Nothing New In Fur For The Next Years

[fxnurbs]

Hiya,

I wanted to share a big disappointment, after the deception to don't have an uptate of the fur system on maya 2009, i ve heard from sources close to autodesk than fur is not really in the list of the future improvements for maya 2010 neither 2011.
It is such a shame that this old fur which have still its great features, continue to carry its huge old odd things.
It is such a shame that it became to be one the worth fur system to work with compare to the other softwares or plugins.

Please Autodesk, do something on fur, all the big studios (mine is in the list) have developed there own fur system... no wonder why.
Please Autodesk, don't forget this nice piece of work which need just a nice lifting to be one the best.

Amen, Thanks

[joojaa]

QUOTE(fxnurbs @ 08/22/08, 09:43 PM) [snapback]290233[/snapback]
Please Autodesk, do something on fur, all the big studios (mine is in the list) have developed there own fur system... no wonder why.

Wellproblem is that fur is a sort of a renderuing issue thing, so all units will need different kinds of capabilities. So i dont see fur as a main candidate for something more useful as rendering is the job for pipeline wranglers and each renderer needing anew fur. And honestly for feedback its half deecentokay, and each renerer can offcourse spit out their own build shaders.

So i see fur a s high classification for costom own solution since theres so much other thigs furlike systems need to do. And i dont see much other goo dfur things out there than shave and haircut. Really. And hair offcourse substitutes fur at some dimension.

[fxnurbs]

Well, i wasn't really talking about the rendering of fur, which is good enough (for me) but more than the way to apply it.

As long you work on a piece of geometry like hairs, grasse... it is all right. But when you have to work on a full character in fur, it is such a nightmare, the uv seams in a big part. You can have the best UV you will still have trouble on a complexe character ( let say a werewolf or a dog)> the brushes paint in reverse way when you do the seams, cleaning in photoshop don't really help except to smooth the seams. Most of the package now, like shave and haircut uses the normals, uv can be usefull, but normal are more right.

Maybe i just don't get the right way, but there is no tutorial really advance (i am able to grow up hairs on a nurbs sphere for years ) on the forums i never got a good tip really helpful
shave and haircut have some nice tools, but not perfect eighter. A smart blend between both will be good.

Well, it just a disappointment i wanted to share. I am not a fur TD i maybe just don't know the secret, but i am not alone in this case. I just pray the 3D gods for a tool more easy

cheers

[joojaa]

Well to be honest, my personal sentiment is. If i didnt do it myself its limitations are annoying. And all tools have limitations.

[verbatimline]

Curve Attractor Sets can achieve any hair do

Maya softaware renderer and render passes can achieve pretty much any look without having to render wrangle fur in Mental Ray

[joojaa]

QUOTE(verbatimlin @ 09/23/08, 06:20 PM) [snapback]292184[/snapback]
Curve Attractor Sets can achieve any hair do

No they can not. Also fur systems are used for stuff thet have nothing to do with fur per see. So theres allways a need for developers for custom fur. (maybe one needs fur that slipts at ends or something, maybe feathers maybe scales)

Anyway i dont think you can ever live without rneder wrangling. Just because you hit snag does not mean the system is broken. You just don't uderstand the sytem is more likely.

[verbatimline]

as far as combing and styling, curve attractors are very powerful.

The rendering aspect is alot more complicated, specially with MR in my opinion.

What fur system out there gives you access to the kind of internal info that would allow you to make feathers or scales (instancing) or even put snow on fur ala Monsters Inc.?

[joojaa]

QUOTE(verbatimlin @ 09/30/08, 04:40 AM) [snapback]292534[/snapback]
The rendering aspect is alot more complicated, specially with MR in my opinion.

Well rendering is not a one push solution, so the further away form teh system you run the gui on you move the more you need to understand of the translation systems. Remeber mr is NOT maya it gets converted somehow and theres plenty of stuff the exporter does NOT see.

You can newer acuieve everything with any one system. Anyway the point is moot if you can do something in mr you cant do with maya software then ist easier to do with mr.

But with more power comes more responsibility. Dont think how hard things are think whatever it takes to get things done.

