Real-Time Animated Grass

Abstract

We present a simple method to render fields of grass, animated in the wind, in real-time. The technique employs vertex shaders to render displacement maps with Russian-doll style transparent shells. Animation is achieved by translating the surface according to a local wind vector while preserving the length of the blades of grass. This technique achieves convincing results on current consumer graphics hardware and can be applied to other similar surfaces such as hair and fur.