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Description
A general-purpose leaf & vegetation shader, for use in Blender's Cycles rendering engine.

You can quickly assess if it's what you need, by looking at the rendered strip to the left (it's an outtake from an upcoming large-scale picture).

The node setup itself isn't my original invention; it's mostly based on this [link] with small tweaks, But I've tested this setup extensively, using it for dense varied vegetation, including flowers, and deemed it worthy of being... disseminated further.

Main change which I've done, after checking against photographs of vegetation, is the addition of transparent shadow, for increased light penetration. Without this, groups of dense vegetation supposed to be in full sunlight were too dark on the inside; apparently, Translucent node, even if added twice, isn't always enough. It's advised to keep the shadow fairly transparent (higher color value/brightness for the Transparent BSDF node) for such groups of leaves/plants, but lower it for dark and/or single plants.

Points of interest:
-Individual colors: change them to obtain various final effects; works for colorful flowers too! Esp. pay attention to the color values in the Diffuse and Translucent nodes, as they govern the outcome quite a bit.
-Mix factor between Diffuse and Translucent: most important, can change the outcome dramatically!
-Transparent node color value: affects the transparency of shadows - mentioned above; adjust as you need.
-Mix factor for Glossy node: better kept lower than higher, adjust as you need.

Generally, experiment until you find settings that are right for you. This node setup is 'touchy', small changes of parameters can bring significant changes of the outcome. On the good side, it doesn't strain the renderer too much.

Cycles does wonderful job with handling large amount of objects. Even on my poor man's PC, I'm able to render thousands of plants, duplicated via particles from about 30 templates, without problems and within reasonable rendertimes.

In case of any questions, feel free to ask.

Description
A general-purpose leaf & vegetation shader, for use in Blender's Cycles rendering engine.

You can quickly assess if it's what you need, by looking at the rendered strip to the left (it's an outtake from an upcoming large-scale picture).

The node setup itself isn't my original invention; it's mostly based on this [link] with small tweaks, But I've tested this setup extensively, using it for dense varied vegetation, including flowers, and deemed it worthy of being... disseminated further.

Main change which I've done, after checking against photographs of vegetation, is the addition of transparent shadow, for increased light penetration. Without this, groups of dense vegetation supposed to be in full sunlight were too dark on the inside; apparently, Translucent node, even if added twice, isn't always enough. It's advised to keep the shadow fairly transparent (higher color value/brightness for the Transparent BSDF node) for such groups of leaves/plants, but lower it for dark and/or single plants.

Points of interest:
-Individual colors: change them to obtain various final effects; works for colorful flowers too! Esp. pay attention to the color values in the Diffuse and Translucent nodes, as they govern the outcome quite a bit.
-Mix factor between Diffuse and Translucent: most important, can change the outcome dramatically!
-Transparent node color value: affects the transparency of shadows - mentioned above; adjust as you need.
-Mix factor for Glossy node: better kept lower than higher, adjust as you need.

Generally, experiment until you find settings that are right for you. This node setup is 'touchy', small changes of parameters can bring significant changes of the outcome. On the good side, it doesn't strain the renderer too much.

Cycles does wonderful job with handling large amount of objects. Even on my poor man's PC, I'm able to render thousands of plants, duplicated via particles from about 30 templates, without problems and within reasonable rendertimes.

In case of any questions, feel free to ask.