PS: i really haven't used maya software rendering for ages (for rendering but i have for modelling, yes the renderer can model), theres not really any point. Its not easier than mr it just had better insight of mayas run time because its running in it. But thing is theres not much other merit in staying in may asoftware.

[verbatimline]

Can anyone recommend any books or tutorials that may give me insight as to how the maya fur is translated into MR hair primitives?

I agree. There is something definitely lost in that translation. Try using a hairsystem to drive fur in Maya software renderer (MSR) and then in MR. The fur does not adhere to the hairsystem as faithfully in MR as it does in MSR AND I don't know how to fix it.

Maya would suffice for rendering IF I could render the shadow pass in MR but the fur in MR looks different than it does in MSR

Should I move to Shave and Haircut? Or should I settle on fur that cannot cast a shadows ala MSR. Shadowless hair looks like it is floating.

[joojaa]

Export to ascii mentalray file and look what it eats. But i dont think they never did think thet youd be working like this.

QUOTE(verbatimlin @ 09/30/08, 03:36 PM) [snapback]292576[/snapback]
Should I move to Shave and Haircut? Or should I settle on fur that cannot cast a shadows ala MSR. Shadowless hair looks like it is floating.

You can allways use maya software to generate the shadow maps if allesle fails. This will give you shadows.

Or you can jsut wirte them out yoruslef.

QUOTE
Should I move to Shave and Haircut?

Well that might help or it might not.

This is a common thinking problem. People who have not so strong grasps on what they do constantly seem to be doing this mistake. I used to too as a 15 year old. See i wanted to learn to play the piano (don't ask). So i got a simple keyboard to practice well the keyboard was cheap and it didn't sound all that good. More importantly i didn't know how to play it. So what i was thinking was if i got BETTER keyboard the problem would go away. Well ofourse because i was not attacking my underlying problem it would not.

A lot of people do this, they blame the tools even tough the underlying problem is not necessarily directly in the tools.

PS: this is a big problem as you can NOT just assume all the human info written down its not enough. The info is only usable once its loaded up to your brain. Otheriwse you can only splve problems that have step by step instructions. So theres no magic shortcuts.

[verbatimline]

QUOTE
You can allways use maya software to generate the shadow maps if allesle fails. This will give you shadows.

Or you can jsut wirte them out yoruslef.

ok, point taken Joojaa. But the easiest solution may be to find a tool that gives the artist the biggest bang for the buck and not have to spend the time to develop a proprietary solution.

As for casting shadows with the Maya software renderer (MSR) - it is not capable of casting shadows. But that is ok. How would you write out the cast shadows?

[joojaa]

QUOTE(verbatimlin @ 09/30/08, 09:52 PM) [snapback]292607[/snapback]
But the easiest solution may be to find a tool that gives the artist the biggest bang for the buck and not have to spend the time to develop a proprietary solution.

Well yes and no. Everything you do is a proprietary solution, even if you do things by hand. One ften fails to appreciate the fact that a script or piece of code is a self feeding loop. So once you make a custom tool that saves you 15 minytes each day IT will keep doing so forever. So in a year you'll save a weeks 2 weeks worth of time.

What people who say this fail to understand is that doing a small piece of necessary code is NOT non artistic endeavor. In fact ALL of the great masters developped a lot of properitary solutions. And ultimately you are responsible for the end image to your client. So best bang for the buck is what gets things done as you need and how you need it irrespectably of what you need to do to achieve this. Not doing what you need to get done is a form of artistic ineptness. And theres allways many ways to force the hand. And ART is foremost the ability to solve problems of how to get there in the end, without it its just something mundane that's certainly not art, art is about the IDEA, and doing that idea. As long as its just a undone idea its not art.

Now since best art is new ideas, best artists never can count on everything being there. Because thir idea si so out there. The slider is HUGE i don't necessarily mean do software engineering just as much as you can.

Learning your tools helps you do your vision

QUOTE
As for casting shadows with the Maya software renderer (MSR) - it is not capable of casting shadows.

Yes it is they just have to be depthmap shadows.