of grass that will help you add grass quickly:
Download and store this .png file anywhere on your computer that is convenient.
Step 1 - Add an area for the grass to your model.
I recommend that you are careful about the size of the area that you intend to use this rendering feature. Large areas will add considerably to the processing time for your rendering. In the rendering at the top of this page, the groundcover is very limited, and the amount that I added was determined by the view I intended to render. There is grass in the front and along the right side of the deck, but the rest is just part of the HDRi sky/background image.
Step 2 - Modify the surface properties
Right-Click on the surface. "IRender nXt > Set Object Properties, then CLICK "Load Editor to create file"
Set "Density" to 500 - which I believe is the highest value permitted.
CLICK the Foliage tab:
1) CLICK the leaf image and browse to bladeOfGrass.png on your computer.
2) Set width to 50. This is the width of the image. Because the aspect ratio is maintained, this will also set the height of the blade.
3) Set "Pattern" to "Seven Leaf Worl" - this will clump 7 of the .png files together, thickening the grass.
4) Set "Number of Buds" to 1.
5) Set "Spacing" to 0. This is the vertical spacing between buds. Set to 0, the first bud will appear on the ground (no stem underneath)
6) Set "Angle" to 36 - this also helps thicken the grass.
7) Click "OK"
Save the ArGroundcover file, you're ready to render the model!
Note: For my rendering I set "Width" to .5, and selected "Seven Leaf Whorel" - only because these are the settings that I have found work well in my models. I hope you'll take some time to experiment and might share your solutions here on the forum.
I hope that you will not hesitate to ask questions about this process and the rendering displayed at the top of the page. Adding a patch of grass to enhance renderings of your SketchUp models is not difficult, especially when you start with grass.ArGroundcover and a nice image such as bladeOfGrass.png.
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Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Sketchit on
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I will test this out. What if you dont want the grass to be that green or the lawn your doing is kind of has patches?
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Permalink Reply by Russell D. Houlden on
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You can make individual little patches - a very good idea. And when you search the internet for .png files there are heaps of them. So you'll discover that with different images you can achieve the color and coverage very well.
Sketchit said:I will test this out. What if you dont want the grass to be that green or the lawn your doing is kind of has patches?
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I just used Google and searched for "blade of grass" - got a result with lots of .png images.
Sketchit said:What kind of images would i search for?
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I tried this out its awesome another thing. Im Going to create. A forum for realistic water mine is not coming out the way i want it to.
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Permalink Reply by Edgar Lopez on
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Is there a way to scale the blades or adjust the height? I can't figure it out. It renders nice but blades look out of proportion. TIA
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Since the blade is a bitmap - when you adjust the width, the height is also adjusted - so that the aspect ratio is maintained.
Edgar Lopez said:Is there a way to scale the blades or adjust the height? I can't figure it out. It renders nice but blades look out of proportion. TIA
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Permalink Reply by Richcat on
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And then you can play around and take it further with haze/mist etc with nxt image editor, but I dont know if you can do this now as it was a few years ago...I'll have to do some digging
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Link to another forum topic on the subject a few years ago, playing around again with ground cover with stones different grass colours etc
Downloads for grass ground cover and png of grass still seems to work.
I'll have to download them again see if they still work.
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Would this work with rock or gravel? I'm struggling to get realistic gravel/rock
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