Stylized Grass Tutorial

hello in this tutorial I will show how I create slide grass it is my mesh based grass and it's used virtual textures for the color and here you can see how it look like and we will try to create something very similar to this first of all I will start from a mesh creation of the grass patch and then I will go back to Unreal Engine to set up landscape material and grass material so first of all is usually start from reference here you can see some references from the internet and from the games for example this grass is from Kenshin impact and as you can see each grass has its unique its unique shape and better to make small research of what result you want to achieve with grass so um yeah go to Maya and I will start from plane try to understand what size I need like this I want to have seen grass and I will add some cuts in the middle and like this I will merge the up and bottom parts and here I have the first Leaf but it's very straight and I want to bend it a bit I go to the Forum non-linear band I need to rotate this tool and here oops I can wait a bit curvature and as you see it's not work like we expected we just need to rotate this tool again like this here I can see that it's a bit too much like this is is nice I'm very satisfied with this results I need to select the grass Leaf in object mode and delete history and that's all I need now I will rotate the sleeve I usually put the bottom part of the leaf a bit under the drain like this and now I need to understand the size we can make it a bit smaller like this and now we need to form a nice grass patch just to duplicate on this it doesn't make it a little bit bigger a bit smaller so just to just try to create some interesting shape oh maybe something like this it's okay now I will select all meshes and combine them as usual your Center pivot so now we need we have these black parts and we need to remove them to do this we need to go to merge display um set vertex normals you need to place x and z value to zero and you require it one and click apply and as you can see now we don't have these black Parts at all if you're not sure that you've done everything right you can go to display polygons vertex normal and as you can see you now see this yellow parts that look up and if it's not really obvious you can go to display polygons normal size and make them bigger if you see something like this everything is good now we need to set up pivot like this and the last part what we need to do it's Joey's um I will use COV after Magic and we need to um each of these grass need to touch the bottom part of the texture because the Shader will mask the bottom part and the wind will not affect to this part and only top part of the grass will have will be affected by wind and the bottom part will stay straight without anything to do this we need to put each grass so it touches the bottom part like this and that's all we need to export this I will call it grass zero four and now we will go back to Unreal Engine I will drag and drop my grass here here we don't need to create materials do not need import textures and do not need do not need generate machine Collision because we don't need it and invert that's all here's our grass measure what we need to do next we need to set up a material for it so um oops yeah um here is my material for the grass that's all we need to set up before we will go to Virtual texture setup we need to enable this function in real engine we go to settings project settings here you can type virtual and here you can see enable virtual texture support you need to make it through like this and also usually for my since I disable a distance field Shadows was generate mesh distance Fields like this and you need to restart your project before you continue working with it as I talked before this material is used in Virtual texture so before we start making something we need to create this virtual textures so um usually I create another folder for this needs um I think I will also create a new scene to make this process more obvious I will go file new level default we don't need this so um I will create new folder and we'll call it there tutorial here we need to right Mouse button click materials and textures and here we have runtime virtual textures and we'll call it a color um tutorial and now we can open it and make some basic setups size of virtual textures so okay okay size of your tall tile 1K and here we have base color normal rough and specular we'll leave it as it is and Save and we need one more texture for the height map we go the same material textures and virtual texture and call it here we also make the same okay 1K and from this list we need to choose World height and save it that's all that we need to do with virtual textures is a basic part now we need to create landscape material or a landscape we'll go here create here will also change settings removable so yeah here was our landscape what we need to do next um we need to go to landscape scroll a bit to find the virtual texture and press this plus two times and put our textures here what next usually I create a folder called Urban tear and here we need to search for virtual texture volume we need to for color and height we will put it to this folder and rename we can call it color and height now we choose color and place it here we need to select the what size of this bands we need we need it um as big as our landscape is so we just use this tool select click on the landscape and here you can see that we already link it and we click set bands the same we do with height don't mix the textures color to color height to color or height to height here the same send bounds and that's all set up that we need now we can go to our landscape material and we'll create our landscape material here is very simple material only for base colors I think maybe later I will show how to create the same material with textures but it will be another winner we will have something very similar very simple so first of all we create colors uh I use three colors you can have as as much colors as you want but don't make them a lot I think five six is more than enough so okay to create the color note we just press three convert to parameter call it as we want and here we change the color and we make it three times the next step is layer blend um right Mouse button click um landscape layer blend and here as you can see I have three and here is zero to add them we need to go to this settings and plus press and