Use of textures vs grass

Community Community & Industry Discussion
1

Guys,

Might seem like a basic question but just interested in point of views. It seems like one of the toughest textures/materials to solve for on a landscape in a realistic way is grass. Because of this it seems like most people use the grass texture/material and then cover it with grass mesh to hide the actual grass texture. So here is my question:

Why use grass texture at all? If I think about how nature is constructed its dirt and grass. With all the enhancements to tessellation and the quality of dirt textures why not just use a real high end and height map tessellated dirt texture/material and cover some of it with grass? Or is there any example where people have managed to get a grass material/texture look good through some form of advanced technique?

C

2

There’s 2 reasons you’d use a grass texture with the grass meshes–first, try it with a dirt texture and you’ll notice that it doesn’t look very good because the grass meshes can’t fill in as much as they need to. Second–grass meshes have a view distance, so you need a texture for the area where the grass isn’t rendered.