 Okay, so here I have an empty scene and what we're going to do in this first Lecture is we are going to create the grass blade. All right, so What I'm going to do for all this is I'm actually going to put this into a subnetwork All right, so I'm just going to hit tab on the keyboard and drop down a subnet and this is going to be called our grass clump Geo, which is called that for now. Let's remove that extra Underscore and then inside of this subnet, you'll notice that we have all these inputs now I'm just going to select them all and hit shift L on the keyboard to organize them and just push them off to the side for now I'm not really going to use any of the the inputs for this particular case Because at the end we're going to turn this into an HDA that way we can reuse it over and over again All right, so let's focus on just creating the grass blade. So I'm going to hit Tab on the keyboard and drop down another geometry node because what we're going to do is we're basically going to Create a little pipeline here. All right, so we're just going to create a bunch of these Geo nodes here and each step of the way or each step in the pipeline We're going to have a geo node for all right, so this is going to be called our grass blade like so and this will be called our grass texture sheet, I believe Obviously, I'm going to update this as we go through all the videos in this series and then this is going to be called the grass clump All right, and then we'll probably have one more for Just gathering everything together. So we'll call this final something like that All right, so let's focus on just the grass blade here and what I'm going to do is drop down a line and This line is basically going to be the main bone or the stock of the the grass blade So we'll just call this the main line. All right And we're also going to need another line and this line is going to be our profile. So this will be profile line cool, and then this particular line actually needs to be Set in the middle on the x-axis. All right, so what I want to do is point it in the x direction First and I want to get the length. Okay, so I'm copying the length here So I'm going to say copy parameter. All right allows me to create relationships between these particular Values here inside of Houdini, which is great. Super powerful And I'm going to right-click on the origin in the x-direction because we are pointing in the x-direction And I'm going to paste that relative reference and what that does is it sets up the relationship So as I change the length of the line, you can see it gets offset in x So I want it to actually sit in the middle of the world. So I'm just going to multiply this distance value by point five and We need to subtract it also. So let's do a subtraction and there we go So now as I change the length of that line, it stays right in the middle perfect, and that is exactly What we want to do. Okay, and so I also want to add another point because I want a point in the center here like so cool All right, so let's do a quick sweep All right, so you can see the sweep requires two curves We need the backbone and we need the cross section and our backbone is our main line there And there's our cross section, which is the profile All right, perfect. So now we actually have a swept Curve and to actually turn this into a piece of geometry We need to go into the sweep node go into the output tab and say skin with auto closure like so cool now This is great. No, but we actually want to create the shape of a grass blade And so that means we're going to need some more resolution on our main line here and to do that We're just going to increase the points that we have On our line. All right, cool. So now I have some geometry to work with here All right, so with this all laid out We need to do a couple things now before the sweep before we process the sweep We want to process some values on the main line We also want to process some information on the profile line. Okay, so let's go and Create a wrangle node because what I want to do is I want to provide some sort of gradient value So as we go from zero all the way up to the number of points here I want to create a gradient and this gradient will allow me to basically shape The shape of the grass blade. Okay, because I'll be able to change that length of the profile line at each point of the main line there All right, so to do this what we want to do is go into that wrangle node. We're going to type in some vex Okay, so I'm going to say that Gradients of float gradient. All right, and I'm using float here inside of vex To make it a local variable. All right, if I wanted to actually expose it to the geometry spreadsheet over here I would do something like at f or f at gradient like so and if I just initialize it you can see now I have The gradient value over here All right, so let's actually leave that in the geometry spreadsheet so we can actually see the values changing as we Type in the little little bit of math that we're going to do here So what I want to do is I want to take the current point number All right, and I want to divide it by the number of points So numpt now if you're new to vex, I'd highly recommend watching the intro to vex series on the indie pixel YouTube channel This will definitely get you up and running quickly with using vex All right, but I Highly encourage you to follow along all this stuff is also Inside of that intro to vex series Okay, so I'm going to cast both these to a float so I get a decimal value And what I want to do is I actually want to subtract one from our number of points there and We actually need to put that inside of parentheses So we subtract one from it Before we cast it and the reason why I'm doing that so if you look at the results over here We have a value now that goes from zero point zero. So point zero is down here It's actually turn this guy on there. So point zero is right there And we get a value of one when we get all the way up to 15. So now we have a gradient value Okay, and if I were to take away this one here, you can see that we get a value from zero to 0.9 375 and that's because this is all zero based Right, so it starts zero not one. So we need to subtract one. So we actually take that into account Cool. All right. So now we have zero to one. Awesome okay now what we want to do is we want to provide some sort of scale value, okay, so I'm going to basically pump a value into the Built-in variable called p scale. All right. So this basically comes with all the points if there's a p scale Value this sweep node will pick it up and use it. So this p scale is going to be equal to CH ramp right since for a channel ramp Okay, this is something that we can expose to users so they can change the shape on their own And what I want to do is I want to pump or give it a name first So we're just going to call this shape and I'm going to give it that gradient value like so So now you can see if I turn on my sweep We don't actually have our shape anymore and that's because we haven't exposed This ramp right here. So all I need to do is just hit this little button right here to create the spare parameter And voila, we now have a way. Let's turn off our displays here We now have a way to shape the grass blade. All right So we get this little down button right here to expand this curve And what we can do is we can start to change the shape of Our grass blade and so what I want is something that goes, you know from pull this guy all the way down here I want to grab this guy right here. So that's going to be right around there I'm going to create a really rough shape of the grass blade here Something like that. It's pretty good and Shape it a little more and then what I'm going to do To kind of round it out a little