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GRASS FINAL TOUCHES

In this bonus video I show how to animate our grass asset with wind. I explain my usual approach of rendering short 240-frame (10-second) loops for public-facing animations that need to run much longer than the render itself, and set up a perfectly seamless loop: an Empty (Plain Axis) follows a Circle path via a Follow Path constraint, keyframed at 0% offset on frame 1 and 100% at frame 100, then that 100% keyframe is duplicated one frame later (241) to prevent overlap and close the loop cleanly. I add a Displace modifier to the grass, set its coordinates to Object (pointing at the Empty) and direction to RGB to XYZ, then drive it with a new Clouds texture (Color mode) so the displacement animates smoothly and loops with the Empty’s rotation. To make the motion look natural, I use Weight Paint with the Gradient tool to create a vertex group so only the top of each blade sways while the base stays fixed, inverting the selection as needed. This same wind rig will be reused for every vegetation asset created throughout the rest of the course.