HairFX + VRay Test (update: now in 1.5 :D)

[yeohyip]

Hullo!

It's been awhile since I posted, so here I am still on that project of mine. Just wanted to share the latest test and get some input, that sort of stuff.

I've been tweaking this one for weeks, trying to get a nice result with HairFX's atmospheric render effect (non-geometry) in VRay, and this is where I'm at. It renders pretty quick, and I'm glad to report the HairFX shader on a std material works pretty nicely with VRay. The whole reason for this test was because I liked the anisotropic highlights and translucency effects in the HairFX shader.

OK, enough words, on to the pics and movie:


A little post in PS, maybe I shouldn't have. The movie file is direct from render. That crap under her jaw is my crap mud shader that I'll need to work on more.

Movie: http://www.collective-expressions.co...r/hairtest.mov

Of course, the big drawback is no GI, and no area lights since the hair can only use shadow maps. So I guess my light setup for this character will have to be old school. Thoughts, comments, critique? How's my homebrew fastSSS skin looking? :P

[pengo]

very nice hair very nice face and very nice model u did

congratulations

[add101]

amazing!
motion looks great

i'm interested to know how it works. very generally. like do you move the hair with controllers, or do you just move the head, and the hair moves.. ?

awesome. what is it for?? looks so realistic. did you model the face?

the animation looks a bit quick. like it could be a fraction slower. the definition of the movement comes when moving the slider manulally (quicktime is great for that)

will look out for your website. would be awesome to see some animation/story with this.
she's got some attitude !
love it!
keep up the great work.

[yeohyip]

Thanks Pengo, Add101.

That's an important issue you bring up... I will give the hair more inertia so that it sways more/slower. Thanks for pointing this out

The hair uses the built in hairfx dynamics, so it's automatic with the head moving. It has to be calculated, but it's fairly quick.

Yep, I modeled the face. She's one of 5 characters I'm building for my personal project that's been going on for a year or so now (I'm so behind schedule :P)... when she's done, I'll have 2 more to do. The story is done, just have to finish building the assets and animate them!

[ngrava]

This is really great. I actually like the fact that the hair doesn't continue to swing to much. To much and to slow of motion runes the effect for me. To me, it's one of those things that makes CG look like CG. But, to each his own right?

The skin does look very good. It's one of the first things I noticed. So, your not using translucency? Very nice.

[yeohyip]

Thanks for the input. I suppose I'll try for something in between quick sway and slomo. Maybe just a very very slight nudge.

There is some very slight translucency (interpolated) so thin areas (ears) will light up if backlit. Working together with that is a shadow/light falloff that blends between a normal diffuse map, and a blue shifted version (there's also for speculars)... and that's about the best results I've gotten so far with the whole skin shading thing.

[davision]

I thought Hair didn't work in a non-geometry mode with Vray?

Of is that just Max's built-in hair, and not HairFX?

[yeohyip]

I thought so too, but looks like it works! It was rendering really slow until I set the bucket mode to "none" in the Hairfx settings. Uses more memory, but super quick.

I haven't tried the built-in hair because it's slow and has bad AA.

[add101]

it looks awesome as it is!

"That's an important issue you bring up... I will give the hair more inertia so that it sways more/slower. Thanks for pointing this out"

cool, i was reffering to the movement of the head, rather than the hair. moves fast. but not unrealistically fast- like if she was flicking her head or something
i just mentioned it because you don't see the definition in the movement fully when playing at normal speed.

but i guess if the head movement slowed, the hair movement wouldn't be as dramatic..

looks great

NEways.. looks awesome. i look forward to seeing the animation. that character looks awesome

[trixian]

Nice test. I have only used the hair & fur that comes with max8, but used shag hair back in the old days. How does hairfx handle motionblur. It looks like you have gotten it to match vrays motionblur on the head. This in one of my biggest issues with hair & fur in max at the moment.

[yeohyip]

add101 > Ooh, okay. So I guess I won't be making it sway a tiny bit more then... thanks for clarifying

trixian > The only motion blur available for the hair buffer render is image based. The head is also image based mb, so that's why it matches (haha). Might be because I usually set my image moblur duration to 0.33 since it tends to oversmear at 1.0. I'm not really sure which path to take for mb for the final rendering yet, might try a combination of multipass and image based.

I hear hair & fur got some speed tweaks in max 9? Might try it out again when it arrives/

[yeohyip]

Just a little update... working with 1.5 nicely

[Da_elf]

animation animation animation animation!!!!!! heheehehe

[jacksc02]

dont be greedy! looks great, time to put her in a scene

[panthon]

That armour looks really cool. She's got that look most of the game cinematics characters have. Good work!