The modeling method of thatched grass blade used skeleton-based modeling. The primary vein used a circle and curve to control its diameter and length. A thin slab was used to simulate a leaf. A displacement map was used to control the width and the height of the primary and secondary veins.
The shading model was implemented in Renderman Shading Language. This shading model can capture all the physical appearances of grass blades. A BRDF model based on [8] was applied on the front side to calculate the reflectance of thatched grass blades. In addition, the back side used a multipole BSSRDF based on [9] to capture the diffuse and translucency of thatched grass. A scar on each blade used texture mapping. This enhanced the rendered image to look more natural and realistic.