In this video, we are going to look at common techniques employed within the video games industry to create vegetation.

We will start small and look at the basic techniques of creating grass to be used in-game.

I will take you through the fact that most game engines can’t afford to model every leaf or blade of grass and I will explain how the problem is solved by applying texture maps with alpha maps or alpha channels to simpler geometry.

Alpha Maps are black and white or grayscale images, which when used with a diffuse texture show any elements in white as being opaque and black areas as being transparent. All grey values will create relevant levels of transparency. For example, 50% gray is taken as 50% transparent.

First of all, we will work through the creation of a texture map and its accompanying alpha map in easy-to-follow steps.

We will create a variety of different assets including grass and leaves, using a variety of source reference from photographs, to renders of complex 3D geometry, and even hand-drawn images.

I will explain how to create a separate alpha map and walk you through layers and alpha channels in Adobe Photoshop.

We will then move into 3dsMax and I will talk you through some examples of grass and how they were created. We will discuss the reasons for the conservative use of polygon geometry and also how to get the most out of the limited polygons.

Starting with the simplest models possible we will slowly introduce more geometry to the models to create better-looking models which look good from all sides using Rotation, Scale, and consideration of which angles the models will be viewed from.

We will then move on to the creation methods for small plants and shrubs. We will once again look at how to create the texture maps and the accompanying alpha maps and we will discuss the file formats which support Embedded Alpha Maps.

I will show you how to deconstruct the components of the plants from the reference images, breaking them up into smaller items for easy modeling. We’ll also look at capturing the real look of the plants by looking at the angles of the stems and the weight of the leaves, all helping you to create much more believable models.

Through the creation of 4 different models, we will look at how using a mix of complex and simple geometry we can create great-looking foliage. We will investigate the use of edges and the use of curves in the leaves and branches and we will also look at the dramatic effects of using colour to give you a massive amount of variety on the same simple shapes.

Finally, we will look at how to put all of this together into a scene, where to place each type of model, and how to get the most out of them for your work.

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