press press this plus Button as much times as we need I have three textures so I will press it three times so first if you place if you click this small triangle you will see all set up for each one so here you can see that the first one is called grass it's uh it has a alpha blend height blend and white blind we set up weight blend and that's all we just need to add name and set up weight blend I will show it here also so name grass and white blind that's all go to the next I will show it here white blend and the last one white blend that's all we need uh now we have roughness parameter as usual click S as a snake call it roughness and set up here parameter is one and plug into reference and the very important part is this runtime virtual texture output you can use the virtual textures with any landscape material that you have to do so you need to create this output and just link your base color normal map to this output to create you just need to type virtual textures and here we have runtime virtual texture output here it is to create this node we just need to write node button click and type World position it will be here well position this node cost called mask component mask and to mask B we need to turn off this button and phrase here so here we have must be and that's all set up for landscape material then we need to go here and create material instance here you have it already and now we need to select our landscape and just drag and drop this material here if everything became black it means everything is good now we go to landscape paint and here you can see our materials but they are not active to make them active we need to create not to add them to our scene first of all I will create new photo link called layer info and now we need to select the first material we select we'll cover all our terrains so think about it I will choose this middle one because this color of grass is the most beautiful for me so and I used white Blended layer I select my letter info folder and save as you can see everything became green the same with next one white Blended and here is the same one and that's all the tabs that we need now if we will when we will choose the color and start paint you see that we have green light green our usual green that's all we need and as when you will return to our textures virtual textures are a bit tricky and as you can see a color texture is black even when I press set bounce it's still black um sometimes it helps when we go to landscape sculpt and try to scoop something go to color set bounds Heights and Bounds and as you can see in height color and in this texture now we see the colors so everything is working now we can return to landscape sculpt choose flatten and just remove this because we don't need these shapes so everything is ready to place the grass first of all we need to create material for grass and here's my setup for the grass I already show it to you all you need to know it's a color with the color it's the color of alpha landscape and the grass will be the same color as landscape colors um this one setup as you can see it moves the texture with different color and you will see nice wind line on the grass and wait I will show what I'm talking about oops we'll say save this file save current test as you can see here on the grass is something moving on the dark Parts you can see it more obvious here you can see the light texture is moving around and this is a kind of wind effect that gives a bit more variations of color to your grass and it looks like the wind is blowing through grass and it's a bit in Wind so this effect is nice but if you don't want it you can skip that part wait I will open tutorial scene again um so um if you don't want to have this wind line you can just do not add this just plug in color with at the base color and that will be all your colors set up here we have some setup for wind and to fix the normals because if you will not eat this at this part our grass will be black not black but very dark and it will not work nicely so we'll start from the color to create this part we need to right Mouse button click and type virtual and here you have runtime virtual texture sample parameter and we'll call it color for color height for height if we will use it so just name this as you want and here you need to place the texture that we use so um wait we can go to our virtual textures and for this we need only color and we just place it here so like this I will not change this change it in this Shredder because we will also we can change this texture in instance as well so next one is wind color it's the color of our wind line just press three convert to parameter change the color and here you go so um next one is this wind line so our absolute body position as usual World position divide divide note this one line parameter is s and you can type the name and default value here is the same one mask node I already showed component mask and here RNG hero is the Pander nose it's a node that will move our texture so banner and that's all and wind noise texture so um before add this to this our to our Shader we can create this noise texture to do this we need to go to photoshop create new file for example 1K for 1K we fill the background with black color create new layer and fill it with white color now we go to filter oh we need to select this white layer go to filter render and choose fibers here you can play with setup randomize it maybe you will find something interesting I will leave it like this something middle Gray okay and now we need to make it a bit interesting shape we can go to filter [Music] um distort I don't know twiddle okay filter distort what we have here also interesting wave um maybe not so crazy okay um also we can go to filter liquify and here also play with something like this but careful with the borders okay I'm happy enough with the structures but now we need to make it so tileable to do this we go to filter other offset and we need to type because we have 1K textures so we need to move it to the half so it's 500 12 to 512 okay and now we need to fix this part to do this I use this um let's put healing brush tool select our texture sometimes it work well sometimes not really well but anyways it's okay for our purpose we can also go here to patch tool and do something like this oops the wrong message do something like this that's okay so now we have the styleable texture and we need to save it file save as we can say with the starga tutorials I will call it