How do I instance characters with fur?

[Twist]

Hello. I Have a scene where I need to instance bees with fur. The client have provided the bee character that includes a xgen groom. My initial thought was to make a proxy from the whole thing but the xgen description wasn't working anymore. I did predeict this but it was worth a try. Then I tried baked the groom to alembic cache and the put a renderable curve node on it and that renders fine. But curves can't be instanced though ChaosScatter which I was planning to use for instancing the bees. I tried instancing with MASH as well but vray cannot render curves that are instanced for some reason.

So how do I do this?

[hermit.crab]

Have you tried converting the xGen to geometry?

EDIT:

Then I tried baked the groom to alembic cache and the put a renderable curve node on it and that renders fine. But curves can't be instanced though ChaosScatter which I was planning to use for instancing the bees

I tried this by converting the xGen to guides > guides to splines > splines to .abc > load in a VRayProxy. VRayRenderableCurves is not needed to render the splines. This way it is scattered as expected.

[Twist]

Thank you for replying.

If you're not using VrayRenderableCurves how do you render the splines then?

[hermit.crab]

The VRayProxy treats the splines as hair. I control the width with the Hair Width multiplier.

[Twist]

The VRayProxy treats the splines as hair. I control the width with the Hair Width multiplier.

Thank you very much. I got it working. Is there any way to control the taper of the hairs?

[Twist]

I tried this expression but the render is blank.

hair_vrayproxy.hairWidthMultiplier = 1 * VRayFurSampler1.distanceAlongStrand;

[hermit.crab]

I tried this expression but the render is blank.

hair_vrayproxy.hairWidthMultiplier = 1 * VRayFurSampler1.distanceAlongStrand;

I tried with float math and it doesn't seem to work. This thread discusses a similar issue. You may try the transparency method.

[Twist]

Yes I found that thread and saw that it was solved at that time. So there's no way to do it seems.

Are you planning on fixing it?