Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Stefan Kubicek]

Hi Tim,

I've just been dealing with hair an a hamster and used the built-in  
hair&fur of Softimage /2014SP2).


A few tips about working with built-in hair:

Avoid too dense meshes. It creates a guide hair for every vertex, hence  
dense meshes make you fiddle with lots and lots of guide hair strands  
manually, which can be counter-productive and -intuitive.


If you want to edit hair parameters on a per vertex basis (via vertex  
colors), you need to plan ahead where exactly you want your hair to be and  
where you want certain features (transparency, density, kink & frizz) to  
change and over which distance/area. This is especially important for  
areas like hand and feet, as well as nose & eye lids.
So, before you move the mesh into skinning/rigging, you better make sure  
your topology works not only for animation but also for the hair setup you  
have in mind.


Don't rely on the built-in style transfer functionality. It does mostly  
work but has a tendency to "blur" the transferred hair style, even if your  
source and target emitter topology are the same. You need to move in again  
and reintroduce details in the fur that got lost.


If you want to simulate hair with collision don't use a subd mesh as the  
emitter. The docs say that having hair emitted from a subd mesh cannot  
collide with its own emitter, so you have to duplicate the source mesh and  
subdivide it for real (that is, create more actual polygons) and use that  
as the collision object. That would still be acceptable, if it worked,  
which it does not. What I found after tedious testing was that any  
collision testing fails when your emitter is a subd mesh, independent of  
what you have it collide with (itself or another mesh), which kinda sucks  
and is the biggest problem I ran into for which I could not find a  
solution. Thankfully my fur was rather short and the character had a lot  
of secondary motion, so it looks alife enough (besides some problems when  
bending arms, which are hardly noticeable in the animation in my case).  
From what I can tell it looks like collision is always computed against a  
simplified collision sphere representation of the collision object, no  
matter what you set for collision  accuracy and shape, deforming shape,  
etc. It just doesn't work, at least not for me.


Sometimes, when saving and reloading a scene some hair strands (like 1 out  
of 1000) would suddenly stick in some random direction. I had the  
impression that it helps to always collapse the modeling stack before  
saving, at least it never occurred again in final stages of production  
when the fur description was final and not changed anymore.


Next time I will surely look at Kristinka or Melena. AS for simulation...I  
believe there was a Strand Simulation framework with self collision  
introduced on softimage.tv some weeks ago that looked promising, I haven't  
heard of ne1 using it for hair so far, mayb someone else can comment on  
that? Would love to hear some ideas on this as well.


Good luck,

Stefan



 > Hi guys,


what would be a convenient way to create,style and control hair
in Softimage, with lengths up to 10-12 inches and ideally
both a good collision model and dedicated styling tools?

Which Softimage version would you suggest, e.g. 2014sp2?

I´m a novice with hair and fur but would like to set up
a manageable sample/test that ideally works with Arnold
and Redshift.

Is it possible to work generic or transfer results from,
say Yeti into Softimage?

Would you recommend actually leaning towards Maya for such
a task, either going directly to Yeti or similar?

I know those are fuzzy questions, I guess I´m actually looking
for a biased answer regarding any of the various hair plugin options
for any of the major three apps, e.g. max/maya/softimage.

Sofar, I´ve found the following options:

hairfarm, yeti, ornatrix, shave&haircut, maya hair, maya xgen "hair" in  
2014ext

and the cinema4d hair options (shadowmapped).

Admittedly, that´s a lot of options and I find it difficult to bet
my time-investment onto any of them since I simply know bling about  
pro´s or con´s.


Cheers,


tim



--
---
   Stefan Kubicek
---
   keyvis digital imagery
  Alfred Feierfeilstraße 3
   A-2380 Perchtoldsdorf bei Wien
 Phone:+43/699/12614231
  www.keyvis.at  ste...@keyvis.at
--  This email and its attachments are   --
--confidential and for the recipient only--

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Tim Leydecker]

Thanks for this in-depth answer!

Personally, I´m starting to lean towards going for the trial of Yeti,
one reason being that I think I remember Colin Doncaster´s name from
another maya maling list and another because of the really nice
sample image of a bear posted by Yolandi Meiring in a similar thread here:

(Thread) https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/xsi_list/2erKqUcghpI

(Image)https://groups.google.com/group/xsi_list/attach/994086131ca9460/bear_still.jpg?part=4&view=1


Another really nice one is a proof of concept of bringing (3dsMax) hair-farm 
into Softimage
from Lee-Perry Smith, with props to Dani Garcia and Steven Caron.
That human hairdo and it´s renderings look incredibly awesome.

http://ir-ltd.net/hair-farm-hair-into-softimage/

For a Melena/Kristinka workflow using Anto Matkovic´s tools in those beautiful 
shed projects
there´s a nice clip posted by/on Lester Banks

http://lesterbanks.com/2013/05/workflow-tips-for-creating-and-grooming-hair-in-softimage/

--

I have only limited amounts of time I can spend on this and need to find 
something
that has potential to be useable for testing Redshift´s hair shading approach 
when
applicable but ideally integrates seamlessly into either Maya/Max/Softimage.

The combination of Maya+Redshift is allready working very well and it seems 
it´ll be
easier to successfully migrate from simple hair/fur testing to something 
actually looking
good (using yeti). Also, yeti has a variety of licensing options I might find 
atractive
at a later date if tempted to actually finish something beyond spare-time 
doodling.

I´d prefer Softimage but if that stuff works better in Maya, it´ll be Maya.

I suck with Max, even the fastest and most intuitive plugin can´t compensate 
that sad fact.

Cheers,

tim







On 08.02.2014 12:57, Stefan Kubicek wrote:

Hi Tim,

I've just been dealing with hair an a hamster and used the built-in hair&fur of 
Softimage /2014SP2).

A few tips about working with built-in hair:

Avoid too dense meshes. It creates a guide hair for every vertex, hence dense 
meshes make you fiddle with lots and lots of guide hair strands manually, which 
can be
counter-productive and -intuitive.

If you want to edit hair parameters on a per vertex basis (via vertex colors), 
you need to plan ahead where exactly you want your hair to be and where you 
want certain features
(transparency, density, kink & frizz) to change and over which distance/area. This 
is especially important for areas like hand and feet, as well as nose & eye lids.
So, before you move the mesh into skinning/rigging, you better make sure your 
topology works not only for animation but also for the hair setup you have in 
mind.

Don't rely on the built-in style transfer functionality. It does mostly work but has a 
tendency to "blur" the transferred hair style, even if your source and target 
emitter
topology are the same. You need to move in again and reintroduce details in the 
fur that got lost.

If you want to simulate hair with collision don't use a subd mesh as the 
emitter. The docs say that having hair emitted from a subd mesh cannot collide 
with its own emitter, so you
have to duplicate the source mesh and subdivide it for real (that is, create 
more actual polygons) and use that as the collision object. That would still be 
acceptable, if it
worked, which it does not. What I found after tedious testing was that any 
collision testing fails when your emitter is a subd mesh, independent of what 
you have it collide with
(itself or another mesh), which kinda sucks and is the biggest problem I ran 
into for which I could not find a solution. Thankfully my fur was rather short 
and the character had a
lot of secondary motion, so it looks alife enough (besides some problems when 
bending arms, which are hardly noticeable in the animation in my case). From 
what I can tell it looks
like collision is always computed against a simplified collision sphere 
representation of the collision object, no matter what you set for collision  
accuracy and shape, deforming
shape, etc. It just doesn't work, at least not for me.

Sometimes, when saving and reloading a scene some hair strands (like 1 out of 
1000) would suddenly stick in some random direction. I had the impression that 
it helps to always
collapse the modeling stack before saving, at least it never occurred again in 
final stages of production when the fur description was final and not changed 
anymore.

Next time I will surely look at Kristinka or Melena. AS for simulation...I 
believe there was a Strand Simulation framework with self collision introduced 
on softimage.tv some weeks
ago that looked promising, I haven't heard of ne1 using it for hair so far, 
mayb someone else can comment on that? Would love to hear some ideas on this as 
well.

Good luck,

 Stefan



  > Hi guys,


what would be a convenient way to create,style and control hair
in Softimage, with lengths up to 10-12 inches and ideally
both a good collision 

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Sebastien Sterling]

Having seen people use Yeti for a year in production i'd have to say its
pretty revolutionary in terms of workflow, i've seen people acclimatise to
it in a matter of weeks, the only drawback i can see is ironically, it
doesn't render using mental ray, obliging you to go for Arnold or vray
renderman...

A year ago, i sent them an email inquiering as to the possibility of a
Softimage port in the near/far future. this was the response.

"Thank you for the great feedback - we have investigated Yeti integration
for rendering preview which may be available in a later version but at this
time we're not planning an XSI version of the editing tools.  Adding in
support for a whole new 3D application is a large task and we haven't had
enough demand for an XSI version at this stage.  If at some point that
changes and it looks like a studio may commit to a large number of licenses
we could afford to do this.

We're glad you're enjoying Yeti!

All the best,
Colin"



On 8 February 2014 13:25, Tim Leydecker  wrote:

> Thanks for this in-depth answer!
>
> Personally, I´m starting to lean towards going for the trial of Yeti,
> one reason being that I think I remember Colin Doncaster´s name from
> another maya maling list and another because of the really nice
> sample image of a bear posted by Yolandi Meiring in a similar thread here:
>
> (Thread) https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/xsi_list/2erKqUcghpI
>
> (Image)https://groups.google.com/group/xsi_list/attach/
> 994086131ca9460/bear_still.jpg?part=4&view=1
>
>
> Another really nice one is a proof of concept of bringing (3dsMax)
> hair-farm into Softimage
> from Lee-Perry Smith, with props to Dani Garcia and Steven Caron.
> That human hairdo and it´s renderings look incredibly awesome.
>
> http://ir-ltd.net/hair-farm-hair-into-softimage/
>
> For a Melena/Kristinka workflow using Anto Matkovic´s tools in those
> beautiful shed projects
> there´s a nice clip posted by/on Lester Banks
>
> http://lesterbanks.com/2013/05/workflow-tips-for-creating-
> and-grooming-hair-in-softimage/
>
> --
>
> I have only limited amounts of time I can spend on this and need to find
> something
> that has potential to be useable for testing Redshift´s hair shading
> approach when
> applicable but ideally integrates seamlessly into either
> Maya/Max/Softimage.
>
> The combination of Maya+Redshift is allready working very well and it
> seems it´ll be
> easier to successfully migrate from simple hair/fur testing to something
> actually looking
> good (using yeti). Also, yeti has a variety of licensing options I might
> find atractive
> at a later date if tempted to actually finish something beyond spare-time
> doodling.
>
> I´d prefer Softimage but if that stuff works better in Maya, it´ll be Maya.
>
> I suck with Max, even the fastest and most intuitive plugin can´t
> compensate that sad fact.
>
> Cheers,
>
> tim
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 08.02.2014 12:57, Stefan Kubicek wrote:
>
>> Hi Tim,
>>
>> I've just been dealing with hair an a hamster and used the built-in
>> hair&fur of Softimage /2014SP2).
>>
>> A few tips about working with built-in hair:
>>
>> Avoid too dense meshes. It creates a guide hair for every vertex, hence
>> dense meshes make you fiddle with lots and lots of guide hair strands
>> manually, which can be
>> counter-productive and -intuitive.
>>
>> If you want to edit hair parameters on a per vertex basis (via vertex
>> colors), you need to plan ahead where exactly you want your hair to be and
>> where you want certain features
>> (transparency, density, kink & frizz) to change and over which
>> distance/area. This is especially important for areas like hand and feet,
>> as well as nose & eye lids.
>> So, before you move the mesh into skinning/rigging, you better make sure
>> your topology works not only for animation but also for the hair setup you
>> have in mind.
>>
>> Don't rely on the built-in style transfer functionality. It does mostly
>> work but has a tendency to "blur" the transferred hair style, even if your
>> source and target emitter
>> topology are the same. You need to move in again and reintroduce details
>> in the fur that got lost.
>>
>> If you want to simulate hair with collision don't use a subd mesh as the
>> emitter. The docs say that having hair emitted from a subd mesh cannot
>> collide with its own emitter, so you
>> have to duplicate the source mesh and subdivide it for real (that is,
>> create more actual polygons) and use that as the collision object. That
>> would still be acceptable, if it
>> worked, which it does not. What I found after tedious testing was that
>> any collision testing fails when your emitter is a subd mesh, independent
>> of what you have it collide with
>> (itself or another mesh), which kinda sucks and is the biggest problem I
>> ran into for which I could not find a solution. Thankfully my fur was
>> rather short and the character had a
>> lot of secondary motion, so it looks alife enough (besides some problems
>> when bending ar

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Stefan Kubicek]

I've never used Yeti but I've heard good things about it, making it the  
topmost solution on my list of things to check out in the future.
I'd also go for that if you are familiar with Maya and don't live in the  
US (copy/paste from their website: "Please note: Due to circumstances  
outside of our control, we are unable to sell Yeti to customers located in  
the US"). But I won't start another Joe Alter bashing thread here...


Especially the dynamics is where Maya seems the provide the longest list  
of options (nHair, Yeti,...), and that's really crucial for longer hair.


