Transitions Between Buildings -- ALSO Grass Texturess

[Natalya]

First, I've been looking at Google Maps, looking at transitions between urban and forest landscapes and between buildings. Usually a transition happens where there's some kind of geographic barrier to building development like a steep slope or a ravine or something. Other times it happens where a new development has been put up next to an old decaying development in a downtown core. The goal in all these situations is make it look natural, but I have lots of trouble with this.

[img]http://www.lady-natalya.info/images/rp_mini_city0109.png[/img]

This is the map I'm working on right now. As you can see I have a few buildings whose structure is complete (and two are internally complete) and then I have one road going out of town, one going into a tunnel, and a few roads which will expand the downtown core.

What I'm most worried about is the interface between the office building on the left and the road on the left:

[img]http://www.lady-natalya.info/images/rp_mini_city0101.png[/img]

It rises up and then becomes a cliff thing. I think the road will eventually go into some kind of in-between mountain thingy. This is fairly standard practice for RP maps -- sink them into some rock cut outs to block the view outside the city and call it a day. This technique was probably popularized by evocity but I've seen it elsewhere and I used this technique on my other RP maps. There's a way to also just sort-of skybox in an inaccessible part of town to complete the background for people in the game but that doesn't work as well when you're trying to make a road that leaves the town unless you use a tunnel under a bridge or something like that. I just wanted a road to go up a hill and out of the city. This necessitates a hill of course, but the area between the building and this funny road just doesn't look right and I want to improve it.

[img]http://www.lady-natalya.info/images/rp_mini_city0105.png[/img]

Here's a slightly different angle. Here I'm standing on the stupid cut-out block that surrounds the city hall (behind me) so I figure I should also mention that I think these cut-out blocks are weak and I'd like inspiration on what to do with them. Maybe I should just recess them away from the building and make them gradual slopes up covered in trees and dead leaves and pinestraw and shit instead of a rock face?

Also, I think it would super help if I had some better grass textures. Preferably displacement grass which spawns the little detail props so you can see it. I know people worked on grass here before but did any of it ever get released? I feel like decent real-looking grass could make the empty fields look way better.