So I’m a UX Designer learning Unity for some personal VR exeperiments. (I have an HTC Vive). I was looking at grass assets awhile back. I can make my own grass assets in Unity with it’s default terrain stuff, but I was hoping to find something more physics based, or something, where movement through grass actually effects or moves the grass, and this was one of the assets I found. Can this do that really though? Aside from some slightly fancier grass wave animation and stuff I’m not sure I see the advantage of this asset over the default grass stuff, it seems to be mostly just a pretty presentation of assets, but not necessarily any additional functionality. Can someone clue me in on how this thing works and what makes it worth anything?
Maybe, but it’s more of a general opinion. If I ask the asset developer he can give me his sales pitch, but I’m asking for more of a technical explanation for the purposes of learning more about how grass is handled etc in game development.
From what I can tell, the big thing is that some of the grass types are shaders instead of vertex, which I’m guessing is more of a memory/performance issue?
And are there interactive grass assets out there, or how would one even go about making one? Is that just too intensive for games still? I feel like I’ve seen that sort of thing in Far Cry but it’s been a long long time since I’ve played.
Your questions are so general I don’t know where to begin.
Grass, typically, as with everything else, is just polys with textures (and the top vertices move all sine wave-like if you want wind).
For interaction, the most basic form, is tracking a couple of positions, passing them to the shader, and moving away the vertices that are close to the position.
But you can do whatever you want. If it looks like grass, it’s grass.
Assets: made by someone, to simplify your life (most of the times, when the author is good).
You can make everything from scratch, like the grass; or use the standard assets, or buy a product on the asset store; the difference is in the implementation.
Does it help to know how to make grass? Depends. Some things are interesting to learn, but either you are a genius and can learn fast, or you have a lots of free time, and all that you do is learning.
The rest of the people usually, go for the approach of learning only what they need; if you see an asset that does what you need, and can focus on designing your app/UI/game, that’s an advantage that you get, so if it save you time, it is money well spent.
All devs here are pretty good at answering questions about their assets (including the ones that give you assets for free); so you may want to start from there. He/she will tell you the sales pitch; you will get the data and compare it with the existing grass; and learn if it is in fact a good deal or not.