Some thoughts on rendering: Most renderers handle hair quite well, unless  
it needs to be transparent,
which it almost always needs to be (usually a gradient with increasing  
transparency from root to tip) to make the hair look softer. Without it it  
just looks really brushy and thick. Ok for short, thick hair like on a  
tigers nose and beard stubbles, but not the fluffy stuff on hamsters or  
human heads even. Making the hair very thin towards the end is an  
alternative, but usually requires to bump up the AA samples, with the  
usual render time hit that goes hand in hand with.
From all renderers I tried (Arnold, Vray, 3Delight, mentalray), 3Delight  
was the only one that deilvered decent performance, especially in  
combination with motion blur, and has, imho, the single most beautiful  
hair shading I've seen, including handling GI very well. All others grind  
to a halt in such cases in comparison, with Vray being extremely slow in  
both rendering and export of hair strands , Arnold having the shortest  
TTFP (time to first pixel) with very fast export, and 3Delight being in  
the middle between the two in terms of export times and TTFP, but fastest  
in rendering overall (by leaps and bounds).
It does require a bit more fiddling with lights (deep shadow maps) to get  
that slight translucent effect on back- and rimlights. See this thread:  
http://www.si-community.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=1275&start=20


I was longing for redshift too, but it became clear shortly before I went  
into the project that it would not be ready in time for hair rendering. A  
version supporting strands was just released yesterday, but there is no  
hair shader yet afaik.


Good luck, and thanks for the links, some where news to me.

Stefan


Thanks for this in-depth answer!

Personally, I´m starting to lean towards going for the trial of Yeti,
one reason being that I think I remember Colin Doncaster´s name from
another maya maling list and another because of the really nice
sample image of a bear posted by Yolandi Meiring in a similar thread  
here:


(Thread) https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/xsi_list/2erKqUcghpI

(Image)https://groups.google.com/group/xsi_list/attach/994086131ca9460/bear_still.jpg?part=4&view=1


Another really nice one is a proof of concept of bringing (3dsMax)  
hair-farm into Softimage

from Lee-Perry Smith, with props to Dani Garcia and Steven Caron.
That human hairdo and it´s renderings look incredibly awesome.

http://ir-ltd.net/hair-farm-hair-into-softimage/

For a Melena/Kristinka workflow using Anto Matkovic´s tools in those  
beautiful shed projects

there´s a nice clip posted by/on Lester Banks

http://lesterbanks.com/2013/05/workflow-tips-for-creating-and-grooming-hair-in-softimage/

--

I have only limited amounts of time I can spend on this and need to find  
something
that has potential to be useable for testing Redshift´s hair shading  
approach when
applicable but ideally integrates seamlessly into either  
Maya/Max/Softimage.


The combination of Maya+Redshift is allready working very well and it  
seems it´ll be
easier to successfully migrate from simple hair/fur testing to something  
actually looking
good (using yeti). Also, yeti has a variety of licensing options I might  
find atractive
at a later date if tempted to actually finish something beyond  
spare-time doodling.


I´d prefer Softimage but if that stuff works better in Maya, it´ll be  
Maya.


I suck with Max, even the fastest and most intuitive plugin can´t  
compensate that sad fact.


Cheers,

tim







On 08.02.2014 12:57, Stefan Kubicek wrote:

Hi Tim,

I've just been dealing with hair an a hamster and used the built-in  
hair&fur of Softimage /2014SP2).


A few tips about working with built-in hair:

Avoid too dense meshes. It creates a guide hair for every vertex, hence  
dense meshes make you fiddle with lots and lots of guide hair strands  
manually, which can be

counter-productive and -intuitive.

If you want to edit hair parameters on a per vertex basis (via vertex  
colors), you need to plan ahead where exactly you want your hair to be  
and where you want certain features
(transparency, density, kink & frizz) to change and over which  
distance/area. This is especially important for areas like hand and  
feet, as well as nose & eye lids.
So, before you move the mesh into skinning/rigging, you better make  
su

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Sebastien Sterling]

Maybe if we got a petition of xsi centric companies or a sort of
kickstarter goal we could persuade them that Softimage is worth porting too
:) i know i'd drop a grand for yeti.


On 8 February 2014 15:07, Sebastien Sterling
wrote:

> Having seen people use Yeti for a year in production i'd have to say its
> pretty revolutionary in terms of workflow, i've seen people acclimatise to
> it in a matter of weeks, the only drawback i can see is ironically, it
> doesn't render using mental ray, obliging you to go for Arnold or vray
> renderman...
>
> A year ago, i sent them an email inquiering as to the possibility of a
> Softimage port in the near/far future. this was the response.
>
> "Thank you for the great feedback - we have investigated Yeti integration
> for rendering preview which may be available in a later version but at this
> time we're not planning an XSI version of the editing tools.  Adding in
> support for a whole new 3D application is a large task and we haven't had
> enough demand for an XSI version at this stage.  If at some point that
> changes and it looks like a studio may commit to a large number of licenses
> we could afford to do this.
>
> We're glad you're enjoying Yeti!
>
> All the best,
> Colin"
>
>
>
> On 8 February 2014 13:25, Tim Leydecker  wrote:
>
>> Thanks for this in-depth answer!
>>
>> Personally, I´m starting to lean towards going for the trial of Yeti,
>> one reason being that I think I remember Colin Doncaster´s name from
>> another maya maling list and another because of the really nice
>> sample image of a bear posted by Yolandi Meiring in a similar thread here:
>>
>> (Thread) https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/xsi_list/2erKqUcghpI
>>
>> (Image)https://groups.google.com/group/xsi_list/attach/
>> 994086131ca9460/bear_still.jpg?part=4&view=1
>>
>>
>> Another really nice one is a proof of concept of bringing (3dsMax)
>> hair-farm into Softimage
>> from Lee-Perry Smith, with props to Dani Garcia and Steven Caron.
>> That human hairdo and it´s renderings look incredibly awesome.
>>
>> http://ir-ltd.net/hair-farm-hair-into-softimage/
>>
>> For a Melena/Kristinka workflow using Anto Matkovic´s tools in those
>> beautiful shed projects
>> there´s a nice clip posted by/on Lester Banks
>>
>> http://lesterbanks.com/2013/05/workflow-tips-for-creating-
>> and-grooming-hair-in-softimage/
>>
>> --
>>
>> I have only limited amounts of time I can spend on this and need to find
>> something
>> that has potential to be useable for testing Redshift´s hair shading
>> approach when
>> applicable but ideally integrates seamlessly into either
>> Maya/Max/Softimage.
>>
>> The combination of Maya+Redshift is allready working very well and it
>> seems it´ll be
>> easier to successfully migrate from simple hair/fur testing to something
>> actually looking
>> good (using yeti). Also, yeti has a variety of licensing options I might
>> find atractive
>> at a later date if tempted to actually finish something beyond spare-time
>> doodling.
>>
>> I´d prefer Softimage but if that stuff works better in Maya, it´ll be
>> Maya.
>>
>> I suck with Max, even the fastest and most intuitive plugin can´t
>> compensate that sad fact.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> tim
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 08.02.2014 12:57, Stefan Kubicek wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Tim,
>>>
>>> I've just been dealing with hair an a hamster and used the built-in
>>> hair&fur of Softimage /2014SP2).
>>>
>>> A few tips about working with built-in hair:
>>>
>>> Avoid too dense meshes. It creates a guide hair for every vertex, hence
>>> dense meshes make you fiddle with lots and lots of guide hair strands
>>> manually, which can be
>>> counter-productive and -intuitive.
>>>
>>> If you want to edit hair parameters on a per vertex basis (via vertex
>>> colors), you need to plan ahead where exactly you want your hair to be and
>>> where you want certain features
>>> (transparency, density, kink & frizz) to change and over which
>>> distance/area. This is especially important for areas like hand and feet,
>>> as well as nose & eye lids.
>>> So, before you move the mesh into skinning/rigging, you better make sure
>>> your topology works not only for animation but also for the hair setup you
>>> have in mind.
>>>
>>> Don't rely on the built-in style transfer functionality. It does mostly
>>> work but has a tendency to "blur" the transferred hair style, even if your
>>> source and target emitter
>>> topology are the same. You need to move in again and reintroduce details
>>> in the fur that got lost.
>>>
>>> If you want to simulate hair with collision don't use a subd mesh as the
>>> emitter. The docs say that having hair emitted from a subd mesh cannot
>>> collide with its own emitter, so you
>>> have to duplicate the source mesh and subdivide it for real (that is,
>>> create more actual polygons) and use that as the collision object. That
>>> would still be acceptable, if it
>>> worked, which it does not. What I found after tedious testing was that
>>> any collision 

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Tim Leydecker]

this hairbusiness is a minefield.

i don´t have a arnold renderman or vray license running on my machine at the 
moment.
I actually took yeti - mR support for granted... crap


In terms of creating/styling hair, the sheep example from Rune Spaans as well as
the other tutorials here make hairfarm look desireable and artist friendly:

www.hair-farm.com/tutorials/

Especially because of it´s volume filling option (something that was also shown
in a demo of fabric engine).

That seems to be something very desireable, as creating a proxy volume instead 
of painfully
creating guide curves and brushing/clipping/forcing things around them in place 
gives a better
feedback while designing a hairdo imo.

The yeti docs for 1.3 i´ve found via google seem comprehensive and include a 
lot of sample files
but I haven´t asked for the trialyet, trying to time my use to having at least 
3-4 days toplay with it.


But that´s all still theoretical in my case. The only option I´ve tried and 
discard is the Fibermesh approach,
for me, that´s to fiddly to get used to it but maybe i just approached it 
without the proper mindset.

Thanks again for sharing your insights!


tim













On 08.02.2014 15:07, Sebastien Sterling wrote:

Having seen people use Yeti for a year in production i'd have to say its pretty 
revolutionary in terms of workflow, i've seen people acclimatise to it in a 
matter of weeks, the
only drawback i can see is ironically, it doesn't render using mental ray, 
obliging you to go for Arnold or vray renderman...

A year ago, i sent them an email inquiering as to the possibility of a 
Softimage port in the near/far future. this was the response.

"Thank you for the great feedback - we have investigated Yeti integration for 
rendering preview which may be available in a later version but at this time we're 
not planning an XSI
version of the editing tools.  Adding in support for a whole new 3D application 
is a large task and we haven't had enough demand for an XSI version at this 
stage.  If at some point
that changes and it looks like a studio may commit to a large number of 
licenses we could afford to do this.

We're glad you're enjoying Yeti!

All the best,
Colin"



On 8 February 2014 13:25, Tim Leydecker mailto:bauero...@gmx.de>> wrote:

Thanks for this in-depth answer!

Personally, I´m starting to lean towards going for the trial of Yeti,
one reason being that I think I remember Colin Doncaster´s name from
another maya maling list and another because of the really nice
sample image of a bear posted by Yolandi Meiring in a similar thread here:

(Thread) https://groups.google.com/__forum/#!topic/xsi_list/__2erKqUcghpI 



(Image)https://groups.google.__com/group/xsi_list/attach/__994086131ca9460/bear_still.__jpg?part=4&view=1




Another really nice one is a proof of concept of bringing (3dsMax) 
hair-farm into Softimage
from Lee-Perry Smith, with props to Dani Garcia and Steven Caron.
That human hairdo and it´s renderings look incredibly awesome.

http://ir-ltd.net/hair-farm-__hair-into-softimage/ 


For a Melena/Kristinka workflow using Anto Matkovic´s tools in those 
beautiful shed projects
there´s a nice clip posted by/on Lester Banks


http://lesterbanks.com/2013/__05/workflow-tips-for-creating-__and-grooming-hair-in-__softimage/



--

I have only limited amounts of time I can spend on this and need to find 
something
that has potential to be useable for testing Redshift´s hair shading 
approach when
applicable but ideally integrates seamlessly into either Maya/Max/Softimage.

The combination of Maya+Redshift is allready working very well and it seems 
it´ll be
easier to successfully migrate from simple hair/fur testing to something 
actually looking
good (using yeti). Also, yeti has a variety of licensing options I might 
find atractive
at a later date if tempted to actually finish something beyond spare-time 
doodling.

I´d prefer Softimage but if that stuff works better in Maya, it´ll be Maya.

I suck with Max, even the fastest and most intuitive plugin can´t 
compensate that sad fact.

Cheers,

tim








On 08.02.2014 12:57, Stefan Kubicek wrote:

Hi Tim,

I've just been dealing with hair an a hamster and used the built-in 
hair&fur of Softimage /2014SP2).

A few tips about working with built-in hair:

Avoid too dense meshes. It creates a guide hair for every vertex, hence 
dense meshes make you fiddle with lots and lots of guide hair strands manually, 
which can be
counter-productive and -intuitive.

If you want to edit hair parameter

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[olivier jeannel]

How do you export a hair sim from Yeti back in Softimage ? Pointcache ? 
Alembic ? Ass ?

Do all info translate well for rendering in Arnold ?

Olivier


Le 08/02/2014 15:21, Sebastien Sterling a écrit :
Maybe if we got a petition of xsi centric companies or a sort of 
kickstarter goal we could persuade them that Softimage is worth 
porting too :) i know i'd drop a grand for yeti.



On 8 February 2014 15:07, Sebastien Sterling 
mailto:sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com>> 
wrote:


Having seen people use Yeti for a year in production i'd have to
say its pretty revolutionary in terms of workflow, i've seen
people acclimatise to it in a matter of weeks, the only drawback i
can see is ironically, it doesn't render using mental ray,
obliging you to go for Arnold or vray renderman...

A year ago, i sent them an email inquiering as to the possibility
of a Softimage port in the near/far future. this was the response.

"Thank you for the great feedback - we have investigated Yeti
integration for rendering preview which may be available in a
later version but at this time we're not planning an XSI version
of the editing tools.  Adding in support for a whole new 3D
application is a large task and we haven't had enough demand for
an XSI version at this stage.  If at some point that changes and
it looks like a studio may commit to a large number of licenses we
could afford to do this.

We're glad you're enjoying Yeti!

