I create clouds and grass in Unity3D in the style of Ghibli animation.
The grass was created using the GPU instancing method. This technique of rendering directly using the GPU allows for the rendering of thousands of models in a scene.
Cartoon shading
Realistic shading
The clouds were created using the Ray marching method. I used Houdini to convert a basic shape model into a 3D texture (Flip book texture) and then rendered it in Unity3D.