Combing tool For vray fur

[trixian]

Now that we can controll fur attributes with monochrome and rgb colours, I wonder if one could just adapt these parameters in the vray fur object to respond to vertex painting, but intuitively. Instead of painting vertices "insert colour of choice" to get the fur to grow left (or whatever direction it coresponds to), it would just bend or grow the fur in the direction one moves the paint brush, never actually seing the colours (unless one wants to). Same could then go for all the parameters that are mapable like length, density etc. This might even be doable through a scripted interface using the vertex paint modifier.
Given this, one would then have to reserve a set number og mapping channels for the wanted attributes.

Any thoughts?

[vlado]

I think that it should be perfectly doable, e.g. you need to derive the color values based on the direction in which the mouse is moving. I was thinking of looking into this at one point or another.

Best regards,
Vlado

[trixian]

Nice to hear

[trixian]

Thought I'd add one extra to this one.
Would it be possible to have an option for tapered strands, like normal fur\hair? The "flat end" chopped off type we have now is fine for grass lawns, or if it is rendered really thin, but getting semi close to it, it's shape gets rather apparent.

[mike_kennedy]

since max has good fur tools already, could it be used tot to drive VRAY fur?

[Da_elf]

that plugin called ornamatrix or something like that used to work with vray

[vlado]

since max has good fur tools already, could it be used tot to drive VRAY fur?

The 3dsmax Hair&Fur does not have an API (other than the UI parameters) that can be accessible from other software.

Best regards,
Vlado

[trixian]

that plugin called ornamatrix or something like that used to work with vray

While Ornatrix did have the best hair shading system in my opinion, compared to the others, and some very good styling tools, it did not support motion blur internally or for 3rd party renderers. As for the bit where it supported vray, that was just a geometry buffer, and it actually didn't work for animated emitters, as there was an invisible "clipping" bounding box that "cut" away the hair when it moved past its boundary. Hair and fur does exactly the same as ornatrix in regards to spitting out geometry. But rendering in the native hair buffer is still done in its own renderer.
Lets hope the new Hairtrix will be better and less buggy

[rpc212]

Ya the API has to be bought from Joe Alter by the developer of the plug-in. Pretty stupid Autodesk didn't buy(license) the rights to the API so plugin developers could get at the hair system in MAX!

With so many 3rd party render engines and other plugins to Max you would have thought they would have thought about this! Either that or Joe Alter was asking an incredibly stupid rice for his hair system API license. In which case Autodesk should have said, "Thanks but no thanks!" and gone after Ornatrix which would have worked out better for all of us, I believe.

Just my 2 cents.

[Mirko]

Hm - yes. I am also looking for an acceptable way to render a cat's fur with vray.
Vray fur is not bad. But yet not flexible enough to create complex hairstyles and realistic fur.
3ds max Fur & hair is not bad, but not very vray compatible.

I think shag:hair was very powerfull. But I am not sure if it is still alife. And I don't know if it is Vray compatible.

So for the moment there is no powerfull hair/fur <-> vray compatible plugin available, eh?

[mike_kennedy]

I Think Ornatrix is Shag

[vlado]

Hm, that's quite an old thread... V-Ray can render now Hair&Fur in 3ds Max 2010.

Best regards,
Vlado