All the best,
Colin"



On 8 February 2014 13:25, Tim Leydecker mailto:bauero...@gmx.de>> wrote:

Thanks for this in-depth answer!

Personally, I´m starting to lean towards going for the trial
of Yeti,
one reason being that I think I remember Colin Doncaster´s
name from
another maya maling list and another because of the really nice
sample image of a bear posted by Yolandi Meiring in a similar
thread here:

(Thread)
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/xsi_list/2erKqUcghpI



(Image)https://groups.google.com/group/xsi_list/attach/994086131ca9460/bear_still.jpg?part=4&view=1


Another really nice one is a proof of concept of bringing
(3dsMax) hair-farm into Softimage
from Lee-Perry Smith, with props to Dani Garcia and Steven Caron.
That human hairdo and it´s renderings look incredibly awesome.

http://ir-ltd.net/hair-farm-hair-into-softimage/

For a Melena/Kristinka workflow using Anto Matkovic´s tools in
those beautiful shed projects
there´s a nice clip posted by/on Lester Banks


http://lesterbanks.com/2013/05/workflow-tips-for-creating-and-grooming-hair-in-softimage/

--

I have only limited amounts of time I can spend on this and
need to find something
that has potential to be useable for testing Redshift´s hair
shading approach when
applicable but ideally integrates seamlessly into either
Maya/Max/Softimage.

The combination of Maya+Redshift is allready working very well
and it seems it´ll be
easier to successfully migrate from simple hair/fur testing to
something actually looking
good (using yeti). Also, yeti has a variety of licensing
options I might find atractive
at a later date if tempted to actually finish something beyond
spare-time doodling.

I´d prefer Softimage but if that stuff works better in Maya,
it´ll be Maya.

I suck with Max, even the fastest and most intuitive plugin
can´t compensate that sad fact.

Cheers,

tim








On 08.02.2014 12:57, Stefan Kubicek wrote:

Hi Tim,

I've just been dealing with hair an a hamster and used the
built-in hair&fur of Softimage /2014SP2).

A few tips about working with built-in hair:

Avoid too dense meshes. It creates a guide hair for every
vertex, hence dense meshes make you fiddle with lots and
lots of guide hair strands manually, which can be
counter-productive and -intuitive.

If you want to edit hair parameters on a per vertex basis
(via vertex colors), you need to plan ahead where exactly
you want your hair to be and where you want certain features
(transparency, density, kink & frizz) to change and over
which distance/area. This is especially important for
areas like hand and feet, as well as nose & eye lids.
So, before you move the mesh into skinning/rigging, you
better make sure your topology works not only for
animation but also for the hair setup you have in mind.

Don't rely on the built-in style transfer functionality.
It does mostly work b

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Tim Leydecker]

Hey Mario,

how do you go about Fibremeshing, I tried it but found
it difficult to get to a point that looked nice. I´ll have
another look into some of the tutorials today.

I guess I may have missed a part of the workflow.

Regarding hair-farm, the manual states the option to export
the hairdo as curves or polygonstrips or polygontubes, it seems
there is less hard conversion work involved as what Lee-Perry Smith
posted in his 2012ish examples.

Cheers,

tim





On 08.02.2014 18:17, Mario Reitbauer wrote:

I can highly recommend doing the basic hair styling in Zbrush with fibremesh 
and then export it to maya directly or through a plugin
(http://florianeberle.com/2012/02/21/fibermesh-to-strands) to softimage.
You can then use the imported curves for ice or in yeti to finalize your hair 
grooming.

Actually there is no tool which is even close to zbrush when it comes to 
brushing your hair.
I guess this will be the way to go in the future (at least for brushing your 
guides before you add stuff on top)

cheers Mario



On Sat, 08 Feb 2014 15:12:33 +, "Artur Woźniak"  
wrote:

Guys I worked with in Platige, used ass to export hair from yeti.
Textures were applied then in Xsi.

Artur

-- Wiadomość oryginalna --
Od: "olivier jeannel"
Do:
Wysłano: 2014-02-08 16:08:26
Temat: Re: Softimage Hair options?

How do you export a hair sim from Yeti back in Softimage ? Pointcache
? Alembic ? Ass ?
Do all info translate well for rendering in Arnold ?

Olivier

Le 08/02/2014 15:21, Sebastien Sterling a écrit :

Maybe if we got a petition of xsi centric companies or a sort of
kickstarter goal we could persuade them that Softimage is worth
porting too :) i know i'd drop a grand for yeti.

On 8 February 2014 15:07, Sebastien Sterling  wrote:

Having seen people use Yeti for a year in production i'd have to say
its pretty revolutionary in terms of workflow, i've seen people
acclimatise to it in a matter of weeks, the only drawback i can see is
ironically, it doesn't render using mental ray, obliging you to go for
Arnold or vray renderman...

A year ago, i sent them an email inquiering as to the possibility of
a Softimage port in the near/far future. this was the response.

"Thank you for the great feedback - we have investigated Yeti
integration for rendering preview which may be available in a later
version but at this time we're not planning an XSI version of the
editing tools. Adding in support for a whole new 3D application is a
large task and we haven't had enough demand for an XSI version at this
stage. If at some point that changes and it looks like a studio may
commit to a large number of licenses we could afford to do this.

We're glad you're enjoying Yeti!

All the best,
Colin"

On 8 February 2014 13:25, Tim Leydecker  wrote:
 Thanks for this in-depth answer!

Personally, I´m starting to lean towards going for the trial of
Yeti,
one reason being that I think I remember Colin Doncaster´s name from
another maya maling list and another because of the really nice
sample image of a bear posted by Yolandi Meiring in a similar thread
here:

(Thread)

(Image)

Another really nice one is a proof of concept of bringing (3dsMax)
hair-farm into Softimage
from Lee-Perry Smith, with props to Dani Garcia and Steven Caron.
That human hairdo and it´s renderings look incredibly awesome.

For a Melena/Kristinka workflow using Anto Matkovic´s tools in those
beautiful shed projects
there´s a nice clip posted by/on Lester Banks

--

I have only limited amounts of time I can spend on this and need to
find something
that has potential to be useable for testing Redshift´s hair shading
approach when
applicable but ideally integrates seamlessly into either
Maya/Max/Softimage.

The combination of Maya+Redshift is allready working very well and it
seems it´ll be
easier to successfully migrate from simple hair/fur testing to
something actually looking
good (using yeti). Also, yeti has a variety of licensing options I
might find atractive
at a later date if tempted to actually finish something beyond
spare-time doodling.

I´d prefer Softimage but if that stuff works better in Maya, it´ll
be Maya.

I suck with Max, even the fastest and most intuitive plugin can´t
compensate that sad fact.

Cheers,

tim

On 08.02.2014 12:57, Stefan Kubicek wrote:
 Hi Tim,

I've just been dealing with hair an a hamster and used the built-in
hair&fur of Softimage /2014SP2).

A few tips about working with built-in hair:

Avoid too dense meshes. It creates a guide hair for every vertex,
hence dense meshes make you fiddle with lots and lots of guide hair
strands manually, which can be
counter-productive and -intuitive.

If you want to edit hair parameters on a per vertex basis (via vertex
colors), you need to plan ahead where exactly you want your hair to be
and where you want certain features
(transparency, density, kink & frizz) to change and over which
distance/area. Th

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Mario Reitbauer]

You have to play around with the brushes, as soon as you are familar with
what burshes you can use it's quite nice.
Just to mention: groom length, move, smooth are some you definitly need
(shorten and smooth them with smooth brush then move them in position with
lengthen or smooth brush).


2014-02-09 11:44 GMT+01:00 Tim Leydecker :

> Hey Mario,
>
> how do you go about Fibremeshing, I tried it but found
> it difficult to get to a point that looked nice. I´ll have
> another look into some of the tutorials today.
>
> I guess I may have missed a part of the workflow.
>
> Regarding hair-farm, the manual states the option to export
> the hairdo as curves or polygonstrips or polygontubes, it seems
> there is less hard conversion work involved as what Lee-Perry Smith
> posted in his 2012ish examples.
>
> Cheers,
>
> tim
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 08.02.2014 18:17, Mario Reitbauer wrote:
>
>> I can highly recommend doing the basic hair styling in Zbrush with
>> fibremesh and then export it to maya directly or through a plugin
>> (http://florianeberle.com/2012/02/21/fibermesh-to-strands) to softimage.
>> You can then use the imported curves for ice or in yeti to finalize your
>> hair grooming.
>>
>> Actually there is no tool which is even close to zbrush when it comes to
>> brushing your hair.
>> I guess this will be the way to go in the future (at least for brushing
>> your guides before you add stuff on top)
>>
>> cheers Mario
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, 08 Feb 2014 15:12:33 +, "Artur Woźniak" 
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Guys I worked with in Platige, used ass to export hair from yeti.
>>> Textures were applied then in Xsi.
>>>
>>> Artur
>>>
>>> -- Wiadomość oryginalna --
>>> Od: "olivier jeannel"
>>> Do:
>>> Wysłano: 2014-02-08 16:08:26
>>> Temat: Re: Softimage Hair options?
>>>
>>> How do you export a hair sim from Yeti back in Softimage ? Pointcache
>>> ? Alembic ? Ass ?
>>> Do all info translate well for rendering in Arnold ?
>>>
>>> Olivier
>>>
>>> Le 08/02/2014 15:21, Sebastien Sterling a écrit :
>>>
>>> Maybe if we got a petition of xsi centric companies or a sort of
>>> kickstarter goal we could persuade them that Softimage is worth
>>> porting too :) i know i'd drop a grand for yeti.
>>>
>>> On 8 February 2014 15:07, Sebastien Sterling  wrote:
>>>
>>> Having seen people use Yeti for a year in production i'd have to say
>>> its pretty revolutionary in terms of workflow, i've seen people
>>> acclimatise to it in a matter of weeks, the only drawback i can see is
>>> ironically, it doesn't render using mental ray, obliging you to go for
>>> Arnold or vray renderman...
>>>
>>> A year ago, i sent them an email inquiering as to the possibility of
>>> a Softimage port in the near/far future. this was the response.
>>>
>>> "Thank you for the great feedback - we have investigated Yeti
>>> integration for rendering preview which may be available in a later
>>> version but at this time we're not planning an XSI version of the
>>> editing tools. Adding in support for a whole new 3D application is a
>>> large task and we haven't had enough demand for an XSI version at this
>>> stage. If at some point that changes and it looks like a studio may
>>> commit to a large number of licenses we could afford to do this.
>>>
>>> We're glad you're enjoying Yeti!
>>>
>>> All the best,
>>> Colin"
>>>
>>> On 8 February 2014 13:25, Tim Leydecker  wrote:
>>>  Thanks for this in-depth answer!
>>>
>>> Personally, I´m starting to lean towards going for the trial of
>>> Yeti,
>>> one reason being that I think I remember Colin Doncaster´s name from
>>> another maya maling list and another because of the really nice
>>> sample image of a bear posted by Yolandi Meiring in a similar thread
>>> here:
>>>
>>> (Thread)
>>>
>>> (Image)
>>>
>>> Another really nice one is a proof of concept of bringing (3dsMax)
>>> hair-farm into Softimage
>>> from Lee-Perry Smith, with props to Dani Garcia and Steven Caron.
>>> That human hairdo and it´s renderings look incredibly awesome.
>>>
>>> For a Melena/Kristinka workflow using Anto Matkovic´s tools in those
>>> beautiful shed projects
>>> there´s a nice clip 

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Tim Leydecker]

Thanks Mario,


you´re right, once I realized I could use masked areas and morphtargets
it was a lot easier to control the hair grooming in zbrush.

I haven´t managed to put together a simple sample moustache kind of file
to test the import into Maya/Softimage and dynamics, yet. That´ll have
to wait until at least next weekend before I can put everything together.

Thanks again for pointing at ZBrush/fibermesh, I would have discarded this 
option to early.

Cheers,

tim



On 09.02.2014 12:40, Mario Reitbauer wrote:

You have to play around with the brushes, as soon as you are familar with what 
burshes you can use it's quite nice.
Just to mention: groom length, move, smooth are some you definitly need 
(shorten and smooth them with smooth brush then move them in position with 
lengthen or smooth brush).


2014-02-09 11:44 GMT+01:00 Tim Leydecker mailto:bauero...@gmx.de>>:

Hey Mario,

how do you go about Fibremeshing, I tried it but found
it difficult to get to a point that looked nice. I´ll have
another look into some of the tutorials today.

I guess I may have missed a part of the workflow.

Regarding hair-farm, the manual states the option to export
the hairdo as curves or polygonstrips or polygontubes, it seems
there is less hard conversion work involved as what Lee-Perry Smith
posted in his 2012ish examples.

Cheers,

tim






On 08.02.2014 18:17, Mario Reitbauer wrote:

I can highly recommend doing the basic hair styling in Zbrush with 
fibremesh and then export it to maya directly or through a plugin
(http://florianeberle.com/__2012/02/21/fibermesh-to-__strands 
<http://florianeberle.com/2012/02/21/fibermesh-to-strands>) to softimage.
You can then use the imported curves for ice or in yeti to finalize 
your hair grooming.

Actually there is no tool which is even close to zbrush when it comes 
to brushing your hair.
I guess this will be the way to go in the future (at least for brushing 
your guides before you add stuff on top)

cheers Mario



On Sat, 08 Feb 2014 15:12:33 +, "Artur Woźniak" mailto:artur.w...@gmail.com>> wrote:

Guys I worked with in Platige, used ass to export hair from yeti.
Textures were applied then in Xsi.