bit more because I'm going to select all these So I'm just going to hold down the control key on the keyboard Just click on each one of these little buttons down there and what I want to do is Select the B-Spline now you can mess around with any of these I'm just going to use B-Spline because it gives me a nice round curve right there And now what I can do is you know really start to play around with the shape a little bit more All right, it's pretty cool You know Something like that. I think we'll work just fine Yeah, let's leave it like that. Cool All right, so that takes care of our main grass blade shape now What I want to do is I also want to give this a little bit of a fold Okay, and to do that I need to take the two outer points So let's take a look at this here on the profile Now this is the reason why we added three points because I want to select both these Outer points here Procedurally I might add I'm not going to do it by hand. All right So procedurally select those two points and I want to move them outwards Okay, so what I'm going to do is I am going to group by range here and I'm going to set this to points. All right, and I'm going to type in dollar OS here And what this means is it's going to pick up the name of the node for the group So now I can just name this node here. I can call this outer Points and now this particular group right here. All right is named outer points because we're using dollar OS there and you could verify this by hitting this little button right here and Going up to this to this window here hitting this little cog wheel and Checking out the outer points group. So now we have this outer points group right there Okay, and what I want to do is I want to take the start and and just pump them up And you'll notice that we only have the middle Point selected now, so I'm going to invert that range and I get the outer points Very cool. All right, so now I've got the outer points. So at this point I can drop down a transform node like so and Select my outer points group and now I can move it in Z. All right, so we'll just move it out a little bit Now if I were to hook that into the sweep like so All right I would hook that into the sweep node. You'll see now we have a little bit of a fold And it looks like It did work. We're getting the fold but in the wrong Direction and that's because our main line doesn't have any normals All right, or any sort of direction Capability and so what we can do is we can drop down a polyframe. Let's do this here So there's a couple of ways you could do this So I might as well cover that so one the one thing we could do is drop down another Transform node over here for the profile line and we can actually rotate these along the X direction And that will fix it or I could drop down a polyframe node here and There it is polyframe Alright, so I'm just gonna toggle that off there and you'll notice that right off the bat. It's now working perfectly Also, so I think let's just keep the polyframe there. I think that'll work for me for now Okay Perfect. So that basically takes care of the fold All right, there's a ton of things you could do with all that you can add some noise in there But I'm just gonna keep this really basic just for time's sake because there's a lot to show in this whole process I really just want to give you kind of a general basic overview of how you know, this whole pipeline works to create, you know, texture sheets and grass clumps and Then export out all the LODs automatically and then import it into unity and everything's already hooked up for us So I wanted to show how to do that. All right Great, so this is working really really well for us And so what I want to do now at this point is I want to bend this So if I drop down a bend There we go bend node. All right, and so just so you guys know, I'm using 17.0 point four three five currently Alrighty and what I'm gonna do is go into this bend node and I need to make sure that the The direction of the bend itself Is pointing in the correct direction. So the capture direction is going to be in one like so Cool. So you can see now we're getting this gradient that's going appropriately from bottom to top there and What I can do is I can visualize all this like so All right, and we can also change this bend capture length let's actually add a little bit of bend in here and And what I need to do is change this up vector. I think to Z Yeah, there we go. And let's change the bends. So now we're able to bend our grass blade Cool All right, so I think what I actually want to do is put this on the X direction Just for this one because remember we're going to be putting this onto a texture sheet And so I really just want to bend these side to side because a forward and backward bend wouldn't do anything At a texture sheet. These are all just gonna be flat All right, so I just wanted the ability to change the bend here that way I can get variations of grass blades Cool, so I'm just gonna kind of leave it bent there for a little bit. That'll be a kind of its default bend All right, and then I want to drop down a Color value or color node and this color node. Let me actually turn the Visualize fall off here. So the color node in here allows us to create a ramp from an attribute Now if you notice we still have this gradient value right here on all of our points Which is perfect because now we can just type in gradient here and you'll notice that we are getting a gradient from Black to white and you'll notice that one side of the the geometry. Let's go back to the bend node here Is a little bit darker than the other right? This one's really bright and that's just because this is the back face So if you want to actually view that hit D on the keyboard Go to the optimize tab and say remove back faces and now I can't see the backside So that means that we need to take that into account here. So what I'm going to do is Drop down a reverse node put this off to the side like so So now that's reversing the the direction cool And then I just want to merge those two together. So now I have a geometry for the front and the back So now I want to merge node here like so I'll pump that into that bend node and There we go So now we've got both Sides visible perfect All right, so then this is basically where we go and you know assign our grass color Let's go do that. So we're just gonna make something really quick here. I'm not going to be tried try to be too Accurate about all this, but I want to set something up. That's relatively pleasing here You make it just a different color slightly off there And let's actually kind of clamp this down a little bit. So maybe just the bottoms more brown there And maybe the tip is a little bit, you know younger There we go Like so, so it's a little bit more of a kind of a aqua aqua green kind of color there All right. So yeah, you can go and add as many of those as you want And I think I'm gonna add a little bit more resolution To our main line. There we go cool Because remember we're gonna actually turn this into a texture so you could have as much geometry in there as you want Awesome. All right. So now we have Our grass blade with all the basic features that we need we can bend it We can change colors change resolution And we're gonna leave it normalized to a scale of one right now if you notice if we go to our Front view. We're just going from zero to one on the grid. That's perfect because we just want to keep everything normalized All right. So last thing I'm gonna do is drop down a null node here and we'll just call this out blade geo And we'll keep all this capitalized Makes it easier to find Cool. All right, so I'm gonna close out this video and what we're gonna do next is get These guys onto a texture sheet. Okay. Thanks so much