Creating foliage, grass, plants and vegetation for video games is a topic that a lot of people struggle with. There are a ton of workflows out there, but how to you know you're doing it correctly? Are you working in the most optimal way possible?

Not only that, but there are so many issues and concerns you may face when it comes to making vegetation, and even more questions. How do you animate hundreds of blades of grass? how do you make both sides of the vegetation textured? How do you go about creating variation without it taking hours? Fortunately, Stylized Station has your back with this FREE guide.

Dan Sonley was kind enough to stop by Stylized Station and give a masterclass on how he approaches his workflow as well as a TON of tips and tricks you can use to create plants, vegetation, grass and other foliage for all of your realtime needs.

This 2 hour guide is going to cover everything you need to know, from modeling & sculpting to procedural generation & animation.

This information and guide can be utilized in any software, but here are the specific software Dan will cover:
Zbrush
Maya
Blender
Substance Painter
Unreal Engine

If you want to check out more of Dan's work, feel free to swing by his Artstation:
https://www.artstation.com/goncat

Timestamps:
0:00 Introduction
2:03 Using Reference
3:00 Beginning Modeling in Maya
3:54 Three ways to approach (TwoSided Materials, etc.)
7:18 Interpreting Reference
8:18 Modeling Practices
9:28 Starting the High Poly and scene cleanup
9:54 Sculpting ZBrush Quick Tips
11:24 The importance of test bakes
13:12 Which brushes to use while sculpting
14:19 Breaking up the silhouette
15:07 Decimation Master in ZBrush
15:37 Starting the lowpoly mesh
16:14 Performance and baking considerations
17:04 Posing your model & baking
18:30 Once baked, now texture
19:45 Substance Painter first pass
21:46 Unreal Shader (subsurface setup)
23:14 Substance Painter (base color detail painting)
25:00 Quality Checking
26:45 Painting technique (keep it simple)
27:49 Revisions & Polish
29:01 Bend modifier detail shapes
30:00 Clothsim deformations
30:49 Unreal foliage tool
31:33 Blueprint Construction Script
33:12 BP: Your first variable (Static Mesh Actor Array)
33:59 BP: Adding plants (GET)
36:15 BP: Set as Random Number
37:19 BP: Random from Stream
39:32 BP: Set Stream on compile
41:50 BP: Random Transforms
44:30 BP: Scale Random
45:00 BP: (Wobble) Random Rotation
48:30 Testing your Blueprint
50:30 Tuning Blueprint values
51:20 Randomize the whole shelf
53:51 BP: Scripting an array for placement
55:50 BP: Adding array variables
58:30 Math
59:29 BP: For Each Loop
1:02:06 BP: Testing ZOffset
1:03:40 Debugging BP
1:06:04 Making a variation using the BP
1:08:00 Best practices
1:08:32 MATERIALS! & Material Instancing
1:09:54 Masking/Packed channels & Subsurface mask
1:13:49 Shading Model: Twosided Foliage
1:15:59 Adding Wind (vertex color)
1:16:59 Crashing unreal :)
1:17:41 Adding Wind (vertex color)
1:19:00 Panning Perlin Noise
1:20:54 Absolute World Position
1:23:00 Adding a Panner
1:26:00 Fixing a seam in Photoshop
1:28:30 Texture Compression Settings
1:29:51 World Position Offset (Finalizing wind)
1:32:29 Transfer Attributes in Maya
1:34:10 Exporting with Vertex Color (Turn on import in Unreal)
1:36:25 Green Channel 2nd UV set
1:40:00 Editing UVs for Green Channel Vertex Color
1:41:21 Blending Color Sets for Vertex Color
1:42:30 Iteration Speed
1:44:00 Fine tuning wind
1:46:32 BLENDER. Making a more complicated plant (Bush)
1:51:32 Decimating quickly ZRemesher as a shortcut
1:53:40 Placing Leaves in Blender
1:56:11 Cloth simulation physics
1:57:49 Thats basically all there is to it
1:58:20 Using Custom Vertex Normals (IMPORTANT!)

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