Paul Smiths Fuzz for animation
I have had the pleasure of testing Paul Smiths excellent Fuzz for applying fur - great tool with comprehensible controls for grooming short fur. Unfortunately it looks like the strands orientation jitter when the generator surface is animated - deformation as well as SRT. It is set up for animation, so the strands stay on the deformed surface, but I have this jitter. Did anyone here succesfully find a fix for that? I did write to Paul BTW, but I guess he is busy, so no reply yet. After all this is a free (donationware)tool so I am certainly not expecting him to provide support :) It would be awesome if I could get it working, as it will be hard to redo the grooming with other tools , plus I have no time for looking into Kristinka or Melena. Cheers Morten
Re: Paul Smiths Fuzz for animation
have seen this on some production shots. because of massive scene size (as in: things happening a long way from the origin) we ran into limits of floating point precision. The solution was to offset the whole shot (parent whole scene under a null) so it was centered around the origin, and rebake all pointcaches. incidentally it was hair for feathers on birds – with the erratic random jitter they were kind of like flapping around in the breeze – and with the fixed and stable caches the hair/feathers ended up too stable to my taste. this was all long before ice and strands – but floating point precision limits still exist. if your scene is very big or very small (size not complexity), or action is happening very far from the origin – that could be the cause. From: Mirko Jankovic Sent: Friday, June 12, 2015 10:00 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Paul Smiths Fuzz for animation Maybe it is not only with fuz.. I'm actually having same issue but with softmiage hair. with animated character hairs jitter like changing places in every frame... so it maybe is not something from the fuzz... On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 9:55 AM, Alok Gandhi alok.gandhi2...@gmail.com wrote: I have no idea of the tool and I can be absolutely wrong but just out of the blue do zero out any epsilon values in the greater than / smaller than nodes (if any). On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 1:20 PM, Morten Bartholdy x...@colorshopvfx.dk wrote: I have had the pleasure of testing Paul Smiths excellent Fuzz for applying fur - great tool with comprehensible controls for grooming short fur. Unfortunately it looks like the strands orientation jitter when the generator surface is animated - deformation as well as SRT. It is set up for animation, so the strands stay on the deformed surface, but I have this jitter. Did anyone here succesfully find a fix for that? I did write to Paul BTW, but I guess he is busy, so no reply yet. After all this is a free (donationware)tool so I am certainly not expecting him to provide support :) It would be awesome if I could get it working, as it will be hard to redo the grooming with other tools , plus I have no time for looking into Kristinka or Melena. Cheers Morten --
Re: Paul Smiths Fuzz for animation
Maybe it is not only with fuz.. I'm actually having same issue but with softmiage hair. with animated character hairs jitter like changing places in every frame... so it maybe is not something from the fuzz... On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 9:55 AM, Alok Gandhi alok.gandhi2...@gmail.com wrote: I have no idea of the tool and I can be absolutely wrong but just out of the blue do zero out any epsilon values in the greater than / smaller than nodes (if any). On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 1:20 PM, Morten Bartholdy x...@colorshopvfx.dk wrote: I have had the pleasure of testing Paul Smiths excellent Fuzz for applying fur - great tool with comprehensible controls for grooming short fur. Unfortunately it looks like the strands orientation jitter when the generator surface is animated - deformation as well as SRT. It is set up for animation, so the strands stay on the deformed surface, but I have this jitter. Did anyone here succesfully find a fix for that? I did write to Paul BTW, but I guess he is busy, so no reply yet. After all this is a free (donationware)tool so I am certainly not expecting him to provide support :) It would be awesome if I could get it working, as it will be hard to redo the grooming with other tools , plus I have no time for looking into Kristinka or Melena. Cheers Morten --
Re: Virtual Apps
