Ink to 3D Grass
As my first hybrid test I wanted to start off with something simple. Inspired by Cody Ginty's brushstroke tree I wanted to create a simple grass card.
I started by using traditional ink on paper, creating various brushstroke clumps until I found one I liked.
Once I found the brushstrokes I liked I scanned them and prepared them in Photoshop. First I inverted the image, then adjusted the threshold until the black against white was sharper and cleaner, before finally adding a colour gradient as shown below:
Once my scan was prepared I created a simple plane in Blender onto which I applied the grass as a texture in the shading editor workspace. To make the grass appear as though it is 3D I simply duplicated the plane and rotated it 90 degrees.
The final render (top: cycles, bottom: eevee):
Reflection:
Initially I planned to use the black and white image as a starting point in Blender but I struggled with adding colour that way so instead I added the colour gradient in Photoshop. I'll have a more in depth look into Blender's geometry nodes and create a second test.
Another change that could improve the result would be using two different ink scans instead of the same one in order to avoid the unnatural symmetry that can be seen in the final result.