Artur

-- Wiadomość oryginalna --
Od: "olivier jeannel"
Do:
Wysłano: 2014-02-08 16:08:26
    Temat: Re: Softimage Hair options?

How do you export a hair sim from Yeti back in Softimage ? 
Pointcache
? Alembic ? Ass ?
Do all info translate well for rendering in Arnold ?

Olivier

Le 08/02/2014 15:21, Sebastien Sterling a écrit :

Maybe if we got a petition of xsi centric companies or a sort of
kickstarter goal we could persuade them that Softimage is worth
porting too :) i know i'd drop a grand for yeti.

On 8 February 2014 15:07, Sebastien Sterling  wrote:

Having seen people use Yeti for a year in production i'd have to say
its pretty revolutionary in terms of workflow, i've seen people
acclimatise to it in a matter of weeks, the only drawback i can see 
is
ironically, it doesn't render using mental ray, obliging you to go 
for
Arnold or vray renderman...

A year ago, i sent them an email inquiering as to the possibility of
a Softimage port in the near/far future. this was the response.

"Thank you for the great feedback - we have investigated Yeti
integration for rendering preview which may be available in a later
version but at this time we're not planning an XSI version of the
editing tools. Adding in support for a whole new 3D application is a
large task and we haven't had enough demand for an XSI version at 
this
stage. If at some point that changes and it looks like a studio may
commit to a large number of licenses we could afford to do this.

We're glad you're enjoying Yeti!

All the best,
Colin"

On 8 February 2014 13:25, Tim Leydecker  wrote:
  Thanks for this in-depth answer!

Personally, I´m starting to lean towards going for the trial of
Yeti,
one reason being that I think I remember Colin Doncaster´s name from
another maya maling list and another because of the really nice
sample image of a bear posted by Yolandi Meiring in a similar thread
here:

(Thread)

(Image)

Another really nice one is a proof of concept of bringing (3dsMax)
hair-farm into Softimage
from Lee-Perry Smith, with props to Dani Garci

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[John Richard Sanchez]

Maya nhair has been pretty good for me especially with collisions. I
usually animate in xsi and send cached animation and camera to Maya to
render a hair pass.


On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 4:25 AM, Tim Leydecker  wrote:

> Thanks Mario,
>
>
> you´re right, once I realized I could use masked areas and morphtargets
> it was a lot easier to control the hair grooming in zbrush.
>
> I haven´t managed to put together a simple sample moustache kind of file
> to test the import into Maya/Softimage and dynamics, yet. That´ll have
> to wait until at least next weekend before I can put everything together.
>
> Thanks again for pointing at ZBrush/fibermesh, I would have discarded this
> option to early.
>
> Cheers,
>
> tim
>
>
>
>
> On 09.02.2014 12:40, Mario Reitbauer wrote:
>
>> You have to play around with the brushes, as soon as you are familar with
>> what burshes you can use it's quite nice.
>> Just to mention: groom length, move, smooth are some you definitly need
>> (shorten and smooth them with smooth brush then move them in position with
>> lengthen or smooth brush).
>>
>>
>> 2014-02-09 11:44 GMT+01:00 Tim Leydecker > bauero...@gmx.de>>:
>>
>>
>> Hey Mario,
>>
>> how do you go about Fibremeshing, I tried it but found
>> it difficult to get to a point that looked nice. I´ll have
>> another look into some of the tutorials today.
>>
>> I guess I may have missed a part of the workflow.
>>
>> Regarding hair-farm, the manual states the option to export
>> the hairdo as curves or polygonstrips or polygontubes, it seems
>> there is less hard conversion work involved as what Lee-Perry Smith
>> posted in his 2012ish examples.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> tim
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 08.02.2014 18:17, Mario Reitbauer wrote:
>>
>> I can highly recommend doing the basic hair styling in Zbrush
>> with fibremesh and then export it to maya directly or through a plugin
>> (http://florianeberle.com/__2012/02/21/fibermesh-to-__strands <
>> http://florianeberle.com/2012/02/21/fibermesh-to-strands>) to softimage.
>>
>> You can then use the imported curves for ice or in yeti to
>> finalize your hair grooming.
>>
>> Actually there is no tool which is even close to zbrush when it
>> comes to brushing your hair.
>> I guess this will be the way to go in the future (at least for
>> brushing your guides before you add stuff on top)
>>
>> cheers Mario
>>
>>
>>
>> On Sat, 08 Feb 2014 15:12:33 +, "Artur Woźniak" <
>> artur.w...@gmail.com <mailto:artur.w...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>>
>> Guys I worked with in Platige, used ass to export hair from
>> yeti.
>> Textures were applied then in Xsi.
>>
>> Artur
>>
>> -- Wiadomość oryginalna --
>> Od: "olivier jeannel"
>> Do:
>> Wysłano: 2014-02-08 16:08:26
>> Temat: Re: Softimage Hair options?
>>
>> How do you export a hair sim from Yeti back in Softimage ?
>> Pointcache
>> ? Alembic ? Ass ?
>> Do all info translate well for rendering in Arnold ?
>>
>> Olivier
>>
>> Le 08/02/2014 15:21, Sebastien Sterling a écrit :
>>
>> Maybe if we got a petition of xsi centric companies or a sort
>> of
>> kickstarter goal we could persuade them that Softimage is
>> worth
>> porting too :) i know i'd drop a grand for yeti.
>>
>> On 8 February 2014 15:07, Sebastien Sterling  wrote:
>>
>> Having seen people use Yeti for a year in production i'd have
>> to say
>> its pretty revolutionary in terms of workflow, i've seen
>> people
>> acclimatise to it in a matter of weeks, the only drawback i
>> can see is
>> ironically, it doesn't render using mental ray, obliging you
>> to go for
>> Arnold or vray renderman...
>>
>> A year ago, i sent them an email inquiering as to the
>> possibility of
>> a Softimage port in the near/far future. this was the
>> response.
>>
>> "Thank you for the great feedback - we have investigated Yeti
>> integration for rendering preview which may be available

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Tim Leydecker]

Hi John,

thanks for the workflow tip.

I went through the GoZ and Export Curves options of ZBrush Fibermeshes 
yesterday,
then either exporting the GoZ (polystrips) result from Maya to Softimage (as 
*.obj)
or assigning an exisiting nhair system to the ZBrush curves imported into Maya 
as *.ma.


I didn´t have time to fully get to understand the nhair system, just went with 
Pfx strokes
on curves. Set to dynamic, I managed to choke my setup with ca. 10 000 curves 
and 10 hair strands
per curve. I would think I´ll need around 250 000 hairs rendered but might be 
able to optimize the
amount of control curves to a more responsive amount. Maybe I just created too 
many dependencies
from the imported curves to the hairfollicles to the pfx strokes in the hair 
system.

The results I produced looked like crap, for a number of reasons. Not worth 
posting a sample, yet.

What are you using inside Softimage to render the nhair?

Strands?

Do you go with mR or rely on a renderman/arnold renderer?

VRay?

I am biased towards hoping to render the (follicle) hair curves directly, as 
that would give
identical results in both Softimage and Maya, e.g. the same curves, the same 
distribution
and might minimize overheads.

Cheers,

tim











On 10.02.2014 20:51, John Richard Sanchez wrote:

Maya nhair has been pretty good for me especially with collisions. I usually 
animate in xsi and send cached animation and camera to Maya to render a hair 
pass.


On Mon, Feb 10, 2014 at 4:25 AM, Tim Leydecker mailto:bauero...@gmx.de>> wrote:

Thanks Mario,


you´re right, once I realized I could use masked areas and morphtargets
it was a lot easier to control the hair grooming in zbrush.

I haven´t managed to put together a simple sample moustache kind of file
to test the import into Maya/Softimage and dynamics, yet. That´ll have
to wait until at least next weekend before I can put everything together.

Thanks again for pointing at ZBrush/fibermesh, I would have discarded this 
option to early.

Cheers,

tim




On 09.02.2014 12:40, Mario Reitbauer wrote:

You have to play around with the brushes, as soon as you are familar 
with what burshes you can use it's quite nice.
Just to mention: groom length, move, smooth are some you definitly need 
(shorten and smooth them with smooth brush then move them in position with 
lengthen or smooth brush).


2014-02-09 11:44 GMT+01:00 Tim Leydecker mailto:bauero...@gmx.de> 
<mailto:bauero...@gmx.de <mailto:bauero...@gmx.de>>>:


 Hey Mario,

 how do you go about Fibremeshing, I tried it but found
 it difficult to get to a point that looked nice. I´ll have
 another look into some of the tutorials today.

 I guess I may have missed a part of the workflow.

 Regarding hair-farm, the manual states the option to export
 the hairdo as curves or polygonstrips or polygontubes, it seems
 there is less hard conversion work involved as what Lee-Perry Smith
 posted in his 2012ish examples.

 Cheers,

 tim






 On 08.02.2014 18:17, Mario Reitbauer wrote:

 I can highly recommend doing the basic hair styling in Zbrush 
with fibremesh and then export it to maya directly or through a plugin
 (http://florianeberle.com/2012/02/21/fibermesh-to-strands 
<http://florianeberle.com/__2012/02/21/fibermesh-to-__strands>
<http://florianeberle.com/__2012/02/21/fibermesh-to-__strands 
<http://florianeberle.com/2012/02/21/fibermesh-to-strands>>) to softimage.

 You can then use the imported curves for ice or in yeti to 
finalize your hair grooming.

 Actually there is no tool which is even close to zbrush when 
it comes to brushing your hair.
 I guess this will be the way to go in the future (at least for 
brushing your guides before you add stuff on top)

 cheers Mario



 On Sat, 08 Feb 2014 15:12:33 +, "Artur Woźniak" 
mailto:artur.w...@gmail.com> <mailto:artur.w...@gmail.com
<mailto:artur.w...@gmail.com>>> wrote:

 Guys I worked with in Platige, used ass to export hair 
from yeti.
 Textures were applied then in Xsi.

 Artur

 -- Wiadomość oryginalna --
 Od: "olivier jeannel"
     Do:
         Wysłano: 2014-02-08 16:08:26
 Temat: Re: Softimage Hair options?

 How do you export a hair sim from Yeti back in Softimage ? 
Pointcache
 ? Alembic ? Ass ?
 Do all info translate well for rendering in Arnold ?

 Olivier

 Le 08/02/2014 15:21,

RE: Softimage Hair options?

[Luc Girard]

Hi Tim,

Thanks for the way you mentioned our projects :) .

I would like to chime in and say that we, at Shed, are also looking at hair 
solutions actively. Our solution based on Kristinka does the job but it is very 
far from being an out of the box solution and it requires a lot of RnD to 
maintain as it not supported by AD. If a problem pops up, with substeps motion 
blur per example, we are left to our own devices. We usually prevail but we end 
up spending nearly 50% of the time on technical details vs real look dev.  I 
thought you should know :).

>From what I've seen around, Yeti seems to be a good contender but I've yet to 
>do a full production setup with it.

Good luck in your search !

Luc Girard // SHED
VFX artist
1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8
T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025 WWW.SHEDMTL.COM


-Original Message-
From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com 
[mailto:softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tim Leydecker
Sent: 8 février 2014 07:26
To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
Subject: Re: Softimage Hair options?

Thanks for this in-depth answer!

Personally, I´m starting to lean towards going for the trial of Yeti, one 
reason being that I think I remember Colin Doncaster´s name from another maya 
maling list and another because of the really nice sample image of a bear 
posted by Yolandi Meiring in a similar thread here:

(Thread) https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/xsi_list/2erKqUcghpI

(Image)https://groups.google.com/group/xsi_list/attach/994086131ca9460/bear_still.jpg?part=4&view=1


Another really nice one is a proof of concept of bringing (3dsMax) hair-farm 
into Softimage from Lee-Perry Smith, with props to Dani Garcia and Steven Caron.
That human hairdo and it´s renderings look incredibly awesome.

http://ir-ltd.net/hair-farm-hair-into-softimage/

For a Melena/Kristinka workflow using Anto Matkovic´s tools in those beautiful 
shed projects there´s a nice clip posted by/on Lester Banks

http://lesterbanks.com/2013/05/workflow-tips-for-creating-and-grooming-hair-in-softimage/

--

I have only limited amounts of time I can spend on this and need to find 
something that has potential to be useable for testing Redshift´s hair shading 
approach when applicable but ideally integrates seamlessly into either 
Maya/Max/Softimage.

The combination of Maya+Redshift is allready working very well and it seems 
it´ll be easier to successfully migrate from simple hair/fur testing to 
something actually looking good (using yeti). Also, yeti has a variety of 
licensing options I might find atractive at a later date if tempted to actually 
finish something beyond spare-time doodling.

I´d prefer Softimage but if that stuff works better in Maya, it´ll be Maya.

I suck with Max, even the fastest and most intuitive plugin can´t compensate 
that sad fact.

