mantragora wrote:How fast it is? Do you think it would make sense to port it to C++?
I started converting it completely to VEX. Got 2 nodes mostly remade.
Don't.....
Imho there is no sense to go with C++, as I'm not sure is this a long time configuration. I want to be able to change anything, during any phase of work. Afaik that's what anyone who is able, already doing.
Regarding interaction speed, can't say that much about view port interaction - as H 15 tweak tool has some unique habit to automatically switch back to 'regular' mode if hair curves are behind, and of course the rest of my modeling skills in H are close to zero, so, almost all geometry (nurbs surfaces or curves) is coming from SI - simply it was faster for me to export something and just reload in H. However I think it's possible - this is a hair system, where you able to just set a lower count of hairs and proceed, or to work only on guides. Never heard complains about *that* speed.
About another, imho much more important speed : hopefully, Mantra TFP (time to first pixel) is really nice in H 15 when it comes to polygonal hair, subdividing of curves as well.
About other types of speed:
H XYZ distance VOP together with Nurbs surfaces, behaved much slower than SI Get Closest Location (several times) that's reason to use Raycast as default, which is so so for end user (easy to omit the target).
Loops are faster in H, so, put some additional for Frenet frame calculations.
Hair Filler is sitting on predefined attributes, it's plain interpolation of clones inside triangle, so it's fast by self, both in H and SI.
Note that, all that nurbs stuff isn't something beloved for modelers. There were many requests for polygonal geo, used for all shaping. So, if I were You, I'll try to re assemble something like Maya
GMH2, or Max Hair Farm if you're ambitious (while some parts of Hair Farm are copyrighted, afaik).
P.S. regarding GIT and such, don't know how many artists are around it
Or to say explicitly: I think the current form of download is best to be utilized by someone who want to create and render some hair, *not* to mess with code. If (if.....) I'll see at least five to ten people of this kind, there's sense to proceed with docs, some streamlining and so on. If no (most likely it will be 'no') current form is more or less what I personally need, so doesn't matter, it will stay where it is, already.