Using Maya hair as Geometry with VRay Mat/ Random RGB

[Cruz]

Whats the best technique to use a Vray Material on Maya Hair?

My guess would be to work with NURBS Curves instead of PFX + NURBS.
Then convert to Polymesh and drop a vray material on it like any other object?

I'd like be able to tune my material further,
eventhough the random sat/col/val settings in the hair shader tab really is nice for random color values

so second question would be howto spread random saturation and RGB/HSV values over the various output curves.
Probably utilizing the remap nodes building a random set in maya....?

[vlado]

Well, in the latest nightly builds, you can add V-Ray attributes to the hair that allow you to assign a custom material to it.

Best regards,
Vlado

[t.petrov]

Well, in the latest nightly builds, you can add V-Ray attributes to the hair that allow you to assign a custom material to it.

Unfortunately this is not quite true.
At the moment the only material that could be attached to HairSystem is VRayMtlHair (which is under development and broken at the moment).

so second question would be howto spread random saturation and RGB/HSV values over the various output curves.
Probably utilizing the remap nodes building a random set in maya....?

You can set per follicle/clump colour and then blend that colour with the main colour

/Teodor

[Cruz]

I tried adding a render curve attribute to the outpurcurveshape. It doesnt seem to work, atleast when I assign a material and render.
An ordinary CV Curve doesnt do it either.

[vlado]

I tried adding a render curve attribute to the outpurcurveshape. It doesnt seem to work, atleast when I assign a material and render.
An ordinary CV Curve doesnt do it either.

This was a bug in the initial release; it has been fixed since in the nightly/stable builds.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Cruz]

Ah okay,

This is for a commercial project though. So I guess I wont be using nightly builds to ensure stability and compatibility.

[t.petrov]

Cruz,

There are two kind of night builds:
1. Builds with all the new developments since 2.0, they are true night builds and could have stability problems
2. Builds with fixes for the critical bugs found after the release of 2.0, they are what Vlado referred as stable builds (stable night builds).

You can switch to 2 and you will have the same features as 2.00.4, but with fewer bugs. The only problem is if you're using a render farm you can't upgrade to the new version.

/Teodor

[Cruz]

You can switch to 2 and you will have the same features as 2.00.4, but with fewer bugs. The only problem is if you're using a render farm you can't upgrade to the new version.

/Teodor

Teodor, thanks for that info I will consider it

Side Question: Will I also have to update the Linux nodes on our farm to ensure DR will still work?

[vlado]

Side Question: Will I also have to update the Linux nodes on our farm to ensure DR will still work?

Yep. This can be automated to some extent though.

Best regards,
Vlado