well, the infuriating thing must be that there is enough money to solve a problem, but because of policy, rather than being flexible and doing just that, more money can be found but not to solve the problem. And so now one tries to go through hoops to see if by throwing the money elsewhere the problem can be solved indirectly. the lack of common sense, or goodwill to get things done can be so frustrating. schools are probably worse but it happens in the 'real' world too. -Original Message- From: Tim Leydecker Sent: Friday, June 12, 2015 8:45 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Virtual Apps If it is any help, when I started studying graphics design/communication design in 1998, the starting point for the transition had already been set way before my starting there... It´s amazing how one or two people with a few forms and the budget to decide on can ruin your day. At least it´s not just like that in universities. We have an airport here in Berlin that will or will not be finish by 2013/2014 on a week or two´s notice. It really boils down on what did you expect? Cheers, tim Am 11.06.2015 um 19:43 schrieb Sofronis Efstathiou: Universities here in the UK are mostly going through a transition of stupidity. I feel your pain... Sent from my Android phone using Symantec TouchDown (www.symantec.com) -Original Message- From: Angus Davidson [angus.david...@wits.ac.za] Received: Thursday, 11 Jun 2015, 18:24 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com [softimage@listproc.autodesk.com] Subject: RE: Virtual Apps Most of our university accountancy runs so totally against reality its scary. I was almost fired on my first day by calling someone (who later turned our CFO) an idiot to their face, We can only use a cloud if its local. We had a trial of shotgun (which is a great piece of kit) but it was totally unusable on our internet. So streaming HD to multiple computers from Europe to Africa will just not work. Which is a shame as it would suit us down to the ground. From: Matt Lind [speye...@hotmail.com] Sent: 11 June 2015 10:05 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Virtual Apps Has a cloud service like Amazon web services, or similar, been considered? Basically everything Peter just said applies, but you'd have the benefit of scaling up and down as needed and not have to pay for time when school is not in session, nor fork out for or maintain hardware sitting in a back room. At my last employer many applications were installed on a SAN and run in virtual machine environments so hardware and maintenance could be consolidated. There was a small amount of teething getting it set up, but once it was up and running the end user didn't know the difference. Softimage wasn't installed on the SAN and we didn't have thin clients, so I can't provide much feedback in that area. Matt Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2015 09:24:39 +0200 From: pete...@skynet.be Subject: Re: Virtual Apps To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com that?s surreal, being forced into buying highly expensive state of the art tech, in stead of some off the shelf computers, out of budgetary constraints. I?m sure that?s exactly how European administration is run. that VCA looks like it would allow you to set up a nice 3D rendering workflow, but it wouldn?t really help with compositing, simulations, working with complex scenes,... or would it? sounds a bit like getting a shiny new pickup truck, but having to load it using chopsticks since you don?t have the budget for a shovel. at least you?ll have the coolest toy in town . From: Angus Davidson Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2015 5:44 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: RE: Virtual Apps Dear Peter Thank you for the incredibly comprehensive response. The crazy kindergarten accountancy at the university means that the lab computers need to be paid for by the schools from their operating budgets (which are not keeping up with inflation). However things like VCA are expensive enough to be considered Major Capex and that amazingly enough they have funds for. So its mostly about reading the situation at the University and trying to plan around it. Kind regards Angus From: pete...@skynet.be [pete...@skynet.be] Sent: 10 June 2015 02:41 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Virtual Apps if you mean using a thin client on the desk, to connect to a remote workstation (in the server room) ? then yes ? have used this at a former studio. overall it worked quite well. on the thin client you would launch an app, on which you chose the workstation to login to and then a full screen window opens on which you see the workstations? desktop ? and you work you session. It?s very intuitive ? apart from a few keyboard combos (ctrl-alt-del is on the thin client, so there?s a different combination to send
Re: Paul Smiths Fuzz for animation
