I love the grass feature - it's one of the best things about enscape. And I really like how the grass assumes the colour of underlying surface fill. But there are a few little things I think would make it even better:
- Use 'bump maps' to change the 'z' of the overlaying grass (height)
- Change the height of the grass from 'cricket pitch' to 'field' (perhaps an actual numerical scale?)
- On surfaces >70º from horizontal (I think that's where it becomes noticeable) use a more random scatter rather than horizontal lines of grass (looks like contour lines just now)
- Access to the variable that defines how far from the camera the grass stops rendering (and is replaced with the flat texture). Similarly, some way to change the density so that the grass thins-out as it gets further from the camera. (These are mostly for speed of render; turned down while setting things up and restored for proper presentation/renders)
- Personally I like the fact that if I draw a cube and colour
the inside base with a grass texture you can see it sticking out the bottom edge/joins;
I could use it to make
industrial scenes look overgrown/naturalised. I could see where a toggle
to tidy this or provide a 'buffer zone' might be asked for however I would
say that this is a cool feature and leave it alone.
- You could also have two grass models: "seed-heads" and "blades" with a mixer to say how much of one to mix (randomly) with the other. Option to select the base model for each type - you could then use this to produce fields of various crops or weed patches in a lawn or just add a little more variation/realism to the standard grass.
- If you wanted to get really clever you could add animation effects to it; a limited ripple so that the grass moved as you "walked" through it. Wind ripples, helicopter down-draught, rippling like water as if things were running through it,
(mentioned elsewhere: - it would look so much better if you could remove the outline from grass when outlining the rest of the model)