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Thanks everyone,
the main reason i uploaded this compound is that
it works on curved surfaces (torus) as well as it does
on planar ones (grid).

from the the few render tests i did,
i would say that strands have a slight advantage

nassosy wrote: from the the few render tests i did,
i would say that strands have a slight advantage

cool, thanks again for sharing.

I did some more tests here are the results on my 6GB Ram Core 2 Quad with 2010sp1 64bit:

(with Raytraced Shadows)
65000 hairs 0:03:53.24
146561 strands 0:00:24.99

(with 1024 Shadow Map, looks like crap though)
65000 hairs 0:00:49.73

(with 2048 Volumic Shadow Map)
65000 hairs 0:00:15.60
146561 strands 0:00:28.58

(with 4096 Volumic Shadow Map)
65000 hairs 0:00:19.08
146561 strands 0:00:39.03

wow, looks like it's really fast for raytracing!

i have a problem here
i dont get why it renders some strands completely black, like they have some normals issue or lack of color attribute, i didnt do anything

i didnt do any customization stuff i just create a grid, create a pointcloud, then create -> ice tree and imported the compound.
plugged the get grid to surface input and render it.

any clue? i'm a grass fanboy and i'm loving this compound

further investigation took me to find out that this issue happens with mental ray sun and sky, when you create sky/sun seutp you get this issue. is there any way to have them work with sky/sun setup? or i'm doing something wrong.

deleted sun and it still doing it, now i got rid of the environment and the problem's gone. re-plugged environment and it renders some black strands, so its bound to environment..



thanks!

That's weird i never had any problems with sun/sky setup
(using Pass->Edit->Initialize Sky Shader)
maybe its the way you create your sun/sky

care to share a scene file?

here is the 2011 scene

i downloaded your scene and the problem is there too, you gotta activate final gather, thats what i did with your scene, set gamma 2.2 in exposure shader and f-stop at 8 to see better.
it seems it has some problem with FG?
i'm uploading my scene in a moment

The problem seems to be with the grass normals looking on the wrong side :
' WARNING : RCFG 0.6 warn 542002: angle between normal and geometry normal > 90 degrees

the only solution i found is setting the Mode to "Expert"
and the "Filter Size = 0"

oh thats fine, i use expert with 0 0 quite often for exteriors, so it should work

i'll check it in a bit

viewtopic.php?f=25&t=752

used for the grass here,thanks again for this awesome compound, i had so much fun

Here is a sample for those having difficulties.

SI 2011 AP 64 bit
when load compoud error
// WARNING : 3000-EDIT-AddICECompoundNode - Could not set value on [Randomize Around Value 0].Variance
// WARNING : 3000-EDIT-AddICECompoundNode - Could not set value on [Randomize Around Value 3].Variance
// WARNING : 3000-EDIT-AddICECompoundNode - Could not set value on [Randomize Around Value 14].Variance
// WARNING : 3000-EDIT-AddICECompoundNode - Could not set value on [Randomize Around Value 16].Variance
// WARNING : 3000-EDIT-AddICECompoundNode - Could not set value on [Randomize Around Value 17].Variance
not work bend and rand angle
ok reconnect node bend strands after self strand size and color and it work! strange

did anyone try to create animated grass with this compound?

When I set the Attribute_Color to StrandColor it is not bend, but when it is set to Color, The blades are bended. I do not understant why tweaking the render_tree changes the shape of the blades?

I tried to reconnect the node bend strands before self strand size and color, as it was connected after, and I have bended blades again but no more color.


I am using Softimage 9.5 64 bit (2011 Subscription Advantage...)

JoQ

Hallo

Anyone knows how can I use a texture to color the grass made with this compound?