Cheers,

tim







On 08.02.2014 12:57, Stefan Kubicek wrote:
> Hi Tim,
>
> I've just been dealing with hair an a hamster and used the built-in hair&fur 
> of Softimage /2014SP2).
>
> A few tips about working with built-in hair:
>
> Avoid too dense meshes. It creates a guide hair for every vertex, 
> hence dense meshes make you fiddle with lots and lots of guide hair strands 
> manually, which can be counter-productive and -intuitive.
>
> If you want to edit hair parameters on a per vertex basis (via vertex 
> colors), you need to plan ahead where exactly you want your hair to be and 
> where you want certain features (transparency, density, kink & frizz) to 
> change and over which distance/area. This is especially important for areas 
> like hand and feet, as well as nose & eye lids.
> So, before you move the mesh into skinning/rigging, you better make sure your 
> topology works not only for animation but also for the hair setup you have in 
> mind.
>
> Don't rely on the built-in style transfer functionality. It does 
> mostly work but has a tendency to "blur" the transferred hair style, even if 
> your source and target emitter topology are the same. You need to move in 
> again and reintroduce details in the fur that got lost.
>
> If you want to simulate hair with collision don't use a subd mesh as 
> the emitter. The docs say that having hair emitted from a subd mesh 
> cannot collide with its own emitter, so you have to duplicate the 
> source mesh and subdivide it for real (that is, create more actual 
> polygons) and use that as the collision object. That would still be 
> acceptable, if it worked, which it does not. What I found after 
> tedious testing was that any collision testing fails when your emitter is a 
> subd mesh, independent of what you have it collide with (itself or another 
> mesh), which kinda sucks and is the biggest problem I ran into for which I 
> could not find a solution. Thankfully my fur was rather 

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Sebastien Sterling]

A new hair system is kinda over due. :(


On 12 February 2014 16:54, Luc Girard  wrote:

> Hi Tim,
>
> Thanks for the way you mentioned our projects :) .
>
> I would like to chime in and say that we, at Shed, are also looking at
> hair solutions actively. Our solution based on Kristinka does the job but
> it is very far from being an out of the box solution and it requires a lot
> of RnD to maintain as it not supported by AD. If a problem pops up, with
> substeps motion blur per example, we are left to our own devices. We
> usually prevail but we end up spending nearly 50% of the time on technical
> details vs real look dev.  I thought you should know :).
>
> >From what I've seen around, Yeti seems to be a good contender but I've
> yet to do a full production setup with it.
>
> Good luck in your search !
>
> Luc Girard // SHED
> VFX artist
> 1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8
> T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025 WWW.SHEDMTL.COM
>
>
> -Original Message-
> From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
> softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tim Leydecker
> Sent: 8 février 2014 07:26
> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
> Subject: Re: Softimage Hair options?
>
> Thanks for this in-depth answer!
>
> Personally, I´m starting to lean towards going for the trial of Yeti, one
> reason being that I think I remember Colin Doncaster´s name from another
> maya maling list and another because of the really nice sample image of a
> bear posted by Yolandi Meiring in a similar thread here:
>
> (Thread) https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/xsi_list/2erKqUcghpI
>
> (Image)
> https://groups.google.com/group/xsi_list/attach/994086131ca9460/bear_still.jpg?part=4&view=1
>
>
> Another really nice one is a proof of concept of bringing (3dsMax)
> hair-farm into Softimage from Lee-Perry Smith, with props to Dani Garcia
> and Steven Caron.
> That human hairdo and it´s renderings look incredibly awesome.
>
> http://ir-ltd.net/hair-farm-hair-into-softimage/
>
> For a Melena/Kristinka workflow using Anto Matkovic´s tools in those
> beautiful shed projects there´s a nice clip posted by/on Lester Banks
>
>
> http://lesterbanks.com/2013/05/workflow-tips-for-creating-and-grooming-hair-in-softimage/
>
> --
>
> I have only limited amounts of time I can spend on this and need to find
> something that has potential to be useable for testing Redshift´s hair
> shading approach when applicable but ideally integrates seamlessly into
> either Maya/Max/Softimage.
>
> The combination of Maya+Redshift is allready working very well and it
> seems it´ll be easier to successfully migrate from simple hair/fur testing
> to something actually looking good (using yeti). Also, yeti has a variety
> of licensing options I might find atractive at a later date if tempted to
> actually finish something beyond spare-time doodling.
>
> I´d prefer Softimage but if that stuff works better in Maya, it´ll be Maya.
>
> I suck with Max, even the fastest and most intuitive plugin can´t
> compensate that sad fact.
>
> Cheers,
>
> tim
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> On 08.02.2014 12:57, Stefan Kubicek wrote:
> > Hi Tim,
> >
> > I've just been dealing with hair an a hamster and used the built-in
> hair&fur of Softimage /2014SP2).
> >
> > A few tips about working with built-in hair:
> >
> > Avoid too dense meshes. It creates a guide hair for every vertex,
> > hence dense meshes make you fiddle with lots and lots of guide hair
> strands manually, which can be counter-productive and -intuitive.
> >
> > If you want to edit hair parameters on a per vertex basis (via vertex
> > colors), you need to plan ahead where exactly you want your hair to be
> and where you want certain features (transparency, density, kink & frizz)
> to change and over which distance/area. This is especially important for
> areas like hand and feet, as well as nose & eye lids.
> > So, before you move the mesh into skinning/rigging, you better make sure
> your topology works not only for animation but also for the hair setup you
> have in mind.
> >
> > Don't rely on the built-in style transfer functionality. It does
> > mostly work but has a tendency to "blur" the transferred hair style,
> even if your source and target emitter topology are the same. You need to
> move in again and reintroduce details in the fur that got lost.
> >
> > If you want to simulate hair with collision don't use a subd mesh as
> > the emitter. The docs say that having hair emitted from a subd mesh
> > cannot collide with its own emitter, so you have to 

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Ed Manning]

https://vimeo.com/80382153


On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 5:10 PM, Sebastien Sterling <
sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:

> A new hair system is kinda over due. :(
>
>
> On 12 February 2014 16:54, Luc Girard  wrote:
>
>> Hi Tim,
>>
>> Thanks for the way you mentioned our projects :) .
>>
>> I would like to chime in and say that we, at Shed, are also looking at
>> hair solutions actively. Our solution based on Kristinka does the job but
>> it is very far from being an out of the box solution and it requires a lot
>> of RnD to maintain as it not supported by AD. If a problem pops up, with
>> substeps motion blur per example, we are left to our own devices. We
>> usually prevail but we end up spending nearly 50% of the time on technical
>> details vs real look dev.  I thought you should know :).
>>
>> >From what I've seen around, Yeti seems to be a good contender but I've
>> yet to do a full production setup with it.
>>
>> Good luck in your search !
>>
>> Luc Girard // SHED
>> VFX artist
>> 1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8
>> T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025 WWW.SHEDMTL.COM
>>
>>
>> -Original Message-
>> From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
>> softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tim Leydecker
>> Sent: 8 février 2014 07:26
>> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
>> Subject: Re: Softimage Hair options?
>>
>> Thanks for this in-depth answer!
>>
>> Personally, I´m starting to lean towards going for the trial of Yeti, one
>> reason being that I think I remember Colin Doncaster´s name from another
>> maya maling list and another because of the really nice sample image of a
>> bear posted by Yolandi Meiring in a similar thread here:
>>
>> (Thread) https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/xsi_list/2erKqUcghpI
>>
>> (Image)
>> https://groups.google.com/group/xsi_list/attach/994086131ca9460/bear_still.jpg?part=4&view=1
>>
>>
>> Another really nice one is a proof of concept of bringing (3dsMax)
>> hair-farm into Softimage from Lee-Perry Smith, with props to Dani Garcia
>> and Steven Caron.
>> That human hairdo and it´s renderings look incredibly awesome.
>>
>> http://ir-ltd.net/hair-farm-hair-into-softimage/
>>
>> For a Melena/Kristinka workflow using Anto Matkovic´s tools in those
>> beautiful shed projects there´s a nice clip posted by/on Lester Banks
>>
>>
>> http://lesterbanks.com/2013/05/workflow-tips-for-creating-and-grooming-hair-in-softimage/
>>
>> --
>>
>> I have only limited amounts of time I can spend on this and need to find
>> something that has potential to be useable for testing Redshift´s hair
>> shading approach when applicable but ideally integrates seamlessly into
>> either Maya/Max/Softimage.
>>
>> The combination of Maya+Redshift is allready working very well and it
>> seems it´ll be easier to successfully migrate from simple hair/fur testing
>> to something actually looking good (using yeti). Also, yeti has a variety
>> of licensing options I might find atractive at a later date if tempted to
>> actually finish something beyond spare-time doodling.
>>
>> I´d prefer Softimage but if that stuff works better in Maya, it´ll be
>> Maya.
>>
>> I suck with Max, even the fastest and most intuitive plugin can´t
>> compensate that sad fact.
>>
>> Cheers,
>>
>> tim
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 08.02.2014 12:57, Stefan Kubicek wrote:
>> > Hi Tim,
>> >
>> > I've just been dealing with hair an a hamster and used the built-in
>> hair&fur of Softimage /2014SP2).
>> >
>> > A few tips about working with built-in hair:
>> >
>> > Avoid too dense meshes. It creates a guide hair for every vertex,
>> > hence dense meshes make you fiddle with lots and lots of guide hair
>> strands manually, which can be counter-productive and -intuitive.
>> >
>> > If you want to edit hair parameters on a per vertex basis (via vertex
>> > colors), you need to plan ahead where exactly you want your hair to be
>> and where you want certain features (transparency, density, kink & frizz)
>> to change and over which distance/area. This is especially important for
>> areas like hand and feet, as well as nose & eye lids.
>> > So, before you move the mesh into skinning/rigging, you better make
>> sure your topology works not only for animation but also for the hair setup
>> you ha

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Sebastien Sterling]

I saw that the first day it was up Eddie

And as jawdroppingly cool as it is, i have a feeling we are going to need
something a little heavier to go forward.


On 14 February 2014 00:01, Ed Manning  wrote:

> https://vimeo.com/80382153
>
>
> On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 5:10 PM, Sebastien Sterling <
> sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> A new hair system is kinda over due. :(
>>
>>
>> On 12 February 2014 16:54, Luc Girard  wrote:
>>
>>> Hi Tim,
>>>
>>> Thanks for the way you mentioned our projects :) .
>>>
>>> I would like to chime in and say that we, at Shed, are also looking at
>>> hair solutions actively. Our solution based on Kristinka does the job but
>>> it is very far from being an out of the box solution and it requires a lot
>>> of RnD to maintain as it not supported by AD. If a problem pops up, with
>>> substeps motion blur per example, we are left to our own devices. We
>>> usually prevail but we end up spending nearly 50% of the time on technical
>>> details vs real look dev.  I thought you should know :).
>>>
>>> >From what I've seen around, Yeti seems to be a good contender but I've
>>> yet to do a full production setup with it.
>>>
>>> Good luck in your search !
>>>
>>> Luc Girard // SHED
>>> VFX artist
>>> 1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8
>>> T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025 WWW.SHEDMTL.COM
>>>
>>>
>>> -Original Message-
>>> From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
>>> softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tim Leydecker
>>> Sent: 8 février 2014 07:26
>>> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
>>> Subject: Re: Softimage Hair options?
>>>
>>> Thanks for this in-depth answer!
>>>
>>> Personally, I´m starting to lean towards going for the trial of Yeti,
>>> one reason being that I think I remember Colin Doncaster´s name from
>>> another maya maling list and another because of the really nice sample
>>> image of a bear posted by Yolandi Meiring in a similar thread here:
>>>
>>> (Thread) https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/xsi_list/2erKqUcghpI
>>>
>>> (Image)
>>> https://groups.google.com/group/xsi_list/attach/994086131ca9460/bear_still.jpg?part=4&view=1
>>>
>>>
>>> Another really nice one is a proof of concept of bringing (3dsMax)
>>> hair-farm into Softimage from Lee-Perry Smith, with props to Dani Garcia
>>> and Steven Caron.
>>> That human hairdo and it´s renderings look incredibly awesome.
>>>
>>> http://ir-ltd.net/hair-farm-hair-into-softimage/
>>>
>>> For a Melena/Kristinka workflow using Anto Matkovic´s tools in those
>>> beautiful shed projects there´s a nice clip posted by/on Lester Banks
>>>
>>>
>>> http://lesterbanks.com/2013/05/workflow-tips-for-creating-and-grooming-hair-in-softimage/
>>>
>>> --
>>>
>>> I have only limited amounts of time I can spend on this and need to find
>>> something that has potential to be useable for testing Redshift´s hair
>>> shading approach when applicable but ideally integrates seamlessly into
>>> either Maya/Max/Softimage.
>>>
>>> The combination of Maya+Redshift is allready working very well and it
>>> seems it´ll be easier to successfully migrate from simple hair/fur testing
>>> to something actually looking good (using yeti). Also, yeti has a variety
>>> of licensing options I might find atractive at a later date if tempted to
>>> actually finish something beyond spare-time doodling.
>>>
>>> I´d prefer Softimage but if that stuff works better in Maya, it´ll be
>>> Maya.
>>>
>>> I suck with Max, even the fastest and most intuitive plugin can´t
>>> compensate that sad fact.
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> tim
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 08.02.2014 12:57, Stefan Kubicek wrote:
>>> > Hi Tim,
>>> >
>>> > I've just been dealing with hair an a hamster and used the built-in
>>> hair&fur of Softimage /2014SP2).
>>> >
>>> > A few tips about working with built-in hair:
>>> >
>>> > Avoid too dense meshes. It creates a guide hair for every vertex,
>>> > hence dense meshes make you fiddle with lots and lots of guide hair
>>> strands manually, which 

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Mathias N]

Sticking with the idea of a complete solution within Softimage, what would
your definition of heavier be?


