Kristinka C

New plugins, tools etc.
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Mathaeus
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Re: Kristinka C

Post by Mathaeus » 31 Dec 2009, 01:15

Hi all,


I've updated "Follow NURBS" styling tutorial for new version of compounds.
Tutorial online is here.
Download, together with support files, is here.


Cheers

...and that's a 'one point' dynamics. Actually, strands just follows the point simulation. I'll work more on this one.


[flv]http://www.matkovic.com/anto/kh-fur-one ... 9dec30.flv[/flv]

Cheers again, and Happy New Year!

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rray
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Re: Kristinka C

Post by rray » 31 Dec 2009, 12:09

Awsome. Looking forward to the release \m/ !

Happy new year!
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wailingmonkey
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Re: Kristinka C

Post by wailingmonkey » 02 Jan 2010, 08:37

many thanks for this, Mathaeus...your effort in documenting this is greatly appreciated! ^:)^ \m/ :)

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Mathaeus
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Re: Kristinka C

Post by Mathaeus » 03 Jan 2010, 21:03

Hi all,

It's there. Almost all mentioned features are present, including a few of new generators/modifiers: the one that interpolates strands between two NURBS surfaces, also special 'Bend' modifier. "Bend" is my personal favorite, I hardly prevented myself from adding this one in every sample :). What isn't there, it's interpolation of hair point cloud over 'Generate strand trails' factory compound - that will need a bit more work to make it stable.

So how it works:

First step is, always, polygon mesh with texture projection. There is no need for tangent map. Second is compound that generates point cloud, strands and basic attributes, here it's called 'Strand Sample Set' or 'Strand Grid'.
Then, there are three kind of compounds for generating strand's profile: Bezier curves between NURBS surfaces, that's called 'Cross Sections'. Strand positions derived from NURBS surfaces or curves, that's called 'Follow'. And, procedurally generated strand profiles, that is 'Fur'. All three can be used in the same point cloud, if that makes sense.
On top of that, deformation compounds: curls, bend, turbulence, randomize, grouping...
At the end of the day, second, optional point cloud that fills the strands over the first one, but it also can carry deformations.

Under the hood, it's endless variation of famous 'Fill interpolated array' - or - 'Build linearly interpolated array' compound, creativity with geometry queries, something from Phil Pack, something from MT Strands....
... so, for more specific ICE tutorials, I would go to already written stuff, like MT Strand samples, Thiago's tutorials, so on.
Also, just common tutorials for every 3d software, about NURBS modeling, very simple math such as add, subtract, modulo, lerp, divide, multiply.... , basic rigging stuff, up vectors, direction constraints...

All stuff is created with XSI 7.01, using factory nodes, so it should work nicely with all versions above 7.01.


Download compounds and samples, here.

Cheers

Deracus
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Re: Kristinka C

Post by Deracus » 04 Jan 2010, 13:01

Man, you are AWESOME! Thank you so much for all the effort, that you put in this.

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rray
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Re: Kristinka C

Post by rray » 04 Jan 2010, 16:43

Wow, best christmas gift =p~
Thank you very much for making this available for free.

Seems with this big a toolkit, we actually need hairdressing skills now

http://www.pxlshots.com/im...
softimage resources section updated Jan 5th 2024

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Mathaeus
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Re: Kristinka C

Post by Mathaeus » 05 Jan 2010, 00:41

Thank you guys

Well I'm primarily game artist, so most important hairdos for me, are something like in image :). fairies, elves, so on... at least for now. Anyway, I've tried to avoid anything with a very high density hairs in samples, because Mental Ray become deadly slow on these areas, and tends to 'melt' shading of many hairs into one. Just be careful with heavy clumping, braids... Adding some randomness on these areas can help a bit.

Image

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rray
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Re: Kristinka C

Post by rray » 20 Jan 2010, 20:07

Hi Anto,
I noticed a strange thing when using the hair color attribute in the render tree:
When the number of points exceeds a certain number (which seems to be different for every scene), the colors are garbled up when rendering (while they are fine in the viewport)

Here's an example (I appended the scene I used also)

First picture is Rate=10000 in the kH Strands SampleSet compound
Second picture is Rate=10001
maybebug.jpg
maybebug.jpg (107.75 KiB) Viewed 6242 times
I can't figure out what's happening, may be anyone knows what going on :-!
(scene: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=FFJXH31O)
Cheers,
Reinhard
softimage resources section updated Jan 5th 2024

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Mathaeus
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Re: Kristinka C

Post by Mathaeus » 20 Jan 2010, 22:38

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.

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rray
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Re: Kristinka C

Post by rray » 21 Jan 2010, 00:31

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! :ymapplause: Looking forward to it. Wondering why your toolkit doesn't cause more buzz on the forums
softimage resources section updated Jan 5th 2024

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rray
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Re: Kristinka C

Post by rray » 21 Jan 2010, 00:59

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.
softimage resources section updated Jan 5th 2024

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Mathaeus
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Re: Kristinka C

Post by Mathaeus » 21 Jan 2010, 13:12

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.

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Mathaeus
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Re: Kristinka C

Post by Mathaeus » 03 Feb 2010, 00:42

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

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Re: Kristinka C

Post by Mathaeus » 04 Feb 2010, 00:26

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

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rray
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Re: Kristinka C

Post by rray » 07 Feb 2010, 01:01

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.
softimage resources section updated Jan 5th 2024

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Re: Kristinka C

Post by Hirazi Blue » 07 Feb 2010, 10:02

A node reference would be most welcome... :ymhug: :-bd
Stay safe, sane & healthy!

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