[Full Release] Enabling GrassLength

[neutrinostack]

[Update] November 14, 2024

@neutrinostack

Hi Creators,

Today, we are moving GrassLength out of Beta and it is now Fully Released! We are thankful for all the great feedback you sent us and we are tracking your requests around getting more customizability of decorators and Terrain in general. If you experience any issues with GrassLength, please let us know by submitting a bug report.

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Hi Creators,

Today, we’re enabling the GrassLength beta in production! While this feature remains in beta and is subject to change, it’s now possible to publish experiences with global custom grass length.We automatically adjust the density of grass depending on its length so it looks good and performs well at any length.

Please note that we reduce the density of grass at lower quality levels, especially when it’s much shorter, to manage GrassLength’s performance and memory impact. Under tight memory pressure, Grass will be entirely disabled.

Usage

To use the new GrassLength property, you will need to have grass on your terrain. Then, you can modify the property under Workspace > Terrain > Appearance > GrassLength.

1. First, let’s scatter some grass

   • Enable the Decoration property under Workspace > Terrain > Appearance > Decoration.
   • Use the Terrain Editor to paint the Grass Material on your terrain. (Find more details on how to add grass here)

2. Change the length of your grass

   • Go to Workspace > Terrain > Appearance > GrassLength property and modulate your GrassLength using the provided slider or by entering a value directly in the property field.

The property is a floating point value of range 0.1 to 1.0. Those values are abstract and simply represent “smallest grass” and “longest grass”. By default, the GrassLength property has a value of 0.7, which corresponds to the grass length before this feature’s release.

Grass and Wind

If you have GlobalWind enabled (Workspace > Behavior > GlobalWind), note that grass will bend a bit differently in the wind based on its length. This mimics a realistic simulation where shorter grass is stiffer than longer grass. Learn more about Wind here.

Scripting

GrassLength is a non-scriptable property because it is incompatible with the future Terrain system we are building, which will provide more grass flexibility. We decided we wanted to provide you with a simple solution today and make it non-scriptable to avoid negative consequences of an API conflict when we’ll be ready to release our more extensive Terrain system. More on that in our “Future plans” section below.

Future Plans (a.k.a “What about local grass?”)

We are looking to extend our Read/WriteVoxelChannel API to allow local modifications of terrain properties. This is where we would like to bring GrassLength in the future, and how we envision supporting customization of grass density, material tint, and grass tint across different terrain areas.

We are not ready to share a timeline yet, as there are multiple prerequisite steps to get there, but we know how important having those features is for many of you! Stay tuned.

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Made with love by the Engine team

Please let us know about your experience with GrassLength and if you encounter any issues while in Client Beta!

[MagicalAnteater (Nat)]

Neat. The release of GrassLength in all servers is very good for developers out there. Although I was wondering if there will ever be a way somehow to make the GrassLength being changeable by scripts?

[hyde12345678]

I don’t like touching grass in real life or in Roblox, but I like looking at tall grass, and this update makes it so everyone can see epic tall grass.

This is great!

[2jammers (james)]

is it really necessary to be first on every announcement post lmao

[Linux_55 (Dughoo)]

when are we getting more customizable terrain grass? In unity, you can choose it to be a billboard and make it your own image, really. This would be a great decorative tool for foliage.

[parker02311]

@LightBeamRays

We decided we wanted to provide you with a simple solution today and make it non-scriptable to avoid negative consequences of an API conflict when we’ll be ready to release our more extensive Terrain system.

I just want to make sure I am reading this right, so we will have scriptable grass-lengths in the future?

[HelpSupport01 (Helper)]

Actually something that I would be using in my game and a nifty little feature too, nice

[IDMC48]

Roblox telling us to touch grass

[frchrono]

What is it with roblox and releasing awesome updates for developers over the past month? (not a bad thing at all) Keep it up!

[UberQuest]

@LightBeamRays

because it is incompatible with the future Terrain system we are building, which will provide more grass flexibility. We decided we wanted to provide you with a simple solution today and make it non-scriptable to avoid negative consequences of an API conflict when we’ll be ready to release our more extensive Terrain system.

Hopefully the whole terrain editor system gets an overhaul, or better optimization or tools like Random Noise.

[SelDraken]

From what I understand it will be something like they did with the new water, where you write to the terrain its own separate table.

So I believe they will allow us to have individual length, density, color per voxel

[AborayStudios]

@LightBeamRays

future Terrain system we are building

‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎ ‎

[Bluff_006]

you wish you were first, don’t you

[Raki3dd (Raki)]

We can finally touch the grass!!!

The truth is that I remember one of the last updates to the grass inside the studio with the function that we could control in which direction of the wind the grass could move and that now we can control the length is fantastic and it is also very simple to apply

[MTL2010]

i like that feature it seems great!

[ahmedsa321 (Warrior)]

You guys cooked fr
I cant wait till you guys add an option to put custom grass model

[jake_4543 (Jakey)]

did you try reading the post? ‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎

[MightyDantheman (Fate)]

I’m glad to see more progress in the area of terrain. I’m hoping plans for localized properties (for both grass and water) are on the horizon as I’m very interested in both.

The ability to paint smooth terrain materials more than one color

Custom Terrain Roblox is still lacking a lot of features when it comes to terrain. One of which is localized properties. I’d like to use this post as reference. Currently, we can change the colors of materials in the properties of Terrain. That’s great and all, but the issue is that it changes the color globally. What if you need multiple shades of grass? What if you want a snowy version of cobblestone as well as the original? My suggestion for a solution is to allow the paint tool to also co…

[ona2000]

@LightBeamRays

the future Terrain system we are building

Words cannot express how excited I am for this! It’s nice to see that its still being worked on.

@LightBeamRays

how we envision supporting customization of grass density, material tint, and grass tint across different terrain areas.

This sounds like steps in the right direction. I can’t wait for more flexibility this will offer in creating stylized environments! I’m really looking forward towards the official announcement of the future Terrain system!