On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 12:23 AM, Sebastien Sterling <
sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I saw that the first day it was up Eddie
>
> And as jawdroppingly cool as it is, i have a feeling we are going to need
> something a little heavier to go forward.
>
>
> On 14 February 2014 00:01, Ed Manning  wrote:
>
>> https://vimeo.com/80382153
>>
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 5:10 PM, Sebastien Sterling <
>> sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> A new hair system is kinda over due. :(
>>>
>>>
>>> On 12 February 2014 16:54, Luc Girard  wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi Tim,
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for the way you mentioned our projects :) .
>>>>
>>>> I would like to chime in and say that we, at Shed, are also looking at
>>>> hair solutions actively. Our solution based on Kristinka does the job but
>>>> it is very far from being an out of the box solution and it requires a lot
>>>> of RnD to maintain as it not supported by AD. If a problem pops up, with
>>>> substeps motion blur per example, we are left to our own devices. We
>>>> usually prevail but we end up spending nearly 50% of the time on technical
>>>> details vs real look dev.  I thought you should know :).
>>>>
>>>> >From what I've seen around, Yeti seems to be a good contender but I've
>>>> yet to do a full production setup with it.
>>>>
>>>> Good luck in your search !
>>>>
>>>> Luc Girard // SHED
>>>> VFX artist
>>>> 1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8
>>>> T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025 WWW.SHEDMTL.COM
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> -Original Message-
>>>> From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
>>>> softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tim Leydecker
>>>> Sent: 8 février 2014 07:26
>>>> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
>>>> Subject: Re: Softimage Hair options?
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for this in-depth answer!
>>>>
>>>> Personally, I´m starting to lean towards going for the trial of Yeti,
>>>> one reason being that I think I remember Colin Doncaster´s name from
>>>> another maya maling list and another because of the really nice sample
>>>> image of a bear posted by Yolandi Meiring in a similar thread here:
>>>>
>>>> (Thread) https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/xsi_list/2erKqUcghpI
>>>>
>>>> (Image)
>>>> https://groups.google.com/group/xsi_list/attach/994086131ca9460/bear_still.jpg?part=4&view=1
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Another really nice one is a proof of concept of bringing (3dsMax)
>>>> hair-farm into Softimage from Lee-Perry Smith, with props to Dani Garcia
>>>> and Steven Caron.
>>>> That human hairdo and it´s renderings look incredibly awesome.
>>>>
>>>> http://ir-ltd.net/hair-farm-hair-into-softimage/
>>>>
>>>> For a Melena/Kristinka workflow using Anto Matkovic´s tools in those
>>>> beautiful shed projects there´s a nice clip posted by/on Lester Banks
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> http://lesterbanks.com/2013/05/workflow-tips-for-creating-and-grooming-hair-in-softimage/
>>>>
>>>> --
>>>>
>>>> I have only limited amounts of time I can spend on this and need to
>>>> find something that has potential to be useable for testing Redshift´s hair
>>>> shading approach when applicable but ideally integrates seamlessly into
>>>> either Maya/Max/Softimage.
>>>>
>>>> The combination of Maya+Redshift is allready working very well and it
>>>> seems it´ll be easier to successfully migrate from simple hair/fur testing
>>>> to something actually looking good (using yeti). Also, yeti has a variety
>>>> of licensing options I might find atractive at a later date if tempted to
>>>> actually finish something beyond spare-time doodling.
>>>>
>>>> I´d prefer Softimage but if that stuff works better in Maya, it´ll be
>>>> Maya.
>>>>
>>>> I suck with Max, even the fastest and most intuitive plugin can´t
>>>> compensate that sad fact.
>>>>
>>>> Cheers,
>>>>
>>>> tim
>>>>
>>>>
>>>

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Sebastien Sterling]

 On 12 February 2014 16:54, Luc Girard  wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Hi Tim,
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks for the way you mentioned our projects :) .
>>>>>
>>>>> I would like to chime in and say that we, at Shed, are also looking at
>>>>> hair solutions actively. Our solution based on Kristinka does the job but
>>>>> it is very far from being an out of the box solution and it requires a lot
>>>>> of RnD to maintain as it not supported by AD. If a problem pops up, with
>>>>> substeps motion blur per example, we are left to our own devices. We
>>>>> usually prevail but we end up spending nearly 50% of the time on technical
>>>>> details vs real look dev.  I thought you should know :).
>>>>>
>>>>> >From what I've seen around, Yeti seems to be a good contender but
>>>>> I've yet to do a full production setup with it.
>>>>>
>>>>> Good luck in your search !
>>>>>
>>>>> Luc Girard // SHED
>>>>> VFX artist
>>>>> 1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8
>>>>> T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025 WWW.SHEDMTL.COM
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> -Original Message-
>>>>> From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
>>>>> softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tim Leydecker
>>>>> Sent: 8 février 2014 07:26
>>>>> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
>>>>> Subject: Re: Softimage Hair options?
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks for this in-depth answer!
>>>>>
>>>>> Personally, I´m starting to lean towards going for the trial of Yeti,
>>>>> one reason being that I think I remember Colin Doncaster´s name from
>>>>> another maya maling list and another because of the really nice sample
>>>>> image of a bear posted by Yolandi Meiring in a similar thread here:
>>>>>
>>>>> (Thread) https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/xsi_list/2erKqUcghpI
>>>>>
>>>>> (Image)
>>>>> https://groups.google.com/group/xsi_list/attach/994086131ca9460/bear_still.jpg?part=4&view=1
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Another really nice one is a proof of concept of bringing (3dsMax)
>>>>> hair-farm into Softimage from Lee-Perry Smith, with props to Dani Garcia
>>>>> and Steven Caron.
>>>>> That human hairdo and it´s renderings look incredibly awesome.
>>>>>
>>>>> http://ir-ltd.net/hair-farm-hair-into-softimage/
>>>>>
>>>>> For a Melena/Kristinka workflow using Anto Matkovic´s tools in those
>>>>> beautiful shed projects there´s a nice clip posted by/on Lester Banks
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> http://lesterbanks.com/2013/05/workflow-tips-for-creating-and-grooming-hair-in-softimage/
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>>
>>>>> I have only limited amounts of time I can spend on this and need to
>>>>> find something that has potential to be useable for testing Redshift´s 
>>>>> hair
>>>>> shading approach when applicable but ideally integrates seamlessly into
>>>>> either Maya/Max/Softimage.
>>>>>
>>>>> The combination of Maya+Redshift is allready working very well and it
>>>>> seems it´ll be easier to successfully migrate from simple hair/fur testing
>>>>> to something actually looking good (using yeti). Also, yeti has a variety
>>>>> of licensing options I might find atractive at a later date if tempted to
>>>>> actually finish something beyond spare-time doodling.
>>>>>
>>>>> I´d prefer Softimage but if that stuff works better in Maya, it´ll be
>>>>> Maya.
>>>>>
>>>>> I suck with Max, even the fastest and most intuitive plugin can´t
>>>>> compensate that sad fact.
>>>>>
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>>
>>>>> tim
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 08.02.2014 12:57, Stefan Kubicek wrote:
>>>>> > Hi Tim,
>>>>> >
>>>>> > I've just been dealing with hair an a hamster and used the built-in
>>>>> hair&fur of Softimage /2014SP2).
&g

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Mathias N]

gt;>
>>>> https://vimeo.com/80382153
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 5:10 PM, Sebastien Sterling <
>>>> sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> A new hair system is kinda over due. :(
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 12 February 2014 16:54, Luc Girard  wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi Tim,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks for the way you mentioned our projects :) .
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I would like to chime in and say that we, at Shed, are also looking
>>>>>> at hair solutions actively. Our solution based on Kristinka does the job
>>>>>> but it is very far from being an out of the box solution and it requires 
>>>>>> a
>>>>>> lot of RnD to maintain as it not supported by AD. If a problem pops up,
>>>>>> with substeps motion blur per example, we are left to our own devices. We
>>>>>> usually prevail but we end up spending nearly 50% of the time on 
>>>>>> technical
>>>>>> details vs real look dev.  I thought you should know :).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> >From what I've seen around, Yeti seems to be a good contender but
>>>>>> I've yet to do a full production setup with it.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Good luck in your search !
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Luc Girard // SHED
>>>>>> VFX artist
>>>>>> 1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8
>>>>>> T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025 WWW.SHEDMTL.COM
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> -Original Message-
>>>>>> From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
>>>>>> softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tim Leydecker
>>>>>> Sent: 8 février 2014 07:26
>>>>>> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
>>>>>> Subject: Re: Softimage Hair options?
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks for this in-depth answer!
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Personally, I´m starting to lean towards going for the trial of Yeti,
>>>>>> one reason being that I think I remember Colin Doncaster´s name from
>>>>>> another maya maling list and another because of the really nice sample
>>>>>> image of a bear posted by Yolandi Meiring in a similar thread here:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> (Thread) https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/xsi_list/2erKqUcghpI
>>>>>>
>>>>>> (Image)
>>>>>> https://groups.google.com/group/xsi_list/attach/994086131ca9460/bear_still.jpg?part=4&view=1
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Another really nice one is a proof of concept of bringing (3dsMax)
>>>>>> hair-farm into Softimage from Lee-Perry Smith, with props to Dani Garcia
>>>>>> and Steven Caron.
>>>>>> That human hairdo and it´s renderings look incredibly awesome.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> http://ir-ltd.net/hair-farm-hair-into-softimage/
>>>>>>
>>>>>> For a Melena/Kristinka workflow using Anto Matkovic´s tools in those
>>>>>> beautiful shed projects there´s a nice clip posted by/on Lester Banks
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> http://lesterbanks.com/2013/05/workflow-tips-for-creating-and-grooming-hair-in-softimage/
>>>>>>
>>>>>> --
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I have only limited amounts of time I can spend on this and need to
>>>>>> find something that has potential to be useable for testing Redshift´s 
>>>>>> hair
>>>>>> shading approach when applicable but ideally integrates seamlessly into
>>>>>> either Maya/Max/Softimage.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The combination of Maya+Redshift is allready working very well and it
>>>>>> seems it´ll be easier to successfully migrate from simple hair/fur 
>>>>>> testing
>>>>>> to something actually looking good (using yeti). Also, yeti has a variety
>>>>>> of licensing options I might find atractive at a later date if tempted to
>>>>>> actually finish something beyond spare-time doodling.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I´d prefer Softimage but if that stuff works better 

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Felix Geremus]

h
>> ever layer you put them, influenced by the closest guide on that layer.
>>
>>
>> And that's it, these are some of the things i would like to see in a
>> "heavier" hair system.
>>
>>
>> I toyed with the notion of a node graph like yeti's but from what i could
>> see of it so far, it is very linear, nowhere near as fun as ICE, so a cool
>> idea, for visualisation but i'd have to see a little more matured version
>> to be sold.
>>
>> i doubt anyone will ever implement any of this, this is just a lot of
>> pipe dreaming, but that is my answer.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 14 February 2014 00:51, Mathias N  wrote:
>>
>>> Sticking with the idea of a complete solution within Softimage, what
>>> would your definition of heavier be?
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 12:23 AM, Sebastien Sterling <
>>> sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I saw that the first day it was up Eddie
>>>>
>>>> And as jawdroppingly cool as it is, i have a feeling we are going to
>>>> need something a little heavier to go forward.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 14 February 2014 00:01, Ed Manning  wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> https://vimeo.com/80382153
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 5:10 PM, Sebastien Sterling <
>>>>> sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> A new hair system is kinda over due. :(
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 12 February 2014 16:54, Luc Girard  wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hi Tim,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Thanks for the way you mentioned our projects :) .
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I would like to chime in and say that we, at Shed, are also looking
>>>>>>> at hair solutions actively. Our solution based on Kristinka does the job
>>>>>>> but it is very far from being an out of the box solution and it 
>>>>>>> requires a
>>>>>>> lot of RnD to maintain as it not supported by AD. If a problem pops up,
>>>>>>> with substeps motion blur per example, we are left to our own devices. 
>>>>>>> We
>>>>>>> usually prevail but we end up spending nearly 50% of the time on 
>>>>>>> technical
>>>>>>> details vs real look dev.  I thought you should know :).
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> >From what I've seen around, Yeti seems to be a good contender but
>>>>>>> I've yet to do a full production setup with it.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Good luck in your search !
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Luc Girard // SHED
>>>>>>> VFX artist
>>>>>>> 1410, RUE STANLEY, 11E ÉTAGE MONTRÉAL (QUÉBEC) H3A 1P8
>>>>>>> T 514 849-1555 F 514 849-5025 WWW.SHEDMTL.COM
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> -Original Message-
>>>>>>> From: softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com [mailto:
>>>>>>> softimage-boun...@listproc.autodesk.com] On Behalf Of Tim Leydecker
>>>>>>> Sent: 8 février 2014 07:26
>>>>>>> To: softimage@listproc.autodesk.com
>>>>>>> Subject: Re: Softimage Hair options?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Thanks for this in-depth answer!
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Personally, I´m starting to lean towards going for the trial of
>>>>>>> Yeti, one reason being that I think I remember Colin Doncaster´s name 
>>>>>>> from
>>>>>>> another maya maling list and another because of the really nice sample
>>>>>>> image of a bear posted by Yolandi Meiring in a similar thread here:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> (Thread)
>>>>>>> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/xsi_list/2erKqUcghpI
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> (Image)
>>>>>>> https://groups.google.com/group/xsi_list/attach/994086131ca9460/bear_still.jpg?part=4&view=1
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Another really nice one is a proof of concept of bringing (3dsMax)
>>>>>>> hair-farm into Softimage from Lee-

