How did they made the grass blades ? it’s seems likes its one plane per blade (i might be wrong), but i can’t see id they are kinda shaped or a simple plane with a mask.
Also, how did they make the grass so shader it self i mean the reflection ( roughness value?)
If someone could help me recreate it, it would be super appreciated !
thanks in advence,
have a nice day !
H.Schnee
(ps : sorry for my english i’m trying my best and i didn’t want to use google translate since i need to learn the hard way)
From what I have seen, the grass in Breath of the wild is likely a very low poly model. There’s some bend in the grass, but not a whole lot. Considering the sheer number of blades, I highly doubt they went with an alpha map since that could potentially cause major overdraw and doesn’t seem like something that would work very well on a Switch or WiiU. Another reason that makes me think this is because the grass blades are actually extremely sharp, whereas things like shrubbery have weird cutoffs due to using an alpha mask.
As for the roughness, I don’t think that actually had anything to do with the shader in question. During rain (when we can assume grass to be at its most reflective), the grass doesn’t actually become more reflective, so my guess is that roughness is 0 or very close to 0 at any given time. What I think is happening instead however, is that the developers at Nintendo made a shader with subsurface scattering (or an approximation of one). This can be seen clearly when looking at the grass with the sun in the background; the parts that the sun hit become almost white.
The only thing that I am not sure about is how they create the light/dark variation in the blades (there seems to be a color variation that is independent from the shadow). My guess is that they determine the subsurface scattering strength with a texture, and use that to add variation. Possibly in conjunction with a modifiable (global?) base color/ scattering color, since the overall color of the blades of grass differ during various weather situations.
I recommend studying this link (and others like it) more in-depth. That should give you a good idea of how the grass in Breath of the Wild works.
Indeed low poly grass blades seems to be the answer it can clearly be seen in the video you sent me.
i will look at subsurface scattering and i will come back with the reasult tonight or tomorrow .
If i can manage to setup a good looking shader i will surely make a tutorial or Something.
If someone as other ideas feel free to share them !