Shot in the dark here, but I always use the store strand groom from melena in my groom ice tree, and then have a simulated ice tree with restore strand groom. I'm doing my fur in houdini at the moment, so I'm a bit rusty on the workflow, but that's how I remember doing it last year. G On 12/06/2015 10:51, Morten Bartholdy wrote: Well this is very average scale and centered, as I am in the proces of rigging and applying fur to the elements. No legacy Hair either - only ICE, and no simulation for turbulence or the like. MB Den 12. juni 2015 kl. 10:43 skrev pete...@skynet.be: have seen this on some production shots. because of massive scene size (as in: things happening a long way from the origin) we ran into limits of floating point precision. The solution was to offset the whole shot (parent whole scene under a null) so it was centered around the origin, and rebake all pointcaches. incidentally it was hair for feathers on birds – with the erratic random jitter they were kind of like flapping around in the breeze – and with the fixed and stable caches the hair/feathers ended up too stable to my taste. this was all long before ice and strands – but floating point precision limits still exist. if your scene is very big or very small (size not complexity), or action is happening very far from the origin – that could be the cause. *From:* Mirko Jankovic mailto:mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com *Sent:* Friday, June 12, 2015 10:00 AM *To:* softimage@listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com *Subject:* Re: Paul Smiths Fuzz for animation Maybe it is not only with fuz.. I'm actually having same issue but with softmiage hair. with animated character hairs jitter like changing places in every frame... so it maybe is not something from the fuzz... On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 9:55 AM, Alok Gandhi alok.gandhi2...@gmail.com mailto:alok.gandhi2...@gmail.com wrote: I have no idea of the tool and I can be absolutely wrong but just out of the blue do zero out any epsilon values in the greater than / smaller than nodes (if any). On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 1:20 PM, Morten Bartholdy x...@colorshopvfx.dk mailto:x...@colorshopvfx.dk wrote: I have had the pleasure of testing Paul Smiths excellent Fuzz for applying fur - great tool with comprehensible controls for grooming short fur. Unfortunately it looks like the strands orientation jitter when the generator surface is animated - deformation as well as SRT. It is set up for animation, so the strands stay on the deformed surface, but I have this jitter. Did anyone here succesfully find a fix for that? I did write to Paul BTW, but I guess he is busy, so no reply yet. After all this is a free (donationware)tool so I am certainly not expecting him to provide support :) It would be awesome if I could get it working, as it will be hard to redo the grooming with other tools , plus I have no time for looking into Kristinka or Melena. Cheers Morten --
Re: Paul Smiths Fuzz for animation
Well this is very average scale and centered, as I am in the proces of rigging and applying fur to the elements. No legacy Hair either - only ICE, and no simulation for turbulence or the like. MB Den 12. juni 2015 kl. 10:43 skrev pete...@skynet.be: have seen this on some production shots. because of massive scene size (as in: things happening a long way from the origin) we ran into limits of floating point precision. The solution was to offset the whole shot (parent whole scene under a null) so it was centered around the origin, and rebake all pointcaches. incidentally it was hair for feathers on birds – with the erratic random jitter they were kind of like flapping around in the breeze – and with the fixed and stable caches the hair/feathers ended up too stable to my taste. this was all long before ice and strands – but floating point precision limits still exist. if your scene is very big or very small (size not complexity), or action is happening very far from the origin – that could be the cause. From: Mirko Jankovic mailto:mirkoj.anima...@gmail.com Sent: Friday, June 12, 2015 10:00 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com mailto:softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Paul Smiths Fuzz for animation Maybe it is not only with fuz.. I'm actually having same issue but with softmiage hair. with animated character hairs jitter like changing places in every frame... so it maybe is not something from the fuzz... On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 9:55 AM, Alok Gandhi alok.gandhi2...@gmail.com mailto:alok.gandhi2...@gmail.com wrote: I have no idea of the tool and I can be absolutely wrong but just out of the blue do zero out any epsilon values in the greater than / smaller than nodes (if any). On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 1:20 PM, Morten Bartholdy x...@colorshopvfx.dk mailto:x...@colorshopvfx.dk wrote: I have had the pleasure of testing Paul Smiths excellent Fuzz for applying fur - great tool with comprehensible controls for grooming short fur. Unfortunately it looks like the strands orientation jitter when the generator surface is animated - deformation as well as SRT. It is set up for animation, so the strands stay on the deformed surface, but I have this jitter. Did anyone here succesfully find a fix for that? I did write to Paul BTW, but I guess he is busy, so no reply yet. After all this is a free (donationware)tool so I am certainly not expecting him to provide support :) It would be awesome if I could get it working, as it will be hard to redo the grooming with other tools , plus I have no time for looking into Kristinka or Melena. Cheers Morten --
Re: Virtual Apps