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Matt Morris]

the bottom of the view port, (manipulate, magnet and weld) i just
>>> wish it was customisable with even more tools !
>>>
>>> In this spirit i would like to have a small library of icons on the hair
>>> system panel, icons for guide painting, and manipulation: paint/erase
>>> grow/cut, brush/frizz,orient ...etc. i would like it to be possible to
>>> click and drag these icons into a small tray on the viewport like the M
>>> tool small grey icons. so you can have your own customizable loadout.
>>>
>>> 4) Convert To: a series of utilities that allow you to convert elements,
>>> primitives or meshes, into hair guides; so you can choose to draw a curve
>>> and then click "convert to"  guides or strands, upon which you get prompted
>>> to choose an existing layer to add to, or to create a layer for this new
>>> hair element. if you choose a mesh like a rectangle, it would give you the
>>> options on how you would like the hairs to populate the inside of the mesh,
>>> by length? what density? etc...
>>>
>>> note: if you convert to a guide, them the elements will become guides,
>>> if you choose convert to strand then the elements will become hair in witch
>>> ever layer you put them, influenced by the closest guide on that layer.
>>>
>>>
>>> And that's it, these are some of the things i would like to see in a
>>> "heavier" hair system.
>>>
>>>
>>> I toyed with the notion of a node graph like yeti's but from what i
>>> could see of it so far, it is very linear, nowhere near as fun as ICE, so a
>>> cool idea, for visualisation but i'd have to see a little more matured
>>> version to be sold.
>>>
>>> i doubt anyone will ever implement any of this, this is just a lot of
>>> pipe dreaming, but that is my answer.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 14 February 2014 00:51, Mathias N  wrote:
>>>
>>>> Sticking with the idea of a complete solution within Softimage, what
>>>> would your definition of heavier be?
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 12:23 AM, Sebastien Sterling <
>>>> sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> I saw that the first day it was up Eddie
>>>>>
>>>>> And as jawdroppingly cool as it is, i have a feeling we are going to
>>>>> need something a little heavier to go forward.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 14 February 2014 00:01, Ed Manning  wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> https://vimeo.com/80382153
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 5:10 PM, Sebastien Sterling <
>>>>>> sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> A new hair system is kinda over due. :(
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On 12 February 2014 16:54, Luc Girard  wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Hi Tim,
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Thanks for the way you mentioned our projects :) .
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I would like to chime in and say that we, at Shed, are also looking
>>>>>>>> at hair solutions actively. Our solution based on Kristinka does the 
>>>>>>>> job
>>>>>>>> but it is very far from being an out of the box solution and it 
>>>>>>>> requires a
>>>>>>>> lot of RnD to maintain as it not supported by AD. If a problem pops up,
>>>>>>>> with substeps motion blur per example, we are left to our own devices. 
>>>>>>>> We
>>>>>>>> usually prevail but we end up spending nearly 50% of the time on 
>>>>>>>> technical
>>>>>>>> details vs real look dev.  I thought you should know :).
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> >From what I've seen around, Yeti seems to be a good contender but
>>>>>>>> I've yet to do a full production setup with it.
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Good luck in your search !
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> Luc Girard // SHED
>>>>>>>> VFX artist
>>>>>>>> 141

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Emilio Hernandez]

e !).
>>>>
>>>> Tab 3: The new hair system panel, including as preliminary features:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> 1) A stylus pressure segment with curve profile.
>>>>
>>>> 2) A layer system like the "scene" one in the KP/L so you can have
>>>> separate hair systems on different hide-able reference-able layers, with
>>>> the addition of a slider enabling you to increase or decrees the number of
>>>> hairs shown in the viewport per layer. (this would allow you to rapidly
>>>> test incremental density simulations, on the fly without having to dive
>>>> into an ice tree or bring up a ppg ).
>>>>
>>>> 3) I'm a big fan of the M tool in SI, i love the 3 small grey icons
>>>> that appear at the bottom of the view port, (manipulate, magnet and weld) i
>>>> just wish it was customisable with even more tools !
>>>>
>>>> In this spirit i would like to have a small library of icons on the
>>>> hair system panel, icons for guide painting, and manipulation: paint/erase
>>>> grow/cut, brush/frizz,orient ...etc. i would like it to be possible to
>>>> click and drag these icons into a small tray on the viewport like the M
>>>> tool small grey icons. so you can have your own customizable loadout.
>>>>
>>>> 4) Convert To: a series of utilities that allow you to convert
>>>> elements, primitives or meshes, into hair guides; so you can choose to draw
>>>> a curve and then click "convert to"  guides or strands, upon which you get
>>>> prompted to choose an existing layer to add to, or to create a layer for
>>>> this new hair element. if you choose a mesh like a rectangle, it would give
>>>> you the options on how you would like the hairs to populate the inside of
>>>> the mesh, by length? what density? etc...
>>>>
>>>> note: if you convert to a guide, them the elements will become guides,
>>>> if you choose convert to strand then the elements will become hair in witch
>>>> ever layer you put them, influenced by the closest guide on that layer.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> And that's it, these are some of the things i would like to see in a
>>>> "heavier" hair system.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> I toyed with the notion of a node graph like yeti's but from what i
>>>> could see of it so far, it is very linear, nowhere near as fun as ICE, so a
>>>> cool idea, for visualisation but i'd have to see a little more matured
>>>> version to be sold.
>>>>
>>>> i doubt anyone will ever implement any of this, this is just a lot of
>>>> pipe dreaming, but that is my answer.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 14 February 2014 00:51, Mathias N  wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Sticking with the idea of a complete solution within Softimage, what
>>>>> would your definition of heavier be?
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 12:23 AM, Sebastien Sterling <
>>>>> sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> I saw that the first day it was up Eddie
>>>>>>
>>>>>> And as jawdroppingly cool as it is, i have a feeling we are going to
>>>>>> need something a little heavier to go forward.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 14 February 2014 00:01, Ed Manning  wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> https://vimeo.com/80382153
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 5:10 PM, Sebastien Sterling <
>>>>>>> sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> A new hair system is kinda over due. :(
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> On 12 February 2014 16:54, Luc Girard  wrote:
>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Hi Tim,
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> Thanks for the way you mentioned our projects :) .
>>>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>>> I would like to chime in and say that we, at Shed, are also
>>>>>>>>> looking at hair solutions actively. Our solution based on Kristinka 
>>>>>>>>> does
>>&

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Sebastien Sterling]

>>>> Smith, in his demo of FUZZ, he says that strand collisions are very slow.
>>>>> So regarding hair, ICE would be more an aesthetics effects base tool then 
>>>>> a
>>>>> physics engine, the actual simulation being taken care of by the hair
>>>>> systems dedicated engine. so yes as much compliance between the two 
>>>>> systems
>>>>> as possible.
>>>>>
>>>>> *) UI integration. where would it live ? i'd love to see the sparsely
>>>>> inhabited paint tools panel, be sectioned into 3 tabs, similar to the 
>>>>> right
>>>>> side, MCP/KP-L/PPG.
>>>>>
>>>>> Tab 1: the original xsi paint tools, weight painting etc...
>>>>>
>>>>> Tab 2:... maybe some sculpting tool implementations :P ? (for another
>>>>> time !).
>>>>>
>>>>> Tab 3: The new hair system panel, including as preliminary features:
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> 1) A stylus pressure segment with curve profile.
>>>>>
>>>>> 2) A layer system like the "scene" one in the KP/L so you can have
>>>>> separate hair systems on different hide-able reference-able layers, with
>>>>> the addition of a slider enabling you to increase or decrees the number of
>>>>> hairs shown in the viewport per layer. (this would allow you to rapidly
>>>>> test incremental density simulations, on the fly without having to dive
>>>>> into an ice tree or bring up a ppg ).
>>>>>
>>>>> 3) I'm a big fan of the M tool in SI, i love the 3 small grey icons
>>>>> that appear at the bottom of the view port, (manipulate, magnet and weld) 
>>>>> i
>>>>> just wish it was customisable with even more tools !
>>>>>
>>>>> In this spirit i would like to have a small library of icons on the
>>>>> hair system panel, icons for guide painting, and manipulation: paint/erase
>>>>> grow/cut, brush/frizz,orient ...etc. i would like it to be possible to
>>>>> click and drag these icons into a small tray on the viewport like the M
>>>>> tool small grey icons. so you can have your own customizable loadout.
>>>>>
>>>>> 4) Convert To: a series of utilities that allow you to convert
>>>>> elements, primitives or meshes, into hair guides; so you can choose to 
>>>>> draw
>>>>> a curve and then click "convert to"  guides or strands, upon which you get
>>>>> prompted to choose an existing layer to add to, or to create a layer for
>>>>> this new hair element. if you choose a mesh like a rectangle, it would 
>>>>> give
>>>>> you the options on how you would like the hairs to populate the inside of
>>>>> the mesh, by length? what density? etc...
>>>>>
>>>>> note: if you convert to a guide, them the elements will become guides,
>>>>> if you choose convert to strand then the elements will become hair in 
>>>>> witch
>>>>> ever layer you put them, influenced by the closest guide on that layer.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> And that's it, these are some of the things i would like to see in a
>>>>> "heavier" hair system.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> I toyed with the notion of a node graph like yeti's but from what i
>>>>> could see of it so far, it is very linear, nowhere near as fun as ICE, so 
>>>>> a
>>>>> cool idea, for visualisation but i'd have to see a little more matured
>>>>> version to be sold.
>>>>>
>>>>> i doubt anyone will ever implement any of this, this is just a lot of
>>>>> pipe dreaming, but that is my answer.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On 14 February 2014 00:51, Mathias N  wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Sticking with the idea of a complete solution within Softimage, what
>>>>>> would your definition of heavier be?
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 12:23 AM, Sebastien Sterling <
>>>>>> sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I saw that th

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Emilio Hernandez]

;>>>> *) It Should have its own unit, like a strand, guide or null, that
>>>>>> exists for this purpose.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> *)It should be tablet compatible, as in stylus, pen pressure, all
>>>>>> that jazz.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> *) It should be ICE compliant ; stand on it's own yes, but that
>>>>>> should not subject isolated from ICE, it's too good a tool to be ignored.
>>>>>> Ideally, a relationship where ICE is less of a crutch and more of a third
>>>>>> arm. e.g The proprietary Guides/strands/units can be brought into ICE as
>>>>>> data, so if you where making a wood nymph, and you wanted to make flowers
>>>>>> bloom from the tips of her hair: all this managed through ICE. Listening 
>>>>>> to
>>>>>> Paul Smith, in his demo of FUZZ, he says that strand collisions are very
>>>>>> slow. So regarding hair, ICE would be more an aesthetics effects base 
>>>>>> tool
>>>>>> then a physics engine, the actual simulation being taken care of by the
>>>>>> hair systems dedicated engine. so yes as much compliance between the two
>>>>>> systems as possible.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> *) UI integration. where would it live ? i'd love to see the sparsely
>>>>>> inhabited paint tools panel, be sectioned into 3 tabs, similar to the 
>>>>>> right
>>>>>> side, MCP/KP-L/PPG.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Tab 1: the original xsi paint tools, weight painting etc...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Tab 2:... maybe some sculpting tool implementations :P ? (for another
>>>>>> time !).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Tab 3: The new hair system panel, including as preliminary features:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 1) A stylus pressure segment with curve profile.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 2) A layer system like the "scene" one in the KP/L so you can have
>>>>>> separate hair systems on different hide-able reference-able layers, with
>>>>>> the addition of a slider enabling you to increase or decrees the number 
>>>>>> of
>>>>>> hairs shown in the viewport per layer. (this would allow you to rapidly
>>>>>> test incremental density simulations, on the fly without having to dive
>>>>>> into an ice tree or bring up a ppg ).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 3) I'm a big fan of the M tool in SI, i love the 3 small grey icons
>>>>>> that appear at the bottom of the view port, (manipulate, magnet and 
>>>>>> weld) i
>>>>>> just wish it was customisable with even more tools !
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In this spirit i would like to have a small library of icons on the
>>>>>> hair system panel, icons for guide painting, and manipulation: 
>>>>>> paint/erase
>>>>>> grow/cut, brush/frizz,orient ...etc. i would like it to be possible to
>>>>>> click and drag these icons into a small tray on the viewport like the M
>>>>>> tool small grey icons. so you can have your own customizable loadout.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> 4) Convert To: a series of utilities that allow you to convert
>>>>>> elements, primitives or meshes, into hair guides; so you can choose to 
>>>>>> draw
>>>>>> a curve and then click "convert to"  guides or strands, upon which you 
>>>>>> get
>>>>>> prompted to choose an existing layer to add to, or to create a layer for
>>>>>> this new hair element. if you choose a mesh like a rectangle, it would 
>>>>>> give
>>>>>> you the options on how you would like the hairs to populate the inside of
>>>>>> the mesh, by length? what density? etc...
>>>>>>
>>>>>> note: if you convert to a guide, them the elements will become
>>>>>> guides, if you choose convert to strand then the elements will become 
>>>>>> hair
>>>>>> in witch ever layer you put them, influenced by the closest guide on that
>>>>>> layer.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> And that's it, these are some of the things i would like to see in a
>>>>>> "heavier"

