How to 'pattern' grass??

Note: I am not sure where this thread should go, so I put it in the Graphics category...

In my current project, I want to add a nice grass pattern, seeing how the grass currently looks repetitive when in large groups...

I want to do something similar to Viva Piñata's short grass:

1280 × 720 - hawtymcbloggy.com

As you can see, there is a beautiful leaf pattern that runs through the grass. How do you guys suppose I can do something similar to this?

My guess is the terrain beneath the grass has been textured with that pattern, and the grass is slightly transparent, but in that case, how would I make the grass slightly transparent?

 

You could have multiple different grasses that you paint or use another tool to randomly apply them to the terrain (like TerrainComposer).

 

seems to be a shader effect similar to the VolumeGrass package in the assetostre.
https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/436

 

You can try to do it with shader.
First, place all grass (quads with sprites, as long as performance of target platform allows) as you would do if no shading were required. Then calculate grass world coordinate in vertex shader, pass it to fragment and use as UV to lookup in some mask texture that will have required shading pattern. Color those pixels that are covering by that mask a little bit darker, and you should get effect similar to one on the screenshot.
However, to do so you probably need to be somewhat familiar with shaders, so check Unity docs on that matters, if you need that.