It's simply a split .rar file. Unpackage all three into one location to build the single proxy object and it's preview.

I had to split the .rar because there is a limit on the size of files I can post here.

If you're using winrar all you need to do is simply extract the first file: "jp_grass_proxy.part1.rar". Winrar will then extract/build the file using all three parts into one location for you.

You could also select all three of the files and extract all at once and winrar will know what to do with the files.

If you're not using winrar, then I don't know.

Glad it's sorted out. Sorry if my first reply about the split rar's added confusion. Thanks for the comment.

I used the FastSSS material in the example render I used in this blog entry. It rendered fine for the example, but as I discuss in the Vizdepot thread I linked to using the FastSSS material on large, complex areas of grass doesn't work well. It takes too long to calculate the lightmap.

I figure I'd use something like a masked self-illuminated material to fake translucence for large areas of proxy grass.

"(What dimensions did you expect this to be?)" - As I described in my blog entry the patch of grass is 5'x5'.

"I tried 9 instances of the object and got a memory error/crash. (Design2010/32, WinP32, 3GB RAM" - I have no clue. I'm using a similar setup 32bit vista and the other day I rendered a scene with over 9000 instanced proxy grass objects without any problems. So I don't understand why some are encountering issues with memory errors unless you're not truly instancing the proxies or not following the proxy optimization tips I've described in previous posts. Also using the FastRasterizer can help for things like grass & hair.

"is there a way to "extract" the underlying geometry from the file you provided, or -better- is there a way to "open" the proxy and edit the root geometry?" - No, you can't edit the proxy geometry. However, it's a simple process to create your own grass patch geometry using the tools I described in my blog entry. This particular patch is too large to be scattered across lumpy terrain so you'll want to make your own smaller patch anyway for scattering on non-uniform geometry.

Texture wise for the grass I'd use a gradient ramp with noise and the new Multi/Sub-Map in 2010 to randomly modify the colors. As mentioned earlier the SSS material would be great to use but on large grass areas it tends to fail or take a LONG time. Perhaps some simulated SSS by use of self-illumination would work, I haven't tried it yet, but in theory it should work. For the ground, I'd probably just use a dirt and/or grass texture map applied to an A&D material since it would be mostly covered by the grass.

"Its hard to believe that we havent something useful without 50 walkaround for this situation, i mean, we need a good shader for grass since ever.. the translucency problem.." - Maybe there's a custom mental ray shader "out there" that would work well. I'll have to look around at maxplugins.de to see.

"There is one big flipped face which renders black. Not that bad if u sink it in ground plane not visible especially in perspective view." - No idea, I don't have that problem here with this proxy object.

"The thing that i have problem with is if u dont scatter it but if u try to build a grid based surface with instancing or coppying this proxy object proxy_s will rotate around z axis for 45 degrees hence u will get 45 degrees chessboard where every second field is empty in other words u need two times as much instances in order to cover a field, since this is going to turn itself into a RAM_predator it would be nice to try and resolve this issue." - Afraid I don't totally understand the question here. I do realize there is a pattern that will appear if you don't rotate this particular proxy object when scattering though so I would recommend rotating it.

You could also use this supplied proxy (or similar) object as a base layer and then scatter a different proxy (perhaps some smaller/taller clumps of grass) on top of this and that would help break up any patterns that appear.

I need to look into some more scatter tools to see if we can make this scatter process easier/faster. Maybe something like GroundWiz from gugila.com would work better.

Sorry for the late reply Grant. I've been meaning to work on a decent grass material so I'll try to get something put up soon.

(LOL @ the cookie comment)

@Herb - Glad to hear the info was/is helpful.

@Grant - I think I'm closing in on a grass material.
Example (click to enlarge):


There's no SSS on this material, just a translucent A&D setup.

Now I just need to figure out the best way to display it here. Obviously it doesn't look right applied to the current matlab objects.

Uploaded the material here:http://mrmaterials.com/resourc...nfo&id=987

There are several ways to scatter objects, all with unique settings/methods. If you're going to use the scatter plugin then I would recommend doing the proxy tree scattering tutorial that ships with 3ds Max. It seems to do a good job of explaining the process & scatter plugin settings.