Hey guys, I was hoping I might be able to find a solution here for a fur issue I've been having. The Maya docs tell me that volume fur and raytracing is a big no-no...and sure enough I have been getting some trouble. If you look at the following movie clip:
http://brm0700.cias.rit.edu/VolumeFur\_StillwArtifacts.mov
You'll see the sampling grids (perhaps a product of rasterizer?) on the duckling's right side/hip (our left side). I read in the docs that this grid like artifact may be due to the number of shadow map samples in the lights...so I increased them to 21 or more for all three lights. No luck. I also have a nice little flicker and some random balding but that's another issue.
I guess what I'm asking is if there is a way to keep using volume fur with raytracing or is it a lost cause? I've read to use depth map shadows and self shadowing but I can never get it to look even close to the kind of quality I want. For one thing the self shadowing really hasn't been working for me....maybe its the settings I've been using.
Here's what I've tried:
Smooth Uvs off (to get rid of flicker)
Making sure connections to fur attr maps are correct
High range for anti-aliasing when I was using scanline (to get rid of flicker)
High samples and shader quality values (to get rid of flicker and see if that would get rid of artifacts)
High values for raytracing
Importing objects, deleting all other objects but mesh, fur, and lights
Detailed Shadow Maps, Shadow on segments, RapidFur preset
And some other techniques I can't think of right now
I haven't really been able to see if the box artifacts are still there with dmap shadows because I can't get the fur to look right (not flat or too dark) with the self-shadowing and dmap attributes.
Please help! I'd very much appreciate it.