My computer doesn’t agree with cycles. If I put the blend file up, can someone else render it?
Sorry, it seems I was misinterpreted. I’m not saying that we should not try for realism. I almost always do! What I’m saying is that going for a too realistic effect takes too much time, and computers don’t exactly help with the task. It’s easier to create a realistic tree bark effect in clay than to sculpt it in the computer. Because in clay, you are not constrained by resolution and vertex numbers, etc…
I like realism, but I also like my renders to have a “fantasy” effect because I believe that computer graphics should help show what we cannot do in real life . Whereas movies that are more focused on “human relations” should not rely on CG to make themselves look good.
(ex: Avatar. the plot was not that special, but the CG was amazing, and it had this “fantasy” style that separated it from the more “human relation” movies)
EDIT: oh and I do believe that cycles can give a better result.
I’m sure if you put up the blend a bunch of people will try rendering it.
I suggest you at the very least add a sky texture to your background node in Cycles and a sun with very small size and about 10 times as strong lighting as the background. After all, what good is to have a full global illumination renderer and then use a lame lamp over gray background to try to depict an outdoors grass scene? That is the strength of cycles that BI won’t reach…
This is my attempt to make grass in Cycles. Combination between dark and light textured group of grass. I think this is not so bad ;).
Built a nice test scene for rendering grass, I’ve only got it in BI because as I previously stated, cycles doesn’t agree with my computer.
.blend will be up shortly.
BumP, Why has no one replied yet? 0.o
This was my first attempt at Cycles grass a couple of months ago. Haven’t had another go yet.
@Atom, particle grass can actually give very convincing results. Only in really close-up scenes would you feel pressure to use models.
There really isn’t much of a comparison. You really didn’t do a great job of setting up the BI grass. Since the material settings are so different, you need to set them up very differently. I mean, the grass in your BI scene is neon green. It’s practically glowing.
Here is my quick test with instanced geo and cycles.
n1k, i like your result, i think materials are really good, if you got the geometry a little more random, it would be even better
Tnx for your comment, glad you liked it :). I started grass tests for scene I’m working on. So here’s how it’s working so far. Getting around with blender particle system:)
Cheers,
n1k
Link to hi res
now that looks really good
is grass material translucent a bit? and did you lit the scene with just background image? gonna try something similar, really like it!
Wow, that’s a great result! What are your material settings for the grass? I think I may do one of these tests, learning how to do grass is very important.
thanks,
Jonathan
Hmmm, this is an interesting thread. In terms of the first example, neither are good. One needs to put a lot of work into making realistic grass. All in all though, I don’t think this is actually a very reasonable thread. It’s already known that cycles is a much more physically accurate, but in this case I really don’t think it matters. Grass is something that is quite different, it has a few illusions from a far that make it seem like fur, or semi transparent near the top, various shading things. So, unless it’s an upclose, I have no doubt that a really good artist could create a scene and render it in cycles and internal realistically, and you wouldn’t be able to tell which is which.
Wow, I have to say that one looks photorealistic all the way. I guess Cycles wins.
Here are setups for two grass shaders I used.
I lit my scene with hdri + sun and that’s it:)
I added some more grass and subsurf :). Here is the link to hi res.
Cheers,
n1k
Thanks! I used that in my test for a scene I am doing that requires a ton of nature. In my actual scene I will use more varied materials and more complex nature, but this is just a test. Please excuse the horribly distracting HDRI
Right click to view in 720p.
Although you can get convincing in BI, I think Cycles is much better.
texture Particle strands are missing, color ramps, transparency, enviroment plus a animation of the grass growing and moving is way more likely.