Could grass be 'water', and could water be 'grass'? Completely an experimental suggestion,
but with some TGC attention I believe some kind of phenomena could be obtained.

Paint water at any height and any location with a new and improved addition to 'grass'.
Now obviously multiple grasses would be a real helpful plus. So that you can also have
some lush, green grass!

Well, here's a couple requirements: an auto-level feature, and certainly all levels of transparency
from 1-99 all in the same image.

Be water my friend
Are you using grass to mimic water at hill height?
If so, nice idea. You are thinking out of the box, and this is always fine.
Or, I'm not getting the point right?

There is this if it helps.



Grab it here.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-modPfXgdx_DaCr8Mo8Rg_1sRj3B8xyt/view?usp=sharing

Hi guys. Yeah- I be weird with the water grass. Thanks for that object synchromesh.
I was just experimenting with the grass-- wanted to know how it works (see pic that I couldn't get embedded to the post).... Seems like the object' is a flat decal that you can draw any picture on.
But it also seems like GG interprets the drawing and produces a mesh accordingly -- or even more likely modifies the drawing to cut out any 'loose' ie transitional transparencies. It will not accept moderate transparencies-- they must be 0 or 100 only.
Anyway, I was walking through a thick, tall grass (everything set to 100%-- try it with the 'Thistle' for example) when I suddenly thought-- hmmm..... seems like you could almost make a water plane with the grass... therefore, the suggestions I mentioned. Doesn't seem like an awfully steep suggestion.... but it would be a little more involved than just my two suggestions, and you would need to place a zone around it w/ script to assign behavior.

Main problem i see with using grass is it follows the contour of the hole you want the water in
Or are you just thinking of flat surfaces ?

Exactly Syncro- you are right. How to do that-- a bit more tricky idea in the end?
The two options I suppose would be a> just for looks or b> include a real water feel when you enter it. Cons: The grass object is not flat on top (horizontally) for one main thing. It's flat vertically. Painting with cubes or really 3d hexagons would be better for this application. Secondly we can only insert ONE grass per map in Classic. If you select some 'water'- grass', there won't be any other grass type allowed to fill out the map.
..."it would be a little more involved than just my two suggestions"...

Anyway, maybe give it a try on a flat plain (put a big field of thistles or something large) with 100% settings and see if you don't feel like you are swimming through weeds?!?
Next make a new folder in vegbank and copy over any veg.X and grass.dds / now edit the grass.dds to fill the entire frame, (solid, no transparencies) and see what design you come up with. Maybe you can use it in your project in some unique fashion (like a field full of stars or money- or...??) IDK- it would just produce something strange presently. Allowing transparencies would be a new test.

@ GubbyBlips
Are you treating that grass as a decal?
I mean in the fpe file, and so on, If so, it makes sense the GG behavior.
Otherwise, treating it as a simple mesh with transparency = X in the fpe file, maybe you get more freedom to work with, though.
Of course, the texture should have the semi-transparency already done (alpha channel).

@3com
Does grass have .fpe? I'm referring to using the painted grass tool, and so I just slid the 2 items from an existing vegbank folder over to a new folder and opened the .dds file and drew a new picture on it (as experimental) to see what would happen.
First I thought I would see if I could paint windows as in real windows from the 'fixtures' folder (to get transparency). I used that mesh and drew lines over the image. It did strange things because obviously part of the object was 0 transparency and part of it was 100 transparency and I blended them together so the image when used on the test map was designed oddly.

Grass is just a billboard so you can put any image on your grass...

Ah, now I've got your point. So, good luck with the experiment.