If it is any help, when I started studying graphics design/communication design in 1998, the starting point for the transition had already been set way before my starting there... It´s amazing how one or two people with a few forms and the budget to decide on can ruin your day. At least it´s not just like that in universities. We have an airport here in Berlin that will or will not be finish by 2013/2014 on a week or two´s notice. It really boils down on what did you expect? Cheers, tim Am 11.06.2015 um 19:43 schrieb Sofronis Efstathiou: Universities here in the UK are mostly going through a transition of stupidity. I feel your pain... Sent from my Android phone using Symantec TouchDown (www.symantec.com) -Original Message- From: Angus Davidson [angus.david...@wits.ac.za] Received: Thursday, 11 Jun 2015, 18:24 To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com [softimage@listproc.autodesk.com] Subject: RE: Virtual Apps Most of our university accountancy runs so totally against reality its scary. I was almost fired on my first day by calling someone (who later turned our CFO) an idiot to their face, We can only use a cloud if its local. We had a trial of shotgun (which is a great piece of kit) but it was totally unusable on our internet. So streaming HD to multiple computers from Europe to Africa will just not work. Which is a shame as it would suit us down to the ground. From: Matt Lind [speye...@hotmail.com] Sent: 11 June 2015 10:05 AM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Virtual Apps Has a cloud service like Amazon web services, or similar, been considered? Basically everything Peter just said applies, but you'd have the benefit of scaling up and down as needed and not have to pay for time when school is not in session, nor fork out for or maintain hardware sitting in a back room. At my last employer many applications were installed on a SAN and run in virtual machine environments so hardware and maintenance could be consolidated. There was a small amount of teething getting it set up, but once it was up and running the end user didn't know the difference. Softimage wasn't installed on the SAN and we didn't have thin clients, so I can't provide much feedback in that area. Matt Date: Thu, 11 Jun 2015 09:24:39 +0200 From: pete...@skynet.be Subject: Re: Virtual Apps To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com that?s surreal, being forced into buying highly expensive state of the art tech, in stead of some off the shelf computers, out of budgetary constraints. I?m sure that?s exactly how European administration is run. that VCA looks like it would allow you to set up a nice 3D rendering workflow, but it wouldn?t really help with compositing, simulations, working with complex scenes,... or would it? sounds a bit like getting a shiny new pickup truck, but having to load it using chopsticks since you don?t have the budget for a shovel. at least you?ll have the coolest toy in town . From: Angus Davidson Sent: Wednesday, June 10, 2015 5:44 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: RE: Virtual Apps Dear Peter Thank you for the incredibly comprehensive response. The crazy kindergarten accountancy at the university means that the lab computers need to be paid for by the schools from their operating budgets (which are not keeping up with inflation). However things like VCA are expensive enough to be considered Major Capex and that amazingly enough they have funds for. So its mostly about reading the situation at the University and trying to plan around it. Kind regards Angus From: pete...@skynet.be [pete...@skynet.be] Sent: 10 June 2015 02:41 PM To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com Subject: Re: Virtual Apps if you mean using a thin client on the desk, to connect to a remote workstation (in the server room) ? then yes ? have used this at a former studio. overall it worked quite well. on the thin client you would launch an app, on which you chose the workstation to login to and then a full screen window opens on which you see the workstations? desktop ? and you work you session. It?s very intuitive ? apart from a few keyboard combos (ctrl-alt-del is on the thin client, so there?s a different combination to send that to the workstation) You could use the thin client at any desk to log in to any equipped workstation ? handy at times ? chaotic when your team members end up all over the place. The overhead on the workstation is pretty much zero. The added card handles the compression/communication ? so you can push the workstation exactly as before. there was hardware compression/decompression of all signals ? so it meant adding a dedicated card in the workstation - all data (kb, mouse, usb as well as monitors) goes through network. afaik the screen refresh is done on the thin client ? which reduces the amount of data to be sent (no screens
Re: Paul Smiths Fuzz for animation