a wind noise I don't remember I have this textures or not and now I will import this to Unreal Engine just drag and drop when you have a virtual textures support on sometimes you will have a bug when you import texture Stone reel and they are very blurred and you can see with the letters on the right bottom part of your image to fix this you need to red mouse button click and who here to convert to regular texture not to your total but to regular and you will fix your problems so here we have our wind textures we will just drag and drop it here right Mouse button click convert to parameter and click it wind noise like this and that's all we need to do to achieve the same one and all of this we need to plug into Lark node a linear interpolate here it is and we plug in these two base color so what we need to do with this one to create this node with usual press three here is our node but here we can make the settings visible and press 1 for blue and we have the same one for this one as usual and multiply it just m on the keyboard and you will have multiply node and we plug in this to the normal and the last one is a simple grasswind setup it's a node as usual simple grass wind here it is and I can tell one interesting sink if you write my button click on this ring you can click promote parameter and you already will have a parameter with good name and just say default value and that's all so um all you already know how to create these parameters if you don't need to have the last one as parameter you can just click one and you will have the same one node and for this one this is the part that masks our bottom part that's why we you be the grass as I showed you before to create this we need to type texture coordinate here it is mask load as usual component mask we need to leave only G and one minus node 1 minus naught we have the same one and set up it like this and put it to the world position of set that's all we need to set up our Master for grasp what we need to do next oops the wrong folder we need to create a material instance right right Mouse button click create material instance here I already have it I will make a copy of this material because this material is used virtual texture for previous map for new map we need to have already in other virtual texture um so we need to replace it um here is my uh instant setup here you can see that I can plug in here a new windows noise texture if I want and I also can change the virtual texture neutral texture so I go to the our textures and we'll just drag and drop it here and our wind texture as well so um here you can also can change the wind color wind intensity here is a wind line size the wind line speed it's about these textures you can play with the size of this texture because if you want it more intense less intense you can play with these parameters and now we need to come back to our grass here it is and all we need to do is just to set up a material for it and as you can see it's a bit different but no worries and now we will go to foliage and just place this grass here add some stuff for example and one two one and a half and start to paint um very important thing is to turn the Shadows off you can scroll a bit down and here and as you can see the grass is now has the same color as the texture of our landscape that's how it works so what we can to do next um first of all um if you want to change the colors of the grass you need to go to landscape instance here it is I will create a copy of it um and if you change the color here for example for Pink as you can see everything is also changes that's nice to have this feature because if you want to have Autumn winter in just few clicks and you already have it winter grass for example Autumn grass make it a bit orange and here you have Autumn grass as usual it's hard to find good good colors very fast so I will just make everything back and how you can make this grass looks better you need to go to landscape paint select our textures and make this too strange a bit smaller brush size also and we need to to make like um how to say it the stripes so dark light dark light dark light then it works really nice if you have some problems and you see that it's not really work good just go here and also set bounce one more time and as you can see now everything is fixed because before this grass is not really matched to the color of landscape now as you can see we already have this wind moving through our grass if you want to make them bigger we can just as you can see the texture is scaling we can also play with color but it could be very intense so as you can see now texture is so big so it's covered almost whole grass in the scene okay let's make it a bit less darker and make the texture smaller yeah like this but I like more darker colors to choose right colors it's also not very easy task so like this and also if you want to make your grass more interesting you need to play it with sizes you need to go to foliage and set up it for example now for two and three make the brush smaller and in this borders with lighter and darker you can place them more higher grass and it will have interesting effect of volume as you can see so yeah that's how it works we can go back to our previous scene here I use all the same methods also we can I'll go here um make it bigger and remove some of my old grass and we can take the grass that we created before this one but we need to change the texture in this one oops not this one this one and we need just drag and drop our new grass make small setup maybe one and a half and here we have a as usual we need to turn off the Shadows cast shadows and maybe bigger and usually as you can see everything is working the same way here we can also make the brush smaller and make it two two three for example go to landscape paint and at the same colors here our new grass here is old grass as you can see um This Grass has a bit triangle shape this one more grass I made before it's almost the same that we made so yeah you just need to play with shape to understand what shape you want to achieve that's how it works so I wish you good luck with your grass goodbye

Channel: Victoria Zavhorodnia (akbutea)

Views: 62,610

Keywords: grass, stylized, styl, model, maya, unreal, engine, ue, foliage, vegetation, tutorial, lern, how, create, make, flowers, scene, files, environment, art, game, nature, simple, fast, free

Id: AEMe-kcZBLw

Length: 39min 36sec (2376 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 26 2022