[suggestion] 3d Grass Color Shade Variety?

[nothke]

I hope this is a good place to reach Kunos, cause well first I have to say that stuff they showed us so far is just amazing! All kudos to Kunos =) Except well, with all the high quality gorgeous models and textures, one thing really pierces my eyes is how the 3d grass looks. Not much to the grass texture itself, but the lack of variety in shading..

Even if you CAN see the difference in color on the screenshots like those yellowish/brownish spots.. The problem is that they are too uniform.

In reality, no grass blade has the same "brightness" or "hue" cause it all depends on different factors such as: time in shadow, soil nutrition and water, air humidity, pressure (if it's being walked or driven over), and few more.. What it looks on the screenshots you showed us is that all blades are the same, and it looks very repeatable, bland, unrealistic and artificial, you name it..

And brightness changes also come in "clumps" so to say, not uniform random "dots", but in a more (lets use the stupid word, but you know what I mean) "organic" way.

In some my tracks I tried to pay attention to this and make same texture with different brightness and WOW.. It just sets realism to a higher league!

I don't use grass everywhere like you, but just just on some pieces where it's thicker, but since you are using it everywhere this would help greatly! And of course, I had to hand plant the objects to create realistic/logical visible clumps, not just scatter uniformly. But I guess if I had better programming skills it could've been done through scripts too.

In this one I actually made the same grass texture but repeated it on a bigger texture with I think 10 versions of variety in brightness and color,(not very good performance wise), but generally it could be done (much easier) with other methods such as vertex painting or add/multi layers on top

I hope you'll see this and well this could serve as a tutorial for others too =)

PS. Kunos: what happened to that teamspeak you promised? Am I missing it somewhere or is it not there yet?

 

[Stefan Mizzi]

F1 2012's visuals are much better than rFactor or Game Stock Car 2012, but it has nowhere near the same immersion as those 2 games

Very true, as rFactor and GSC have so much better physics.

But...great physics with better visuals brings in more immersion

 

[feels3]

People complaining about the grass. Kunos worrying about the grass. LOL. No wonder the tech demo isn't out yet. This title will never be released if Kunos keeps worrying about stupid stuff.

Actually, grass colours is very important and not only grass. Colours and lighting are the most important parts in CG, you can easily destroy your hard work on tons of track details when you don't put proper attention to these two important factors.

Remember that grass, road surface and trees are objects visible all the time during driving, even if you're focusing on braking, accelerating and fighting with other drivers, your brain easilly notice all these details

 

[BanjoMaster]

I would agree 100%, especially the last sentence. These details make a big difference to your experience in my opinion - even if you don't realise you're noticing them, you almost certainly are.

Am I the only one who thinks that even the original grass in the AC screenshots we've seen add immeasurably to the photo-realism of the screenshots? I think that the 3D grass makes a huge difference to the believability of them. Maybe I'm just that much of a geek...

 

[StefanoCasillo]

meh.. speechless, a 1 hour improvement coded on early sunday morning turns into a mess.
Some people really behave in ways that would make a primate ashamed.

 

[Fred Joseph]

LOL, don't bother with him Kunos.

Everybody else know that you did very good doing what you did.

Good Job.

 

[BanjoMaster]

Such is the nature of the tinternet *shrug* I think/hope the vast majority of us are very appreciative of this kind of attention to detail, and I hope that comes across the most from this thread

I bet he's delighted to have had so many responses. Only course of action: Do. Not. Feed. Ever.

 

[XN-Sigma]

hahah oh hey Kunos, don't worry too much about it, there is always that one guy that is never happy with anything. Pic related:

PS. On the next April 1st you should "add" grasshoppers to the grass just for kicks.

 

[Luke Russell]

lol

 

[BanjoMaster]

*edit: deleted - wasn't even following my own advice... *

 

[Luciano Falkowski]

Awesome! I'm eagerly waiting for the release of the Tech Demo, and actually that grass thing made a huge difference on visuals.

I can't really quite understand how someone gets mad because a dev stopped, listened to a community request and spent ONE day working on it. I mean, yeah dude, that ONE day will mean you will have AC exactly ONE day "late". That definitely will change the world...

There is just something about the overall colors that seem a little too "gamie". Oversaturated colors, they don't feel too "real". But that won't stop me from enjoying AC.

