Architectural Grass

Architectural Grass

Architectural Grass is a special material that lets you quickly and easily create realistic-looking grass.

Follow these steps to create grass:

1. Select the object to be greened
   
2. Select the Grow Grass (main menu: Create | Environment | Grow Grass) command.
   
3. If necessary, open the newly created Grass material and fine-tune the settings.
   

Architectural Grass is a simplified, specialized object based on Cinema 4D’s Hair function, i.e., if you need more wide-ranging grass effects with more control settings, Cinema 4D Studio is the right version for you.

The Architectural Grass’ render settings such as Antialiasing are then also available in the normal Hair Render Settings (however, many of these have no effect on Architectural Grass).

Note that the dispersion of polygons objects to be greened should be as uniform as possible. Otherwise a non-uniform dispersion of grass can result. Also, the greened surface should not be modified during an animation because the number of blades of grass will change as the surface changes, which can lead to grass disappearing and reappearing.

Note also the Limitations for Hair, which also apply to Architectural Grass.

Grow Grass

All required tags, materials and render settings will be generated for the currently selected object.

Tips and Tricks

• If you want to let grass grow on a plane with a green material assigned to it, the Density setting, which can greatly influence render speed, can be reduced without affecting the overall look very much.
• Grass that is thicker and longer than real-world grass helps simulate fuller growth without having to increase the Density value too much.
• If the grass surface is very far from the camera you should consider using a texture instead of grass (for much faster rendering).