Speeding up 3ds Max Hair and Fur? Any free/low cost alternative that allows clumping?

Is there a way to speed up the 3ds Max Hair and Fur when rendering with Vray? I need clumping which is missing in Vray Fur. Unfortunately, as opposed to Vray fur which starts rendering in 1-2 seconds, Max’es hair and fur is painfully slow to start rendering. I have to wait for like 10-15 sec. for the rendering to start once i hit render. Is there a way to cut down this time? Or are there any other alternatives that will allow me to do something like clumping? I don’t see myself shelling out $500-900 for a plugin like Ornatrix or Hairfarm just so I can do some more advanced hair stuff once in a couple of months.

It probably doesn’t help right away, but there are some plans to implement simple clumping for VRayFur; if you can tell me what kind of control you need, it will be helpful. Right now my plan is for it to be really simple - just cluster size and clump strength.

Best regards,
Vlado

Exciting news! Cluster size and clump strength are a great start. Here’s a couple of things I would like to see if possible down the road and if resources allow:

  1. Clump twist (along with a simple 0-1 var parameter).
  2. Flyout. This lets some hairs on the perimeter of the clumps to “break free” and point in their normal “non-clumped” direction. This way there are no completely bald spots at the boundaries of the clumps.

More to follow if I think of anything else.

Hi Vlado,

Are there any plans for this to be implemented in the Maya version?

Thanks :slight_smile:

A really good trick (thanks piotrus3333)