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How to create nice grass materials?


Mud-H

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I'm experimenting with some new grass and I'm having problem to figure the best way to create grass materials. I always had problem with my grass, sometime it was quite good but other time it had a alpha surrounding issue (Black edge in general). Today, I search a bit about it and found more about that issue, it seem to be related to the Matte transparent color of the PNG exported from Photoshop. I figured how to change the Matte color in Photoshop by exporting the PNG using "Save for web". Here's an image showing the comparaison between stock PNG export and Save For Web PNGs. I also have the same issue with Substance Designer which always export the PNG with the black Matte color.


http://mud-h.com/miscweb/t3dforum/Misc/GrassPNGIssue.png

So that "Save for Web" export thing seem to do the job for now but I'd like to be able to export directly from substance designer. I also tried TGA but got the same Black Matte issue...


I'm wondering how other T3D developers proceed to get good grass. Anyone here have a better way to get good grass?

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I actually had a thread that went over what I was doing for my foliage, here: http://forums.torque3d.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=18


It occurs to me I forgot to get around to uploading the source blender files I had though, for examples. I'll do that today.


But I've found this method produces pretty good results, with a bit of mussing, because you render the grass blades yourself, instead of sourcing from a picture, the edges are perfectly crisp in the alpha channel.

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Thanks, I will have a try to see what it does. It's supposed to fix my issue with PNGs?

 

I actually had a thread that went over what I was doing for my foliage, here: viewtopic.php?f=18&t=18


It occurs to me I forgot to get around to uploading the source blender files I had though, for examples. I'll do that today.


But I've found this method produces pretty good results, with a bit of mussing, because you render the grass blades yourself, instead of sourcing from a picture, the edges are perfectly crisp in the alpha channel.

Thanks for reminding me about this ressource. I will have a try as soon as I find time to... :|

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Thanks, I will have a try to see what it does. It's supposed to fix my issue with PNGs?

Halo Remover worked great to fix the pngs transparency, better than my photoshop "fix". But it still need extra operation that I would like to avoid, it's break the power of substance designer... (Off-Topic: Anyone tried to implement substance support to T3D yet?)

 

Another way to make grass is to use a green background around the grass and use an alpha channel, export as DDS and then u get a green edge when importing into a game engine rather than a black edge

Yeah, that's the first thing I tought when I went to bed... I had try to export with a alpha channel mask but I think I let the background transparent which make it useless. I guess that's how you make it work with TGA, maybe I should have a try to see if substance designer can export T3D ready transparent TGA.

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Another way to make grass is to use a green background around the grass and use an alpha channel, export as DDS and then u get a green edge when importing into a game engine rather than a black edge

Yeah, that's the first thing I tought when I went to bed... I had try to export with a alpha channel mask but I think I let the background transparent which make it useless. I guess that's how you make it work with TGA, maybe I should have a try to see if substance designer can export T3D ready transparent TGA.

 

Sometime just stopping a little and thinking can save a lot of time. By adding a green background to a transparent PNG and then adding a alpha channel mask in Substance designer works like a charm. (Exported DDS, PNG and TGA look the same) It also fix a issue I had with the exported DDS which had a weird blue color overlay...

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Haloremover has a batch conversion function, it is not that hard to run all your textures through that one time after you are done making them, its all automatic and it is even better than doing it by hand, since it extends automatically the right colors needed to the sides, since textures are not uniform color.

But if you do not believe me, you can as well chose a more complicated way to fix this.

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