I have no idea of the tool and I can be absolutely wrong but just out of the blue do zero out any epsilon values in the greater than / smaller than nodes (if any). On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 1:20 PM, Morten Bartholdy x...@colorshopvfx.dk wrote: I have had the pleasure of testing Paul Smiths excellent Fuzz for applying fur - great tool with comprehensible controls for grooming short fur. Unfortunately it looks like the strands orientation jitter when the generator surface is animated - deformation as well as SRT. It is set up for animation, so the strands stay on the deformed surface, but I have this jitter. Did anyone here succesfully find a fix for that? I did write to Paul BTW, but I guess he is busy, so no reply yet. After all this is a free (donationware)tool so I am certainly not expecting him to provide support :) It would be awesome if I could get it working, as it will be hard to redo the grooming with other tools , plus I have no time for looking into Kristinka or Melena. Cheers Morten --
Re: Nodal Setups and Utilities Reel 2015
Very nice! --- Ahmidou Lyazidi Director | TD | CG artist http://vimeo.com/ahmidou/videos http://www.cappuccino-films.com 2015-06-12 6:05 GMT-04:00 pedro santos probi...@gmail.com: Just plugging my recent reel on nodal approaches. https://vimeo.com/130052083 Cheers
Nodal Setups and Utilities Reel 2015
Just plugging my recent reel on nodal approaches. https://vimeo.com/130052083 Cheers
Re: Paul Smiths Fuzz for animation
I'm not familiar with Paul's setup but he's a very clever and talented guy. If the jitter is just a few occasional pops, I'd check if any nodes are using a point reference frame (ICE attribute) instead of a poly reference frame (or a point normal instead of a poly normal). When sticking geo/particles to other surfaces I've found that the point reference frame is an interpolated result which can make things jitter on a deformation. The poly reference frame (or poly normal) locks to each polygon. I like the look of the point interpolation but when it causes problems I switch to poly. Beyond that emitting from deforming geo can also cause problems. I would suggest using a static object to do all the emitting/grooming and transfer that over to the animated mesh. Not sure how you're doing it now.
Re: Paul Smiths Fuzz for animation
Paul got back to me - caching the start frame and reading it back in per frame should solve it. Not exactly sure how to do the reading per frame though. Morten Den 12. juni 2015 kl. 12:44 skrev David Barosin dbaro...@gmail.com: I'm not familiar with Paul's setup but he's a very clever and talented guy. If the jitter is just a few occasional pops, I'd check if any nodes are using a point reference frame (ICE attribute) instead of a poly reference frame (or a point normal instead of a poly normal). When sticking geo/particles to other surfaces I've found that the point reference frame is an interpolated result which can make things jitter on a deformation. The poly reference frame (or poly normal) locks to each polygon. I like the look of the point interpolation but when it causes problems I switch to poly. Beyond that emitting from deforming geo can also cause problems. I would suggest using a static object to do all the emitting/grooming and transfer that over to the animated mesh. Not sure how you're doing it now.
OT: Oculus rift + LeapMotion + Softimage?
Hi, this is kind of an offtopic thing, but is there anyone in the list who has already jumped into the VR wagon? I´m checking out some motion leap demos and honestly if we could hook it into softimage (rigging for example as in -animation-) I see a dream come true. The basic idea? posing your character on real 3d space. Good bye blocking by hand. Hello blocking (animation) interactively!! An inspiration article: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/experiential-vr-activation-us-air-force-dan-ferguson Thoughts? ps: Touch (select), Roll hand (rolls a joint). Interface on swipe, save pose. Rinse and wash again. :) -- Portfolio 2013 http://be.net/3dcinetv Cinema TV production Video Reel https://vimeo.com/3dcinetv/reel2012
Friday Flashback #228
SOFTIMAGE|3D 1992 ACTOR amazes customers http://wp.me/powV4-3dd
Re: Nodal Setups and Utilities Reel 2015
Awesome, Pedro! On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 10:03 AM, Morten Bartholdy x...@colorshopvfx.dk wrote: Love it - very nicely done Pedro :) Morten Den 12. juni 2015 kl. 12:05 skrev pedro santos probi...@gmail.com: Just plugging my recent reel on nodal approaches. https://vimeo.com/130052083 Cheers -- www.edschiffer.com
Re: Nodal Setups and Utilities Reel 2015
Frend, it´s the most inspiring ICE reel I´ve seen this year. :) Congratulations! On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 10:17 AM, Ed Schiffer edschif...@gmail.com wrote: Awesome, Pedro! On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 10:03 AM, Morten Bartholdy x...@colorshopvfx.dk wrote: Love it - very nicely done Pedro :) Morten Den 12. juni 2015 kl. 12:05 skrev pedro santos probi...@gmail.com: Just plugging my recent reel on nodal approaches. https://vimeo.com/130052083 Cheers -- www.edschiffer.com -- Portfolio 2013 http://be.net/3dcinetv Cinema TV production Video Reel https://vimeo.com/3dcinetv/reel2012
