I've been trying to write some macros to generate grass, and a couple of my
experiments have turned out reasonably pretty so I thought I'd share.

The grass is formed clump by clump, each clump having an adjustable width
and height and composed of a specified number of curved leaves built from
triangles. The curves are parabolas, I guess - as each blade is generated
it "falls" away from the central axis. At first I put the macro calls
inside one large mesh, but this turned out to be inefficient, so now I
define a single clump as a mesh and then copy it wherever I want (using
trace() in these examples). Rendering time is reasonable even with 10,000 -
20,000 clumps; these examples were slowed down by the isosurface scenery as
much as anything else.

Of course, there are plenty of grass macros knocking around but it's so much
more satisfying and customisable when you do-it-yourself!

Bill

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