I would like to create wool like seen on the reference image attached.
I tried Fur with many different options and settings.
But so far no luck, to get even close.
Any ideas how you could do that with any of the current vray tools?
thanks a lot!
VRayFur or fur from 3ds max (‘hair and fur’ modifier. VRayHairMtl.
sure:
edit:
looks like scale of the noise map you are using is very small. preferably mix more than one VRayBump2Normal maps to get the messy look. or paint it. use in bend or initial direction slot of VRayFur.
Hey man.. thanks a lot.. appreciate it Captain Fur! 
p
will dig into that and see what I can do with it. My render times seem to go through the roof.. so I am also looking into other solutions…
checking zbrush sculpting with fibermesh and uaahhh.. l
ooks like the old mr Hair and Fur is killing it right now..
will keep you posted…
not even 8am today.. but man.. the day is screaming for a an early fresh ice cold drink..
haha… 
if you have a lot of seats like that in the scene there is option of converting Hair and Fur to VRayProxy I guess.
Results are not getting close when using Vray Fur and Hair. Just doesn’t seem practical.
I was switching to mr_prim and using the old Hair & Fur modifier.
The results are getting much closer. However, Vray is killing it.. by UPDATING INSTANCES.
There was no help in the documentation, or aywhere else.
If you increase the Hair Count, Vray dies like a fly get’s smashed under a shoe.
What the heck is Vray doing when updating instances?
I turned off the general Displacement… but nothing.
Is it possible to stop the updating instance process from Vray?
Or any other way to speed up that process?
There is no way you can use this in production or make quick and fast changes & render at the same time if the “updating instance” process takes 15 minutes every time you click render.
That’s a shame… :(
sweat_smile:
have you tried VRayProxy route?
well.. I could proxy the geo once I have a geometry that gives me the proper result… but it’s about creating the proper geometry first.. right?
that’s my approach…
when using mr_prim I do have the built in shader, that has opacity on the tips.
I guess that makes the fur look very smooth… or like wool, kinda like what we know from a sheep.
The opacity is not bad for closeup shots.. but with the vray fur… I can’t find such an option.
all you can do is taper the tips and crank up the amount.
and about the maps:
it’s really hard to see what the maps are doing.
and if you need normal maps, or just black/white bump maps, etc.
for example:
from where should you know how the bump map should look like to achieve a specific look of the fur?
what I miss, since a decade.. is the fact, that chaosgroup gives you all the options.. but it’s not convenient.
I am not a developer, I am a user. I want to achieve fast results, and I don’t want to experiment or hack like a developer does with coding.
I want a freaking drag and drop option. it’s as simple as that.
You need a rug fur, pick it, assign it. boom done.
you need a wool fur? pick it from the library and assign it. boom done.
With a few minimum options. that’s it.
regardless if it’s shader creation, phoenix fd with fire, smoke, dust, or with fur.
but I guess that feature will never be created…
in this particular case, vray fur kinda fails in creating the fluffy soft tips…
I read that Vray Fur should be able to produce such results… but when you search on google, the entire forum and even ask the support team.
Nope… doesn’t look like anyone created so far a fur, that comes close to the reference image I posted and that holds up for closeup shots as well.
I was able to achieve a result that comes close.. but not with Vray Fur and Hair.. I had to use the built in Hair and Fur (WSM).
But that system relies on the mr_prim and that’s on the other side a killer for vray, when using on larger scale rugs, carpets, etc.
Because Vray Instancing operation takes forever.
At that stage, V-Ray is waiting for max to pass on the data about the hair strands.
That’s likely done on a single core, and if you get the count wrong, it’ll badly eat up RAM, *before* V-Ray can even put those instances into the acceleration structures needed to render them.
There’s around 90k to 150k hair on a human head (depending on hair type), for your reference.
This is fur (thicker), and you can most surely get away with thicker strands and lower overall counts, so perhaps around 1M hair should be your target.
FYI, 70M hair segments (ie. 10 mill hair strands with 8 knots, 7 segments each) take 15 seconds and ~5GB of RAM to first pixel with my basic TR1 CPU, with VRayFur.