Hey everyone, I know there are already a few grass creation compounds out there but I decided to add the one I am working on anyway to get some outside input. I am using this project to expand my ICE knowledge and the grass compound is just a simple grass painting tool for now.

how to use:
1. First create the mesh which will emit the grass and apply two weight maps to it one called "weight map" and one called "Height map"
2. Create empty point cloud and apply ICE tree
3. Connect the Zybrand_Grass compound to the ICE tree and connect the emitter object to Geometry port
4. If the grass compound is still red open the PPG and at the top pick the weight map .weights and then the height maps .weights
5. Additionally to control the color through ICE connect the color attribute to the diffuse of the shader and set it to ColorAlongStrands (in the ICE tree the color along strands gets blended with the color variation of the particles, and that can all be controlled from the grass PPG)

Let me know what you think of the compound, I would welcome some feedback and advise on how to improve it or what to add.

thank you for the compound, it seems nice but i have some problem, after i followed step by step your guide as soon as i launch the render softimage crashes.
I cant see strands being created. Maybe i'm doing something wrong.


Max


edit: nevermind, solved, i just applied the weight maps, but i didnt actually paint on them
works good!

I've got some problems:

The compound doesn't create any strand, and it seems correct, when I pick the wight maps, it creates some point, but the compound turns red and when I try to render softimage gives me an error.
In Get particle EmitLocation, the Get self.EmitPosition is red, both, the one connected to Height_map an the other to the Weight_map, I don't know if that it's normal.

If posible, Can you make a little video showing how to properly use it? I Know little about Ice and Softimage, so a video would help a lot.
Thanks in advance.

i think you are doing my same mistake as before, you need to actually paint the weights.
here is a screen, hope it helps:



and here is a quick test, i already love it!



Thanks again for the compound!!

Max

Yeah, now is working, thanks a lot Maximus.
Although sofitmage crashes when I reduce o change the features.

Hey guy, thanks for trying the compound. This is the first time other people are working with one of my compounds so I am glad to see its working for the most part



Voltaje I dont have time right now but I will try and maak a little how to video by next week. In the meanwhile I attached a sample scene as well. So far the main issue people are having is the weight map connections and they do seem to be easy break, and once they break they can be tricky to fix. I work on they and see if there is a better way of hooking them up.



I don't have a explanation for your crashing issue yet but I will look into it. Try the sample scene and see if you still have crashing issues then.

I am glad your enjoying the compound Maximus. Loving the render you got there
I hope to see some more.

I've got some question, what does Weight_map does? beacuse Height_map let you paint the grass, but when I draw having wight_map selected, nothing happen.
What's overral color wheight, strand color gradient and strand color weight?, beacuse doing some testing, I can change the color of the strands with Overral color, but not with strand color gradient.
What kind of things can be connected in On creation, thanks in advance and sorry if some answers are obvious, I'm not so god at Ice or Softiamge.

I can answer to the color issue: to control the color using the strand color gradient you need to add a Color_Attribute to the pointcloud material:


I'm not sure if I'm doing the right way, SI is still new to me.
Hope this may helps somehow.

Hi Voltaje, first of all thanks for all the feedback. I updated the compound to 2.3 so download the new one and replace your old one before you do anymore tests.



The weight map should actually be the density map because that is its function. It is applied to the points that the strands are created from and it is a standard filter by weight map compound. See the attached image below about the weight map to height map relationship that should explain everything. If yours in not working like that the the weight map is not applied correctly. If you cant get it to work and you feel you don't need it you can go into the compound and just unplug it, the compound should work fine without it.



Thanks for pointing this one out my colors setup was not working correctly and I didn't notice it was broken because I was working with shades of green all the time, but I fixed up the nodes and it should work fine in the new compound. See the attached image which should explain the way the color setup works.



I left that one in there because I used it to plug in things like filter by volume to delete grass when there is objects in the grass field like a big rock or something like that.

I hope this answers all your questions, Let me know if I missed anything.

Almost forgot but I updated the sample scene as well.

Enjoy