sounds like a fantastic and educational idea, Mathaeus!

and many, many thanks for sharing your work with Kristinka and ICE hair!

Well, guys, I have to delay the tutorial for some better times. Summer is gone , so I really don't know if I'll have time for tutorials soon. Anyway, here is a simple 'Make grass' compound. It might be a bit faster than grass creation with factory compounds, but that's the all. For strands that follow the wind, I think it's a better way to go with procedural animation with 'Turbulize Around Value' factory node, instead of simulation. All you need to do, is to set the turbulence center movement to direction of wind, strands will follow turbulence vector as a some kind of target for direction constraint.
By default, compound will set strand shape to segment, which means Mental Ray hair primitives, that is faster for rendering, also, hair shaders should fit nice. It working in unsimulated ICE tree.


Cheers

link: http://www.matkovic.com/anto/ice-grass.rar

really nice stuff, thanks!
greets,
ardworx

Hi Everyone:

This is a troubleshooting re-post from the Softimage area: viewtopic.php?f=4&t=199

Being super excited about the new hair release I immediately downloaded and installed the compounds and plugins outlined from http://www.matkovic.com/anto/kristinka-hair.html

Unfortunately I'm unable to get the example scenes to work properly and I'm trying to diagnose where the problem is coming from. Win Vista 64, XSI 7.9 64 bit.

On Scene load after installing the plugins I receive the following error messages:
' VERBOSE : 5360 - This plug-in is not compatible with the current platform and will be ignored:
' <path: C:\Users\Cy\Softimage\XSI_7.0\Addons\mt_ice_staticInstancer\Application\Plugins\mt_ice_staticInstancer.32.dll>
' VERBOSE : 5360 - This plug-in is not compatible with the current platform and will be ignored:
' <path: C:\Users\Cy\Softimage\XSI_7.0\Addons\mt_strandNodes\Application\Plugins\mt_StrandFitting.32.dll>

After loading any of the models provided all the ice trees are present, however the majority of the nodes contained are red. Functionally the point clouds are generating the hair emition locations but not the strands themselves.

Additionally Some of the models provided function as above, the rest cause XSI to crash completely.

My Guess is something to do with either the xsi addons running in 64 bit (which I've been told shouldn't be an issue as both the 32 bit and 64 bit dlls have been provided. The compounds themselves seemed to work individually when I used them exclusive of the example models.

Has anyone run into a similar problem or have any insight as to what I can do?

Much appreciated,
-Richard

Well I didn't upgraded my own 7.01, also I don't work with Softimage anymore, so 32bit XSI 7.01 is the only what I have for testing.
Anyway, here is a main simulation example without MT_strands nodes inside. I would be glad if someone is willing to test this one. Without mt_strands_fitting node some nice features will not work, but it's not that much.

link:http://www.matkovic.com/anto/temp/simulation-philpack-xsibase-08aug09-no-mt.rar

@Dixon3d - Trying to recreate your "error messages", I came up with the following:

Quote:

# VERBOSE : 5360 - This plug-in is not compatible with the current platform and will be ignored:
# <path: C:\Users\HiraziBlue\Autodesk\Softimage_7.5\Addons\mt_ice_staticInstancer\Application\Plugins\mt_ice_staticInstancer.32.dll>
#
# VERBOSE : 5322 - This plug-in has been successfully loaded:
# <name: mt_ice_staticInstancer_Plugin>
# <path: C:\Users\HiraziBlue\Autodesk\Softimage_7.5\Addons\mt_ice_staticInstancer\Application\Plugins\mt_ice_staticInstancer.64.dll>
#
# VERBOSE : 5360 - This plug-in is not compatible with the current platform and will be ignored:
# <path: C:\Users\HiraziBlue\Autodesk\Softimage_7.5\Addons\mt_strandNodes\Application\Plugins\mt_StrandFitting.32.dll>
#
# VERBOSE : 5322 - This plug-in has been successfully loaded:
# <name: mt_StrandFitting Plugin>
# <path: C:\Users\HiraziBlue\Autodesk\Softimage_7.5\Addons\mt_strandNodes\Application\Plugins\mt_StrandFitting.64.dll>

From which I gather, XSI sends the message about it's inability to load a 32 bit plugin, even if it correctly loads the 64 bit plugin afterwards.

In 7.5 & 7.01 (the only two I can check) the plugin manager does not show any flaming red triangles. Hmm, interesting... (and frustrating to you, obviously!!! )

Guys,
I've just uploaded a smaller version that doesn't require external addons.
It' now about 12 mb.
Link:
http://www.matkovic.com/anto/kristinka-hair-c-29aug09-nomt.rar

Cheers

Hmm, well now I'm rightly confused. All of the models included in "kristinka-hair-c-29aug09-nomt" from "Basic-Setup" through "Turbulence-Static" still don't generate strands and the ice trees are still red, same with the Simulation-PhilPack-xsibase-08aug09-no-MT.emdl as well.

All the previous hair models from the may release function as expected.

HOWEVER: on a different computer running vista 32 bit with a fresh install of 7.01 32 bit everything works great (compounds and applicable addons pulled directly from this computer).

My guess at this point would be that the kristinka compounds require xsi 7.01 or greater, and that separately there's a problem with the MT_Strands addons potentially with the 64 bit version of 7.0. More checking to do.

Thanks for all the help!

Thanks for response,
for now, the only difference I found between my nodes and mt_ice tutorials is that I using point clouds inside the model hierarchy (something that I really wouldn't like to change). This release also has a much more connections between point clouds.

I sow something similar once when I changed model name outside of XSI - and I was been able to fix that by supplying geometries again, even both new and old set data nodes were looking the same.

I did all that stuff with XSI 7.01.

Problem resolved:

Switched from 7.0-64 to 7.01-32 and everything works beautifully, (Including the MT_Strands addons).

That's some pretty amazing stuff you have there! Thanks for allowing access - so much learning to do now!

-edit-

Oh and it appears the ~32.dll / ~64.dll error message was the "other" one being rejected by XSI.
the 64 bit version rejects the 32 and causes the error message, the 32 does the opposite. Other than the 64 bit one crashing on model load (unknown reason), the fact that the 32 bit works perfectly makes me inclined to point a problem at 7.0 64 bit rather than anything else.