Graswald vs. Grass Essentials

I recently bought the Graswald add-on because the sample images looked really good and the collection of plant species, variations and leaf debris on offer was quite extensive.

A couple of years ago I also bought Grass Essentials and although that was (and is) is fine collection of grasses and weeds too, I always found it rather difficult to get naturalistic looks. Both products have options to change things like the patchiness or wetness of the plants but I feel that Graswald, being an add-on*) with all the configurable options in a toolbar panel is far easier to work with and offers some extra possibilities, like integration with weight painting for distribution and length as well as aging a percentage of the plants .

*) It is also available as an asset library without the add-on at a slightly lower price.

Example

To show you what I mean I spent some time trying to recreate a patchy grass field consisting mainly of Kentucky Rye grass sprinkled with lots of dandelions. It took me about 10 minutes to set up the Grasswald patch on the left and although the time it took to set up the Grass Essentials patch on the right was about the same, I lost some time because although Grass Essentials does have dandelion flowers and seed-heads, it does not have a particle system to represent the actual dandelion plant leaves, so I finally substituted those with plantain to get at least some leaves showing.

(click to enlarge. Image rendered in Cycles with 1000 samples, filmic color management at medium high contrast and lit by a single HDRI backplate from HDRI Haven. The ground texture barely visible below the plants was a simple dirt texture created in Substance Painter. Note that Grass Essentials bundles several good dirt textures as well.)

Conclusion

Now everybody knows I not much of an artist and probably with some extra time the Grass Essentials version could be made to look more varied and patchy but for me the ease of use and the quality of the end result speaks for itself. Given this quality and ease of use combined with the slightly lower price, Graswald easily wins out on value for money.

[These opinions are my own. I am no way affiliated with either Graswald or Grass Essentials and did pay for both products myself.]