Capture grass

NAIMA

Hello, do you have any sugestions on how to do to apture grass textures to make grass patcges , flower beds etc in a game ? I mean technically strip out grass of soil or else ? Take pictures how and at what distance ? Etc ?
Thankyou.

Eric Chadwick

Creating Grass and Vegetation For Video Games from Jason Stokes / FuturePoly is a good rundown of the process.

More:
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/GrassTechnique
http://wiki.polycount.com/wiki/Foliage

Obscura

I may be misunderstanding the question, but I think he i asking how to create a realistic grass card texture by making a photo of it or scanning it. And in that case I'm wondering why redo this for the 10.000th time instead of using an existing scan that is accessible on the internet.

Like I said I'm possibly misunderstanding the question.

NAIMA

Thankyou for the answers , my question though is more on the capture grass textures from real and process them to be used in games , the reason why I dont use internet sources are paywalls and also couse I wanted to learn how to create my own sources.

Neox

what does it cost to buy ready made high quality grass blades, vs how much time do you spend researching and doing it?

i understand the want to learn it for yourself but the paywall is no good argument.

NAIMA

Neox said:

what does it cost to buy ready made high quality grass blades, vs how much time do you spend researching and doing it?

i understand the want to learn it for yourself but the paywall is no good argument.

Some site forbit the use in certain game communities or modding because of lame actions of some dishonest users in te past I guess.

gnoop

Obscura said:

 why redo this for the 10.000th time instead of using an existing scan that is accessible on the internet.

It's always good to have your own library  for such things.   Many content providers allow to  use their things only in CAD  or have special conditions  or even if they do  it's too much  of a hassle to figure out  if  they really allow it for videogames and you need a special person for licensing  and similar headache  .   Or sometimes your employer /customer prefers  to have everything  be "original work"  especially form contractors .     Or because  Megascan is too expensive for a studio. 

I recall I once tried to ask Quixel if I am as a business  can buy Indie subscription and then re-sell to  big game company  together with my own work  and subtle modifications.  It was like asking Autodesk about indie licensing .  No simple and definitive answer .  In  the end the  big company  just told me to forget about it.   Customers  don't like any licensing /trade rights complications usually.

NAIMA

Any hints? But also on how to taje textures of varied things like industial walls , pipes , strets , lamps etc?

icegodofhungary

https://medium.com/@EightyLevel/preparing-realistic-grass-in-ue4-8bf54b1fa01c

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/1nx0Yo

You go outside and pick good grass specimens. Then you throw them into your photogrammetry setup, create the scans. Pack the scans into an atlas. Then use the atlas as modular assets to build your grass cards/meshes.

If you don't know how to do a photogammetry setup, look on youtube.

If you have an Epic/Unreal account then quixel megascans is free.

https://quixel.com/megascans/home?category=3D plant&category=grass

If you wanted to be super pure about it you could download the scans and reverse engineer them by seeing what realistic albedo, roughness, and normals look like. Then replicate it yourself.

There are also free foliage assets on the UE4 marketplace, you could deconstruct these too. There's flowers and different ground coverings and trees.

https://www.unrealengine.com/marketplace/en-US/profile/Project+Nature

NAIMA

Anyway I was more looking for tips on how to capture pictures, what tools use, what type of camera, focal lenght etc?

gnoop

NAIMA said:

Anyway I was more looking for tips on how to capture pictures, what tools use, what type of camera, focal lenght etc?

it's irrelevant.   You just  need to make a black box and  2 lamps  in X and Y direction for normals .  Then you could capture  leaves or grass plants  you have picked   with a phone camera or any you already have  .   

NAIMA

gnoop said:

NAIMA said:

Anyway I was more looking for tips on how to capture pictures, what tools use, what type of camera, focal lenght etc?

make a black box and  2 lamps  in X and Y direction for normals .

what u mean by that?

Obscura

He probably meant something like this:
https://magazine.substance3d.com/your-smartphone-is-a-material-scanner-vol-ii/