VRayFur's "Flat Normals" not working?

[vlado]

See my reply here:
http://forums.chaosgroup.com/showthr...317#post660317

Best regards,
Vlado

[ramy02]

Can you add the Max 3.20.03 builds to my nightlies list? Only shows Max 2.0 right now.

Thanks

r

[Zdravko.Keremidchiev]

Please send an e-mail with that request to support@chaosgroup.com

[ramy02]

Is this the correct result? This is from 3.30.01 nightly

[NIKE_USA]

So I'm unclear. We can no longer use Vray Fur for grass? There's no way to flatten the polys with the new version?

It seemed like Vlado indicated that we can still do it with VrayHair, but I'm not very familiar with it.

[Donfarese]

Vlado is trying to explain that the correct way is to use the Vrayhair to get it to look flat, that implementing it into the modifier was probably an error to them putting and should of never put it there. I kinda liked it there and was wondering why the flatten wasn't working with RT, now I know. I hope that doesn't reduce out texturing options for the fur now that we have to use vrayhair. Maybe Vlado can confirm.

[NIKE_USA]

I wish they'd left that feature alone. It served so many purposes without having to do something more time consuming like scattering grass/carpet instances. I understand that the scatter method is better from a technical standpoint. But the Vray Fur was good enough, which is just fine sometimes. What's the old saying? "Perfect is the enemy of the good"

I've looked through the VrayHairMtl and the VrayHairFarm mod but haven't found any way to flatten the geometry. I'd love some help if they could give me some direction. Many thanks in advance.

Vlado is trying to explain that the correct way is to use the Vrayhair to get it to look flat, that implementing it into the modifier was probably an error to them putting and should of never put it there. I kinda liked it there and was wondering why the flatten wasn't working with RT, now I know. I hope that doesn't reduce out texturing options for the fur now that we have to use vrayhair. Maybe Vlado can confirm.

[Rick Eloy]

AFAIK, it's pretty simple, actually. Just apply the VRayHairMtl to the VRayFur object and that's it.
(beta 3.30.02)

[ramy02]

Ah, now I get it. Perhaps the flat normals toggle should move to the VRayHairMtl instead of living in the VRayFur settings. That may help fix some problems!

[Frieder]

There is another issue which could be in relation with this topic issue. The 2Sidedmtl is no longer working with the fur object. Don´t know why, but maybe it goes in the same direction. The lightcache calculation will never come to end and sometimes it crashes the program.

[vlado]

You should use the VRayHairMtl material instead. The 2-sided material is meant to be used for surfaces, not for hair primitives.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Alex_M]

Sorry for bringing up this old thread but I just found that the "Flat Normals" option was removed and that we should use the VrayHairMtl with VrayFur from now on. The problem is that now I can't seem to build a realistic looking grass with VrayHairMtl the same way I could with Flat Normals and Vray2sidedMtl. With VrayHairMtl the grass looks dark and VrayHairMtl doesn't seem to allow adding reflections, just specularity which is not the same and not enough for realistic grass. Is there still a way to create realistic grass with VrayFur (without plugins) now and if yes, what's the best approach? Mixing VrayHairMtl and a reflective coat material with VrayBlendMtl doesn't seem to work as a workaround for the missing reflections. The moment I add VrayBlendMtl to the fur object all hairs become round again instead of flat.