 

[Grzesiek Zabielski]

Totally agree with you mate! And well done Stefano!

 

[magicfr]

Looks like the AC fanboys will rival the iracing fanboys for their fanaticism.
Heck with the tire model or the ffb, the most important thing in a racing simulation is how the grass looks. LOL. Like I said, this title will never be released if they worry about stupid stuff like this.
Hey Kunos! If you're reading this, to heck with a dynamic environment, I wanna see some grasshoppers in the new sexy grass model.

The thing you don't understand, because you have 0 understanding of how to dev a video games, is that sometimes there some changes that are not very important but because it takes only 1H for a dev which is certainly not the bottleneck for the tech demo to be release, it would be stupid to not do it, and make the community pleased.

You come with sarcasm and you don't know what you are talking about.

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Guys please give it a rest and move back to the topic: grass

 

[Mapu]

As good as it looks; smoking grass, I cannot recommend.

Well I don't think the colors (specifically the grass) are oversaturated. Take a walk in the park during a hot summers day. And well, the color of grass can be diverse, depending on where it grows on our planet. Maybe the grass around Monza looks similar to what we see in the pictures. But enough of grass...

Good job Kunos Simulazioni! Keep it up...

 

[nothke]

What I do in my mods is when I finish all the models and textures, I find a good photo from the race that I think is the most realistic color balance, and then take some screenshots from the game, compare them side to side (or pick colors) and then tweak the textures to match the photo. Then go back to the game and check again.. Sometimes if I don't find a photo "eye realistic" enough in my opinion, I edit the contrast, brightness or curves, sometimes saturation, but I do it on the whole photo, that way the overall balance is preserved.

I also check how dark the shadows are and what is the overall most common indirect light color, so I can tweak the ambient light values in .gdb (in rF)

I hope Kunos will do something similar in the end, this is certainly not what the balance will be in the final product.

 

[Ho3n3r]

meh.. speechless, a 1 hour improvement coded on early sunday morning turns into a mess.
Some people really behave in ways that would make a primate ashamed.

Lol

Don't worry about it, I would've loved to play it even before the grass tweak The physics look amazing :drool:

 

[radome]

I love the new grass.

Does anyone know: Is there any noticeable "pattern-effect" if a large-ish expanse of grass is viewed from quite a long way away? To put it another way: As a content developer, will I be able to supply a tile of grass to the shader and trust that it will be applied so that it doesn't look tiled? I'd appreciate any insight or instruction.

 

[Lee Knight]

Does anyone know: Is there any noticeable "pattern-effect" if a large-ish expanse of grass is viewed from quite a long way away? To put it another way: As a content developer, will I be able to supply a tile of grass to the shader and trust that it will be applied so that it doesn't look tiled? I'd appreciate any insight or instruction.

Same here as most of my projects are rural roads surrounded by grass up to a meter high & usually in (what I call) rafts of clumps or tussocks....
It's easy to do for track-side without hitting fps to badly while driving but nearly impossible for vista's of open paddocks...
Im hoping that what Ive seen from AC's screen shots can be used with something longer in height & distance...

 

[nothke]

If they say track modding works by importing the .fbx into an editor where you set up materials.. I am wondering if this 3d grass is generated automatically by applying a certain "grass material" to a surface? Or is the 3d grass in those screenshots separate 3d models made in the first place in a modelling program, and then exported with .FBX?

I mean, I thought it's done in the modelling program.. But apparently it's not since "making the shader" is different then changing track models..

If this is a shared shader, then it wouldn't be so good in my opinion since all the tracks will use the same grass type and same length, for example.. If it is like that than it would be good to have different parameters such as the ability to change the 3d grass model/texture, length, color.. Or otherwise maybe it would be better to have it separate materials, one that generates the grass and other that doesn't so we could "design" the grass ourselves..

(now I expect the trolls to yell "STOP TALKING ABOUT THE STUPID GRASS!!! LET THEM FINISH THE GAME!!)

 

[Mapu]

[...]
(now I expect the trolls to yell "STOP TALKING ABOUT THE STUPID GRASS!!! LET THEM FINISH THE GAME!!)

Not necessary to say that. Leave the trolls alone and let the moderators handle them.