Ok... here's what I'm doing, which is not working: open carrara, open new. drop down an infinate plane and drop a shader onto it. I tried 'Moss' knowing it wouldn't be grass but should've been a smooth greenish effect. I get a pixilated screen of different greens. So I pull down a terrain and set it to 200*200. I make it dunes and then smooth it once. Drop the same shader down on it. Same problem. Switch the shader to 'tiled'. Same problem. So how would one achieve the effect of grasslands? I'm not even getting past the basic layer of flat green here, but I figure I need to know that plus wha to do next. Any ideas? I've in mind a scene of a person standing in such a plain eventually.

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Even when not this close up to it I get a level of visibly obvious pixilization.

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arcady - I think the problem is you are using a Texture Map shader. If you open the Moss shader I think you will see a T-Map in the Color channel. One way around this is to use a procedural shader or tile the moss in the Color channel a lot. The T-Map is stretching to fit the Infinate Plane and it is pixilating. The problem with tiling the T-Map is it will start to give you a pattern look in the grass. If you tile the Color channel also check the bump channel and tile it the same amount, if the bump channel is used. See if this helps out. Clint

Clint Hawkins
MarketPlace Manager/Copyright Agent

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Another way is to create multiple 'planes' instead of using the infinite plane; you can tile on those. Also, getting a camera too close to the plane will create issues. The first tree druid image I posted used an infinite plane with a t-map without any of the pixelation issues you encountered because the camera was further away. BTW, there are some great grass t-maps on the CD. Mark

Forgot to mention the resolution of the texturemaps. They should be high enough res to have the minimum pixel or dpi count at their maximum magnification in the image ie. if the shader is close to the camera and effectively magnified 300%, then the texture map should be at least 72x3 or 216 pixel per inch in the original texture map file. Mark

Which CD? The Carrara one? If there I'll have to take a second look.

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Carrara Content, Textures.

This is getting better. It still doesn't look like grass but it's better. This is LAND_43.JPG from the CD. Tiled seamlessly. Also used for bump map and highlight. tiled 3030 which is the maximum setting. Tiled onto the terrain (200200) and the infinate plain. It seems odd that you can't infinate tile with no stretch. Especially that that's not there for infinate planes. I suppose it's time to begin playing with proceedural shaders...

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For a more effective bump and highlight, that is if you have photoshop or something, is to convert a copy of 'land 43' to a gray scale and adjust contrasts. The bump channel especially, looks only at gray scale data. It will give you more defined bumps and highlites. Mark

One more idea (although I couldn't see the second image you posted), you might try copying land 43 into Photoshop or some other image editor, enlarging the "canvas" and cloning more copies of it so you have the same resolution but spread over a larger image map. Then when you tile it 30 x 30, you'll have more repetitions of the image. Tile it seamlessly and all that, as usual. It'll help reduce the pixillation you were talking about. - Chip

Procedural textures are usually the best way to go for terrain. Make sure you get the free shaders at www.digitalcarversguild.com, the elevation and slope shaders are very useful for terrain. Also, get my free shader package at www.losthorizonsoftware.com, the free Noise shader is great for landscapes (Eric's pack has a noise shader also, but I prefer mine as it has many more options) The picture above was made using them. The blades of grass in the picture were created by placing several finite planes and using the spike deformer. On a side note, the clouds were created using the 4D volumetric clouds that come with my commercial package, the Carrara Power Pack. Hope this helps. Brian P. Retford Carrara Extensions www.losthorizonsoftware.com