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Make Grass in Cinema 4D Using Hair 65 Comments

In this tutorial, Chris shows you how to make realistic looking grass using Cinema 4D Hair. Yep, Hair isn’t just for hair. Follow along to see how to make different types of grass and to learn about some of the Hair specific issues to look out for when rendering.

Tutorial

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65 Comments

  6. KGB

    It was Chris’ birthday just yesterday! I heard Nick got him a City Kit as a gift :-P

    Reply

    • alex

      Awesome stuff, I feel like watching some Xpresso stuff all the sudden, Happy birthday Chris :D

      Reply

  7. makosx

    Another great tutorial. Now, for me, this is a less “pretty unknown” module of Cinema. Thanx Chris.

    Reply

  8. Dave

    Hey Chris,

    I have used hair for grass a few times but with 2 sets of hair, one for base grass and one for weeds/dead patches etc, i found it useful to do it like this as i could have different dynamic settings for each when using wind or collision etc.
    Also, using real images to grab colours (or colors :D ) is a great idea, i take it the PC version has this?.
    anyway, thanks for another handy tute (and all the others btw)

    cheers.

    Dave.

    Reply

  9. Jaap

    Great tutorial and I maybe could use it for a project I am working on. But 1 question. You could add some wind to it at last the grass react on that right?

    Reply

  11. rohit tyagi

    Wow…………..its gr8 tutorial…………..nd Happy Birthday Chris…………………………………. :)

    Reply

  13. DeanG

    Nice tutorial, will have a play. would like some more guidance on how you achieved your final render.

    Reply

    • kago

      if i remember well, the hair engine does not render in the physical render. I just read the R13 help file. I even failed to render with GI.

      Reply

    • Zuka

      Amazing. Looks really good, and I think the sky you used balances the colors really well.

      Reply

  16. Baris Oktem

    Thank you Chris…
    I just ask one thing if I’m open that hair shadow reflection refraction render takes to long about 5 min in small plane what is the reason for that?

    Reply

  19. Andrew

    Hi Chris. Followed your tutorial and placed my company’s Logo in the grass with the sunset behind. Decided later to advance the image and put some grass on the top of the text as well. Cannot figure out how to apply the copy of the first grass to the selected top polygons of the text. Found out the way to make the whole text covered by the copy of the grass. But I want only the top to be covered with the grass. If I select polygons and apply new hair it works fine but I am not going to recreate this new hair again according to your tutorial, there should be easier way to just copy-paste-reassign of the first grass- right? Any suggestions?

    Reply

  20. Chris (not Schmidt)

    Great rundown of the hair settings, it really helped with understanding how to use the hair to achieve different results. On a side note, I understand promoting plugins, but maybe not when Cinema 4d’s built-in Physical Sky looks leaps-and-bounds better, in this case anyways (unless you’re going for surreal), with virtually no setup time. Though, I’m not 100% that the Physical Sky comes with all versions of C4D.

    Reply

  21. Crissy

    Great tut Chris! Could you do a tutorial of how to make some of the plants in the Broadcast preset?

    Thanks!

    Reply

  27. Paperstab

    I Need a way to render larger surfaces but wont crank the haircount up to 100million ;(

    Reply

  28. Mac

    Hi .

    I have a tricky question.

    How to make large area covered with grass. This type of grass form the tut is nice for small area, but when I want to make a grassy hill far to the horizon the hair shader is useless – preparing the scene and calculations lasts forever etc. I tried several optimizations – less hair in greater distance etc. None of the results were satisfying – usually when something finally came up (after long time of calculating etc) it looked crappy.
    Any ideas?

    Regards,
    Mac

    Reply
    • The Gorilla

      The Gorilla

      I would use real hair for the close up stuff but then use fake grass ( a more simple texture ) for the far away stuff.

      Cheers,
      Nick

      Reply

  30. Thomas Nordén

    Thanks! Nice tut. For part two… There will be a part two, right… please add some dynamics like wind or objects interacting with the grass, maybe leaving some of the grass pressed down to the dirt?

    Two thumbs up for the tutorial!

    Reply

  35. Gokhan

    Great tutorial Nick,you are really great man…man’s hand will be tightened ;)
    Thanks for the great tuorial,very useful my friend .

    Reply

  36. Joep

    Great tutorial Chris!

    I would like to make the grass even more realistic with clovers and those little yellow plants…
    In the Netherlands we call these ‘horseflowers’…. I guess it’s called different in english….
    I don’t know the name, but if you look outside and find some grass you’ll find these flowers…

    How can you make an extra layer with random small flowers in the grass?

    Thanks,
    Joep

    Reply

    • DeanG

      you mean butter cup flowers. id reckon model it then use cloner and add a random effector, something like that . .there is probs an easier way

      Reply

    • Jose Madrigal

      Yes… I know…. It’s onlu a word… but it’s a joke that we make in Spain

      Reply

  40. Ali

    Anyone know how the screen shots are done? Is it just an apple thing or can PC do the same?

    Reply

  41. LUIS VILLAMIZAR

    CHRIS

    please that if you can make a tutorial of several ways to do or how to create a tree in Cinema 4D and as their options thanks

    Reply

  44. Jake McBride

    This was so useful, thank you so much :)

    I’ve now wow’ed my friends over Facebook with my tree on a grass-ridden mound! :D

    Gracias!

    Reply

  46. Alan Clavo

    Hi, I was wondering, How can I put some football or soccer field lines?
    Thanks!

    Reply

  47. Neeraj

    Amazing as always..you are the guyz I started learning more & more cinema these days…thank you…God Bless
    neer

    Reply

  49. Virginia

    Thankyou so much for your help Chris!!!! <3 have a nice day

    Reply

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Comment Rules

This is a friendly community. Please treat everyone with respect. We don't all have to agree, but we do have to be nice. Criticism is fine, but rude comments and name calling will be deleted. Use your real name and don't be spammy. Thanks for adding to the conversation.