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Hi, I've had my first play with rendering grass and unfortunately it keeps crashing sketchup. I've tried it with a smaller test drawing and it works, so I'm guessing it's the size of the ground I'm rendering. Basically, I have a rectangular building 20m x 10m and then I've surrounded it with a rectangular plain 80m x 70m so as a scene is set up to just focus on the building when I'm zoomed in close to the building with land (grass) going into the distance behind. Imagine it's sat in the centre of a farmers field, it isn't, but imagine it. I've tried various reduced settings within grass and it always crashes.

I've just done a test with a render of the same size land (without the building) and it has worked a treat.

Is there anything you can suggest as to what is causing this, or how to fix it?

Thanks

*Update

I've also tried to use image based render, but I have 2 issues:

1. How do I move the shadows around to reflect what's in sketchup or doesn't it work like that?

2. When selecting a custom mxm of downloaded grass from the site, and no ground drawn in, it renders the ground plain grey as in the default colour. What am I doing wrong there?

Thanks

are you rendering inside sketchup (fire) or exporting to maxwell?
How much RAM do you have and how is the RAM usage when it crashes?
Can you render the house without the grass?
Maybe the grass is fitting into the RAM but nothing more.

Hi, thanks for the response, but as you say, it might just be too much for my PC. I have 16GB RAM for info though. The building renders without an issue on it's own which is why I've resolved to trying to use an image based render with a custom mxm ground pane.

I'm using the fire standalone install of Maxwell render.

However, I've tried 3x mxm files downloaded from the skethup resources. 2 of them render grey like it's a default colour and one of them rendered 'massive' as in the grass looked like a forest. I'm really not having much luck with this today.

I'd be happy with a grass texture now as I've been messing with it for too long without success. Any idease why the mxm ground plane isn't working. I've downloaded:
Grass by thxraph
grass by mikey1314
Kentucky Blue Grass by Jayster

There has to be a simple way of getting decent looking grass. The sketchup stock textures look really flat and dull.

I'm off to bed now, so I won't be replying tonight. Thanks for any pointers though. Appreciated.

Chris wrote:I have 16GB RAM for info though.

4GB would be the absolute limit (SketchUp being 32-bit), regardless what is installed on the machine. More likely, it would top out somewhere around 3GB, though.

Chris wrote:However, I've tried 3x mxm files downloaded from the skethup resources. 2 of them render grey like it's a default colour and one of them rendered 'massive' as in the grass looked like a forest.

I looked at these materials and find they are quite old, do not work properly, and are likely not what you are looking for, regardless (and they appear intended to be applied to many vertical planes). However, before moving to a material-based solution, I might suggest first:

1. Using no more Points or Blades per sq. meter than necessary.
2. Using the LOD (Level Of Detail) parameters in your Maxwell Grass settings.
3. Making sure not to apply the grass to more geometry than necessary.

The last two have to do with taking advantage of the fact that you only need to render what the camera can actually see. Any material/texture-based solution will tend to appear flat (unless the textures depict grass blades in profile, and are applied to many vertical planes), when compared with actual Maxwell Grass.

I have a grass material here:

http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtop ... 80&t=46053

Best,
Jason.

Hello Chris,

Continuing with Jeremy's advises, and knowing that there may be just a Ram limitation issue (topping around 3Gb, like any other 32Bits application), you will have to distribute your fibers in a more smart way.

Maybe, instead of an homogeneous field, you will need to prepare different patches: full density closer to the camera; less density mixed with field ground texture in the mid term; and pure (or almost pure) texture approach in the areas far away.

Keep in mind that in the distance, the fibers are less visible but they consume more Ram, because there is much more space to fill as you get far from the camera.

I hope this helps to overcome the Ram limitation.

Greetings

Dario Lanza