Shave 6.0.70 and Vray 2.21 +VRayMtlHair3

[Zach Gray]

I've got Shave 6.0.70 and Vray 2.21 working in maya 2012.

Obviously, I'd like to use VRayMtlHair3, but the workflow is unclear to me, and I can't confirm it's using the new shader.

1. How do I apply the Hair3 shader? Rt click and assign to shaveHair?
2. How do I confirm that the Hair3 is actually applied. Is there a verbose debug mode that shows all the plugins that are being used? I don't want to use Joe's shader.
3. Do I control the shading via the shave node or hair3?
4. Do I use the vray prim or geometry type?

Scratching my head a bit here, any ideas appreciated.

Zach

[Morbid Angel]

I don't think its supported yet. It looks like it will be coming but not until shave 7.0 releases.

[Zach Gray]

My rendertimes lead me to think it's utilizing the hair3 shader. From my previous work with shave, it was just useless with any transparency.

This thread http://www.chaosgroup.com/forums/vbu...s-Shave-plugin

Makes me think it's working...

Also, when I apply the same hair3 shader between two shave nodes, I get a hard crash, but if I assign separate hair3 materials, it renders fine.

[Zach Gray]

Here is my best guess, if it is indeed working. There is some stuff that isn't clear still since I can't get transmission to have much of an effect.

[Zach Gray]

Here is what I'm working on. I've got the passes set to 2, then 3 for the finer transition hairs. Rendertime increased massively over a single pass. I was under 2 minutes before, but it seems like the time is increasing linearly. 9500 base hairs *2, 2000 fine hairs *3 = 25k hairs. 10M, BF+LC, pretty low settings.

Adjusting transparency in the shader doesn't seem to have any effect either.



Dome light and directional.

[Morbid Angel]

Yeah well, in my recent fur projects I did not use dome light for this reason. I didn't have hair mtl3 back then, but I just got away with a more simple setup, like using area lights and a simple ambient light for fill with color. Of course its not as good looking as the real deal but also renders at a fraction of time in final quality settings.

[Zach Gray]

You may be right about hair3 not working yet. I turned everything bright green in the hair3 shader, set everything to 50% gray in shave, but nothing changes.

I was *sure* this was working - feel like an idiot. Sad I was really looking forward to it.

[t.petrov]

I don't think its supported yet. It looks like it will be coming but not until shave 7.0 releases.

Hi,
Yes you're correct, even 6.0.71 doesn't support VRayMtlHair3.
I don't know what is the problem, but you should contact Joe about this issue.
Probably a month ago we have implemented support for VRayMtlHair3 and
we have send the sources to Joe. Now it is up to him to integrate them in his
releases. We can't do more about it.

/Teodor

[Morbid Angel]

Yup, like I said its coming. What I also would like to see is a better assignment integration, right now its nearly impossible to tell if you had assigned your shader correctly.

[Zach Gray]

I was trying the shave > curves > mayaHair > hair3, workflow to get something working, but I'm having issues adding assigning the curves to the hairSystem. It doesn't seem like it can handle a large number of curves, and the styling isn't accurate enough if I just use the guides.

The Hair3 shader is 10x faster than shave. The control over shading is soooo much better, especially using the hair sampler.


I'm not a fan of the grooming. The guide hairs are too regular, and you can see a pattern start to develop. And you loose all the edge control due to needing a fat clump width.

[Morbid Angel]

Hmm I don't quite understand what you are describing? are you assigning a shader to guide curves? I just did a simple test today where I assigned a vray hair material 3 to the shave node directly and that seemed to have worked, but I didn't do anything extensive.

[vlado]

Hmm I don't quite understand what you are describing? are you assigning a shader to guide curves? I just did a simple test today where I assigned a vray hair material 3 to the shave node directly and that seemed to have worked, but I didn't do anything extensive.

Well, something comes out, but's definitely not the right thing; VRayHairInfoTex doesn't work either.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Morbid Angel]

Well, something comes out, but's definitely not the right thing; VRayHairInfoTex doesn't work either.

Best regards,
Vlado

HairMtl3 should be working in v7, but I get render exception each time I try to render anything with vray and shave 7.

[vlado]

ok, will check it out.

Best regards,
Vlado

[Zach Gray]

Hmm I don't quite understand what you are describing? are you assigning a shader to guide curves? I just did a simple test today where I assigned a vray hair material 3 to the shave node directly and that seemed to have worked, but I didn't do anything extensive.

As a workaround, I was trying to pipe the output from shave into mayaHair so we could access hair3. After grooming in shave, I converted the hairs to curves. It's too dense to assign to a maya hair system. Theguide curves aren't dense enough, and create a really ugly repeating pattern since you have to increase the clump width to compensate for the lack of density.

You can get it to render, but there's no good control.
I don't think you can assign Hair 3 shader to curves directly, since it wouldn't have any information about width, taper, etc, unless there is a way to specify that separately.