Vray fur with guide curves

[sharktacos]

It would be great if there were ways to stylize vray fur more. Here are two suggestions. I'll start off with the big one:

1) Using curves to guide the fur to create hair styles. Fur would follow the shape of the curves, interpolating between them. This would allow one to create long hair using Vray fur which would be pretty sweet. As a point of reference Modo has a nice implementation of this. Maya nHair in contrast can do this, but the way it interpolates between the guide curves with clumps is pretty wonky.

This would not create or edit the curves, it would merely have the fur follow the curves and interpolate between them.

2) Artisan brush to paint fur direction. The brush stroke direction would determine the appropriate color to drive the fur direction generating an EXR . Currently it is possible to create this texture map in other software (for example in Modo), but it would be great to have this inside of Maya so we can see the affect on the fur directly as we paint.

How about it guys?

[vlado]

Some of that stuff is patented; plus, I don't want to really go into developing a hair plugin You will also want dynamics, and combing etc etc. We are, after all, writing a renderer, not a hair system There is Maya hair, Yeti and Shave&Haircut (X-Gen at some point too) and they do a much better job than we can ever hope to do.

Best regards,
Vlado

[vlado]

We that said, we were looking into porting the VRayFurStyler plugin for Maya; will get back to it at one point...

Best regards,
Vlado

[FSGFX]

xgen sounds interesting... i hope we get vray support..?

[sharktacos]

Some of that stuff is patented; plus, I don't want to really go into developing a hair plugin You will also want dynamics, and combing etc etc. We are, after all, writing a renderer, not a hair system There is Maya hair, Yeti and Shave&Haircut (X-Gen at some point too) and they do a much better job than we can ever hope to do.

Best regards,
Vlado

Yes I realize it is a potential bottomless pit of stuff that people could request here But I'm not looking for a way to style or comb hair, nor a way to do dynamics on it. I promise! We can already generate the curves using a number of methods (for example using Shave, Zbrush, or even by curves generated hand) and it's also possible to apply dynamics to those curves in Maya. So we already have that capability.

I'm really only interested in the rendering of the hair driven by those curves. In other words, having those curves drive Vray fur. Maya Hair can do this (have curves drive the hair), but the way it interpolates between the curves with "clumps" is not that great. So I'm looking for alternatives. It's always nice to have multiple ways to address an issue, and Vray fur seems pretty neat

So assuming there is no patent issues involved (I don't think simply interpolating between curves is the part that is patented). It would be neat to have the ability to use curves to drive Vray fur, even if it isn't a complete "solution" it would be pretty awesome, assuming it was not a terribly hard thing to do.

[ajlbeer]

I think you nailed it on the head sharktaco's... unfortunately I am pretty sure Joe Alter's patent is exactly what you are describing: How hairs are interpolated from their guide curves and the surface they are attached to.

[Zach Gray]

Yep, and that's why X-Gen has been delayed so long. Disney had to settle with Joe for X-Gen, and that complicated the deal between AD/WDAS... We were supposed to see X-Gen over a year ago from the first press on topic.

I'll be surprised if it ever happens.

[sharktacos]

Well I don't know about the specifics of the patent, but I do know that the suit between Joe and Disney was settled quite a while ago (Joe says this himself in this post from Feb, 2012). I have not heard anything about Gen-X since then tho...