Golf Green

A golf green has 3 different levels of grass and I wanted to show the difference in each of them. My first task was going to be to create the grass. The method I used for this was using a Hair and Fur modifier on the ground. The issue I was going to have was that I wanted to make it clear the 3 different parts of the grass scene. The way I decided to do this was that I would split up each part of the grass into sections and then add a separate Hair and Fur Modifier to each. This would give me a lot more freedom when it came to editing the grass colours, lengths and amounts.

I started the model with a simple plain that had a high amount of length and width segments. I converted the Plane into an Editable Poly to allow me to manipulate the vertices to different shapes. I then moved around some of the vertices to create the first layer of grass, which was the rough. This would be the outer most section of the green. I then highlighted all of the Polygons that I wanted t be used for the rough and detached them from the main poly.

Even though I had detached the object, I left it in its place so that it looked like it was still connected to the rest of the green.

I then had a though about how a golf green looks in real life. The different sections and types of grass are usually determined by the length of the grass and there is always a big difference between the very short grass on the green and the quite short grass on the fringe. It gives the impression that the green dips down from the fringe as if it were a separate piece of land. To show this effect and emphasize the change, I decided that I would try to cut out the green shape and then lower this therefore creating a lipped edge to the fringe. I was thinking of ways to do this and one way that was suggested was the idea of using the “ProBoolean Tool”.

After doing research on this tool, I realised that this would be a good tool to use to complete this part so decided to use this method. I have now found out from doing a lot more research that the “ProBoolean Tool” usually creates a lot of unwanted topology. This would be an issue in most cases however the tool worked very well for me in this situation. I feel this is probably because I am using it on only a small part.

I then repeated the method of detaching the rough to get a separation between the green and the fringe. This now gave me 3 separate sets of Polygons to represent the 3 stages of grass on a golf green (Rough/Fringe/Green). The next step was going to be adding the Hair and Fur Modifiers to create the grass.

This was probably one of the most important parts of my animation because there was going to be grass in every scene therefore making it important to get it looking realistic. I had used the Hair and Fur Modifier’s in previous years but never to make grass. This meant that I knew how the basics of the modifier worked but was unsure at the beginning how I would be able to create different types of realistic grass. I added a base colour to each set of Polygons that would be similar to the colour of the grass to give me an idea of what colour I was aiming for in each section.

I decided to work on the rough first. This is where the grass is longest and usually a darker colour than the other parts of the green. I added the Hair and Fur Modifier to the set of the Polygons that I had detached ready for this process. I played around with the colour settings for both the root and tip until I had selected a colour that I felt was going to work well in the scene. The next step was going to just be a lot of trial and error whilst playing around with different amounts of grass, length and thickness of each strand.

Render of Rough

I played around with the different lengths of the rough to get the perfect length and one that I was happy with. I then moved on to the other parts of the green, which were the fringe and the actual green itself. I was able to use the same method to get to my final design by playing about with the colours till I found one that I liked. The green itself was going to be quite a bright green because on a golf course the green is cut a different way and lightened so that it is distinctive. Once I had the colours for the fringe and green, I then just played about with the different variables to get the desired effect.

Render of Fringe

Green Render
Grass Scene Rendered

I had never worked with the Hair and Fur Modifier to this extent or to achieve a grass effect. I was very happy with how it came out because I believe it all looks very realistic. I think the colour and the length of the grass for the rough and green help to make the difference between the sections of the grass easier to see and therefore more realistic.

One issue that I found while using this choice of Modifier was that to get a realistic look of grass, it required me to add a very high amount of hairs (strands of grass). If the amount was too low, it made it impossible to get a smooth look of realistic grass because it became very patchy. The other issue that was with the modifier was the high amount of time it took to render the scenes where it was being used. The perfect situation would be to add a very high amount of hairs to the scene because it would make it very realistic. Unfortunately due to the resources available and time restraints, this would have caused my render times to increase dramatically almost to an impossible amount. I feel that the amounts I used were suitable and the outcome was very good.