First that I see something like that, looks like some rounding issue. I guess it can help if you replace 'strands sample set' with the one in attachment - it has emission rate as a scalar value, just as original node.

strands sample set

By the way, I planning to post an 'service pack' to these compounds in a few days.

Hi there, thanks a lot for your reply.

Afraid the new compound doesn't resolve the problem for me yet.

I just checked an old scene, the same issue occured with the old version of Kristinka.

Could be an ICE bug (?)
Reinhard

ps Service pack -- great! Looking forward to it. Wondering why your toolkit doesn't cause more buzz on the forums

Little update: It seems to be a rasterizer bug. Same thing works when using scanline or raytracing. Too bad, seem there's no easy fix.

Here with 7.01, I had a lot of rendering problems when some, or all strand segments were at zero length. Such as broken final gathering, wrong shading normals, NaN pixels in case of Hair Geo shader, enormous use of memory in case of pHairTK shader...

...but really nothing that looks like a wrong ICE attribute in rendering. At last with these few attributes, used here. Fur and Hair render that I posted a few posts above, has about 70K strands only for fur, and it's rendered with rasterizer.

If it's possible to take analogy with that zero-segment-length problem, I would believe that there is a way to make Mental Ray's life easier, just by sending 'something other' to him - well, just now, I had no idea what is the solution.

Update will be mainly to fixing inconsistencies, redutant nodes, a bit more ways for preventing mentioned zero-length problem, so on.

Regarding popularity, perhaps people are waiting for plugin that gives them clear directions what to do, I expect response to know in which way to go . As it is for now, it's tailored around my own habits, which obviously isn't enough. Actually, it's a bit more popular, than I can support.

Hi all

Regarding '10001 issue', for what I know for now, it's somehow related to emitter's mesh - some of meshes from v1.0 samples seems to working fine with 2010, for example 'Hair-from-Fur'. But animal model from 'Fur-Vector-Field', or 'Simulation-Fur' seems to be resistant to any strands setup, including setups done by factory nodes only. Funnily enough, I created these fur setups as an 'quick and dirty' solution for Christmas-time gigs, when it was almost impossible to meet the deadline by using Softimage's hair, and these setups were working just fine with my 7.01.

So update is a bit compromised. Fur stays the same, Hair is vastly changed to use simple emissions from NURBS surfaces, even without Generate Sample Set node. As usually, this is an advantage, and disadvantage. It's faster in interaction, I - guessing - because geometry queries have a shortest way for work, also setups looks more 'logic'. But it wouldn't be easy to shrink wrap NURBS surface around complex objects, that's a reason to keep NURBS emitters for hair only.

There are a lot of other improvements, clean ups, a few more options for splitting-grouping hairs, a few more nodes... everything, including updated tutorial, is ready, I'm pretty sure I'll post it tomorrow or day after. Sorry for delay.

Cheers

Hi,

Downloads for version 1.1 are:
Samples and compounds
Tutorial with support files
Tutorial online


Beside the changes mentioned in previous post,

The 'main' deformer is still 'Follow NURBS' - this time, it don't need NURBS surface to be too close to hair roots. Even it's a slower than CrossSections, because of lot of geometry queries for every strand segment, it also provides a lot of info for later deformations.

I've added one of these 'sub-deformers' in sample model called 'Follow-Two-NURBS-Offset-Curves', where main shape of hair is deformed by another layer of curves. It's a bit wild because it's double deformation, it requires yet another point cloud to work, but generally, it's something I tring to achieve from start: to always keep main shape of hair, together with deformation that respect correct layering of hairs.

'Cross Sections' has a cleaner interface, and now with single NURBS emitter, I believe it can be easilly used for other purposes than hair creation.

For general NURBS modeling, perhaps compound called 'NURBS UV Density" may be interesting, it's a very simple compound that allows sliding of NURBS surface along itself.

Tutorial is updated, also I've added a few more tips about shading, NURBS modeling, so on...

For anything related, don't hesitate to ask, nothing is set in stone with these ICE compounds.

Also I would like to say a BIG thanks to RRay for diving into this stuff - shame on me, I've figured out just before few days that this is the same RRay who made RCTools, which I continuously using from XSI 4.


Cheers

You are welcome! I'm enjoying your hair toolkit a lot (Diving into it is also a nice way to learn more ICE)
The updates make a lot of sense, I noticed the improvements in the follow NURBS compound right away - for the other nodes to check out I need some more time. The curve editing feature seems particulary useful, also the decision to go back to NURBS for hair I think is good. Cross section styling with a poly emitter was tricky =)

Btw I started writing up a little node reference, at least for the few nodes that I learnt how to use. I'll post it here when it's finished---let me know if there's something else I can do in terms of promoting your toolkit (maybe some editing of the Kristinka entry at rray.de/xsi, or some head models might be useful for web renders, see rray.de/sp)

Thanks for sticking with them ole RCtools for so long!=)

Oh the "10001" issue happened with the Softimage factory strands demo scene also, it must be some sort of limitation or bug in the rasterizer.

A node reference would be most welcome...

Yeah, node reference may be cool Honestly I've avoided to add something like that, because all these nodes are some kind of work in progress. So only a few deserves writing about them, I think. Here's brief description:

Emitters for first and second point cloud, also two 'strand profile generators': Follow NURBS and Cross Sections, are here for relative long time. Both profile generators were designed for creating main shape of hair in one go, avoiding using of many guides/curves.

Deformers such as Curls, Static Turbulence, Randomize, Push, all were builded using same pattern, strands are just moved along two vectors.

'Emit Hair'- it's compound for second, filler point cloud - has a lot of 'Emit Filler Strands' and 'Constrain To Guide Hairs' from PhilPack.

General way for hair parting/grouping rely on method described here, actually on second method described by Ronald Beirouti. I'm pretty sure I'll keep this method in the future.

'Strand fCurve' compound is taken from MT Strands samples, it may be interesting because something like that doesn't exist with factory strand nodes. It allows modulating of almost any scalar value along strand length, such as hair thickness, weight of deformers and such, also keeping PPGs clear of many function curves all around.' Get emitter UV' is doing the same, but this time, along U or V of emitter. Both are some kind of 'portable function curves'. Just these two, I think, may be important for figuring out the modular, 'lego bricks' concept of ICE nodes.

'Offset Curve' compound from 'Follow-Two-NURBS-Offset-Curves', it's something I found in last minute when working on update - as some kind of multiple, 3d function curve, it seems to be very useful. I just working on cleaner version that may be plugged where ever it makes sense, for yet another, small update.

'Big' simulation, the one from 'Simulation-PhilPack-xsibase-08aug09' is taken from PhilPack. Another one called One Point Dynamics, it's just simple implementation of Hooke's law, performed only on points.


Cheers

Node reference is still work in progress but I'll post it tonight.

What I don't understand at all is the whole concept of spiltting offsets, including the kH Splitting Offset compound.


Any chance you got a minute to give me some clues as to how this works? I'm stumped