What possibilities do I have for fur/hair?

[Pancho]

I don't know whether this is the correct section for this post, but I'll see.

Coming a long way from Lightwave and Modo I am used to have one or two solutions for fur. Well, in Modo there is the native fur/hair and in LW it's the same + Worleys Sasquatch.

I bought SI almost a year ago, but never found the time to give fur a try. As a Modo>SI>Modo workflow for hair is a pain in the b..., I wonder whether I shouldn't start to render this kind of stuff in SI. Especially enveloping the guides would be a big step forward.

I just would like to know, what possibilities do I have in SI and which one is the best/ what are the drawbacks. There's the native shave and haircut implemented, but I read a lot about Kristinka and Melena, Muh hair and so on. Can somebody please give a glimpse of how hair/fur (animal fur) "works" in SI and which way should I go in order to come up with photorealistic hair for animals especially. From what I learned the styling (brushing guides) is one of the most important thing in order to stay mentally stable. LW sucks big time in this regard. Modo is kind of nice, but lacks a nice workflow with SI.

How do I do this stuff?

Thanks in advance!
Pancho

[ActionArt]

I've done just basic stuff in the SI/ShaveHaircut system and I was surprised how easy it was (coming from LW it was quite a shock)

I used it to create some grass here: viewtopic.php?f=25&t=1609

I have no idea how if does with more complex tasks but there was a really nice sample on xsibase involving squirrels that I remember. Looked great. There are other helpful threads on hair there as well.

I think Kristinka is better for long styled hair.

Other than that, I can't help much, I'm sure others know far more than me in this regard.

[Mathaeus]

There's the native shave and haircut implemented, but I read a lot about Kristinka and Melena, Muh hair and so on. Can somebody please give a glimpse of how hair/fur (animal fur) "works" in SI and which way should I go in order to come up with photorealistic hair for animals especially. From what I learned the styling (brushing guides) is one of the most important thing in order to stay mentally stable.

There is no brushes or guides for 'fur' in Kristinka hair, fur is procedurally generated. There is a basic profile, procedurally generated , aligned along UV (through tangent map). You can change the local orientation by using groups of nulls. Also there is a node for making clones if you want a 'clump' effect. Of course there is a good bit of parameters, you can modulate procedurally. So if you're familiar with ICE setups, I'd believe you'll be able to create it relatively fast. Samples 'deform_hair' and 'fur_vector_field' could be enough.

However, if you're planning an image output, by using 3d motion blur in Mental Ray, on animated emitter (means, no simulation)... k Hair won't calculate 'strand velocity' attribute, required for motion blur in MR. *Maybe* this attribute is calculated automatically in latest SI versions, maybe not, I don't know. Unfortunately, just about ICE strands and motion blur in MR, I have zero user feedback. My wild guess is that people didn't went so far.

If you're rendering with 3delight, motion blur is calculated automatically by 3delight itself, also overall speed is a few times better. Anyway you'll probably want to render shadow maps separately. 3delight, in case of motion blur, changes strand size ('thickness') to SI units, instead of screen size, but shadow map calculation seems to be still the ratio of pixel, or 'screen size' - of shadow map (at least I think so).

Also, some people weren't able to got connection to tangent map in SI 2012, but I'd believe this was an user error.

Cheers

btw, Muh Hair is an old MR hair shader, had a memory leaking problems in SI 6-7 and above, probably you should avoid this one.

[Saturn]

there is fixed version of the muh_hair shader.

http://www.puppet.tfdv.com/download/shaders_p_e.shtml

it's called p_hairTK