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Sebastien Sterling]

ems dedicated engine. so yes as much compliance between the two systems
>> as possible.
>>
>> *) UI integration. where would it live ? i'd love to see the sparsely
>> inhabited paint tools panel, be sectioned into 3 tabs, similar to the right
>> side, MCP/KP-L/PPG.
>>
>> Tab 1: the original xsi paint tools, weight painting etc...
>>
>> Tab 2:... maybe some sculpting tool implementations :P ? (for another
>> time !).
>>
>> Tab 3: The new hair system panel, including as preliminary features:
>>
>>
>> 1) A stylus pressure segment with curve profile.
>>
>> 2) A layer system like the "scene" one in the KP/L so you can have
>> separate hair systems on different hide-able reference-able layers, with
>> the addition of a slider enabling you to increase or decrees the number of
>> hairs shown in the viewport per layer. (this would allow you to rapidly
>> test incremental density simulations, on the fly without having to dive
>> into an ice tree or bring up a ppg ).
>>
>> 3) I'm a big fan of the M tool in SI, i love the 3 small grey icons that
>> appear at the bottom of the view port, (manipulate, magnet and weld) i just
>> wish it was customisable with even more tools !
>>
>> In this spirit i would like to have a small library of icons on the hair
>> system panel, icons for guide painting, and manipulation: paint/erase
>> grow/cut, brush/frizz,orient ...etc. i would like it to be possible to
>> click and drag these icons into a small tray on the viewport like the M
>> tool small grey icons. so you can have your own customizable loadout.
>>
>> 4) Convert To: a series of utilities that allow you to convert elements,
>> primitives or meshes, into hair guides; so you can choose to draw a curve
>> and then click "convert to"  guides or strands, upon which you get prompted
>> to choose an existing layer to add to, or to create a layer for this new
>> hair element. if you choose a mesh like a rectangle, it would give you the
>> options on how you would like the hairs to populate the inside of the mesh,
>> by length? what density? etc...
>>
>> note: if you convert to a guide, them the elements will become guides, if
>> you choose convert to strand then the elements will become hair in witch
>> ever layer you put them, influenced by the closest guide on that layer.
>>
>>
>> And that's it, these are some of the things i would like to see in a
>> "heavier" hair system.
>>
>>
>> I toyed with the notion of a node graph like yeti's but from what i could
>> see of it so far, it is very linear, nowhere near as fun as ICE, so a cool
>> idea, for visualisation but i'd have to see a little more matured version
>> to be sold.
>>
>> i doubt anyone will ever implement any of this, this is just a lot of
>> pipe dreaming, but that is my answer.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On 14 February 2014 00:51, Mathias N  wrote:
>>
>>> Sticking with the idea of a complete solution within Softimage, what
>>> would your definition of heavier be?
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 12:23 AM, Sebastien Sterling <
>>> sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> I saw that the first day it was up Eddie
>>>>
>>>> And as jawdroppingly cool as it is, i have a feeling we are going to
>>>> need something a little heavier to go forward.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 14 February 2014 00:01, Ed Manning  wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> https://vimeo.com/80382153
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> On Thu, Feb 13, 2014 at 5:10 PM, Sebastien Sterling <
>>>>> sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> A new hair system is kinda over due. :(
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 12 February 2014 16:54, Luc Girard  wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hi Tim,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Thanks for the way you mentioned our projects :) .
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I would like to chime in and say that we, at Shed, are also looking
>>>>>>> at hair solutions actively. Our solution based on Kristinka does the job
>>>>>>> but it is very far from being an out of the box solution and it 
>>>>>>> requires a
>>>>>>> lot of RnD to maintain as it not supported by AD. If a problem pops up,
>>>>&g

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Steven Caron]

i experimented with a custom tool, which would write ice data arrays
directly, so this could be for brushing existing strands, cutting strands,
etc. i found the SDK wasn't behaving correctly in this area, i stopped it.


On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 4:24 PM, Sebastien Sterling <
sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> ICE on it's own won't yield a solution, a method of interaction is
> required, you need to be able to interact with the hair directly, with a
> pen and tablet. i thought maybe this hair system could take care of the
> guides, once this is done you import the guide data into ICE, which in turn
> takes care of populating, generating strands and such. this would allow for
> an artistic manipulation of the guides while maintaining the modularity and
> versatility of ICE.
>
>

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Sebastien Sterling]

:- (


On 15 February 2014 02:04, Steven Caron  wrote:

> i experimented with a custom tool, which would write ice data arrays
> directly, so this could be for brushing existing strands, cutting strands,
> etc. i found the SDK wasn't behaving correctly in this area, i stopped it.
>
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 4:24 PM, Sebastien Sterling <
> sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> ICE on it's own won't yield a solution, a method of interaction is
>> required, you need to be able to interact with the hair directly, with a
>> pen and tablet. i thought maybe this hair system could take care of the
>> guides, once this is done you import the guide data into ICE, which in turn
>> takes care of populating, generating strands and such. this would allow for
>> an artistic manipulation of the guides while maintaining the modularity and
>> versatility of ICE.
>>
>>

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Sebastien Sterling]

how about a system where you create and style guides before sending the
data to ICE ? melena has a create strands from curve node, it seems
doable...


On 15 February 2014 02:13, Sebastien Sterling
wrote:

> :- (
>
>
> On 15 February 2014 02:04, Steven Caron  wrote:
>
>> i experimented with a custom tool, which would write ice data arrays
>> directly, so this could be for brushing existing strands, cutting strands,
>> etc. i found the SDK wasn't behaving correctly in this area, i stopped it.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 4:24 PM, Sebastien Sterling <
>> sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> ICE on it's own won't yield a solution, a method of interaction is
>>> required, you need to be able to interact with the hair directly, with a
>>> pen and tablet. i thought maybe this hair system could take care of the
>>> guides, once this is done you import the guide data into ICE, which in turn
>>> takes care of populating, generating strands and such. this would allow for
>>> an artistic manipulation of the guides while maintaining the modularity and
>>> versatility of ICE.
>>>
>>>
>

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Steven Caron]

ya, if you want to make your own curve tools that might turn out better..
but ask eugen sares how this area is lacking too ;)


On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 5:17 PM, Sebastien Sterling <
sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:

> how about a system where you create and style guides before sending the
> data to ICE ? melena has a create strands from curve node, it seems
> doable...
>
>
> On 15 February 2014 02:13, Sebastien Sterling <
> sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> :- (
>>
>>
>> On 15 February 2014 02:04, Steven Caron  wrote:
>>
>>> i experimented with a custom tool, which would write ice data arrays
>>> directly, so this could be for brushing existing strands, cutting strands,
>>> etc. i found the SDK wasn't behaving correctly in this area, i stopped it.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 4:24 PM, Sebastien Sterling <
>>> sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:


 ICE on it's own won't yield a solution, a method of interaction is
 required, you need to be able to interact with the hair directly, with a
 pen and tablet. i thought maybe this hair system could take care of the
 guides, once this is done you import the guide data into ICE, which in turn
 takes care of populating, generating strands and such. this would allow for
 an artistic manipulation of the guides while maintaining the modularity and
 versatility of ICE.


>>
>

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Sebastien Sterling]

If you wanted to make it all within SI, but what if it was an external
engine, like yeti, or fabric ?


On 15 February 2014 02:19, Steven Caron  wrote:

> ya, if you want to make your own curve tools that might turn out better..
> but ask eugen sares how this area is lacking too ;)
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 5:17 PM, Sebastien Sterling <
> sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> how about a system where you create and style guides before sending the
>> data to ICE ? melena has a create strands from curve node, it seems
>> doable...
>>
>>
>> On 15 February 2014 02:13, Sebastien Sterling <
>> sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> :- (
>>>
>>>
>>> On 15 February 2014 02:04, Steven Caron  wrote:
>>>
 i experimented with a custom tool, which would write ice data arrays
 directly, so this could be for brushing existing strands, cutting strands,
 etc. i found the SDK wasn't behaving correctly in this area, i stopped it.



 On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 4:24 PM, Sebastien Sterling <
 sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> ICE on it's own won't yield a solution, a method of interaction is
> required, you need to be able to interact with the hair directly, with a
> pen and tablet. i thought maybe this hair system could take care of the
> guides, once this is done you import the guide data into ICE, which in 
> turn
> takes care of populating, generating strands and such. this would allow 
> for
> an artistic manipulation of the guides while maintaining the modularity 
> and
> versatility of ICE.
>
>
>>>
>>
>

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Steven Caron]

well, fabric has already proven they can. i mean, integrate visualization
tools into softimage but have the data be separated. as long as you have
good support for your target renderer (ie. render time procedural) and good
support for caching softimage is just a host.

it is a question of, interest, time, and money... someone has to be
interested in investing the time to make some (little) money.


On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 5:39 PM, Sebastien Sterling <
sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:

> If you wanted to make it all within SI, but what if it was an external
> engine, like yeti, or fabric ?
>
>
> On 15 February 2014 02:19, Steven Caron  wrote:
>
>> ya, if you want to make your own curve tools that might turn out better..
>> but ask eugen sares how this area is lacking too ;)
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 5:17 PM, Sebastien Sterling <
>> sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> how about a system where you create and style guides before sending the
>>> data to ICE ? melena has a create strands from curve node, it seems
>>> doable...
>>>
>>>
>>> On 15 February 2014 02:13, Sebastien Sterling <
>>> sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
 :- (


 On 15 February 2014 02:04, Steven Caron  wrote:

> i experimented with a custom tool, which would write ice data arrays
> directly, so this could be for brushing existing strands, cutting strands,
> etc. i found the SDK wasn't behaving correctly in this area, i stopped it.
>
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 4:24 PM, Sebastien Sterling <
> sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>
>> ICE on it's own won't yield a solution, a method of interaction is
>> required, you need to be able to interact with the hair directly, with a
>> pen and tablet. i thought maybe this hair system could take care of the
>> guides, once this is done you import the guide data into ICE, which in 
>> turn
>> takes care of populating, generating strands and such. this would allow 
>> for
>> an artistic manipulation of the guides while maintaining the modularity 
>> and
>> versatility of ICE.
>>
>>

>>>
>>
>

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Sebastien Sterling]

so the question is can Softimage play both host to an external engine, and
also be able to interpret subsequent data rom said engine through ICE. i
don't think render support would be a problem if the hair ends up being
strands, it wouldn't really matter that the guides aren't render supported,
we just need them for styling and maybe simulation.


On 15 February 2014 03:24, Steven Caron  wrote:

> well, fabric has already proven they can. i mean, integrate visualization
> tools into softimage but have the data be separated. as long as you have
> good support for your target renderer (ie. render time procedural) and good
> support for caching softimage is just a host.
>
> it is a question of, interest, time, and money... someone has to be
> interested in investing the time to make some (little) money.
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 5:39 PM, Sebastien Sterling <
> sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> If you wanted to make it all within SI, but what if it was an external
>> engine, like yeti, or fabric ?
>>
>>
>> On 15 February 2014 02:19, Steven Caron  wrote:
>>
>>> ya, if you want to make your own curve tools that might turn out
>>> better.. but ask eugen sares how this area is lacking too ;)
>>>
>>>
>>> On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 5:17 PM, Sebastien Sterling <
>>> sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
 how about a system where you create and style guides before sending the
 data to ICE ? melena has a create strands from curve node, it seems
 doable...


 On 15 February 2014 02:13, Sebastien Sterling <
 sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:

> :- (
>
>
> On 15 February 2014 02:04, Steven Caron  wrote:
>
>> i experimented with a custom tool, which would write ice data arrays
>> directly, so this could be for brushing existing strands, cutting 
>> strands,
>> etc. i found the SDK wasn't behaving correctly in this area, i stopped 
>> it.
>>
>>
>>
>> On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 4:24 PM, Sebastien Sterling <
>> sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> ICE on it's own won't yield a solution, a method of interaction is
>>> required, you need to be able to interact with the hair directly, with a
>>> pen and tablet. i thought maybe this hair system could take care of the
>>> guides, once this is done you import the guide data into ICE, which in 
>>> turn
>>> takes care of populating, generating strands and such. this would allow 
>>> for
>>> an artistic manipulation of the guides while maintaining the modularity 
>>> and
>>> versatility of ICE.
>>>
>>>
>

>>>
>>
>

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Steven Caron]

the benefit of using ICE becomes less and less if you are generating your
own tech.


On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 6:36 PM, Sebastien Sterling <
sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:

> so the question is can Softimage play both host to an external engine, and
> also be able to interpret subsequent data rom said engine through ICE. i
> don't think render support would be a problem if the hair ends up being
> strands, it wouldn't really matter that the guides aren't render supported,
> we just need them for styling and maybe simulation.
>
>

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Sebastien Sterling]

Very true, and i remarked as much earlier. but interesting things might
still be possible, if ICE could add to the system instead of being the
system. you might not get all the functionality, but you could get some
nice effects on the hair systems this way.


On 15 February 2014 03:42, Steven Caron  wrote:

> the benefit of using ICE becomes less and less if you are generating your
> own tech.
>
>
> On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 6:36 PM, Sebastien Sterling <
> sebastien.sterl...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> so the question is can Softimage play both host to an external engine,
>> and also be able to interpret subsequent data rom said engine through ICE.
>> i don't think render support would be a problem if the hair ends up being
>> strands, it wouldn't really matter that the guides aren't render supported,
>> we just need them for styling and maybe simulation.
>>
>>

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Tim Leydecker]

Hi guys,


my emaildatabase got fragmented between seperating machines, please allow for
delayed responses.


Thanks for the many ideas and insights shed on Melena and Kristinka as well as 
the
thoughts and opinions on how to potentially best implement a system in 
Softimage.

Personally, I identify at least two groups of users, the first one capable of 
going
in and actively developing a working system, the second group benefiting from 
such
developments rippling into either a (commercial) plug-in or even functionality 
that
makes it into a vanilla installation. Often with some delay and a limited 
feature set
but out-of-the-box functions none the less. Sort of the 2nd wave on the beach.

As much as I´d like to perceive myself differently, I must say I am part of 
group two.

I may be able to find good workflows and good combinations of tools but there´s
limitations in how far I will be able to push beyond already existing tools.

As such, for now, I am looking forward to giving yeti a run for it´s money and
going for Maya as a common factor in bringing things together.

This may be disapointing when seen from a Softimage fan boy perspective but I 
think
it is obvious that being in wave two, I can not afford to limit myself in the 
choices
between existing tools, as I already limited myself to those existing tools.

Still, for Softimage, I would like to see a fully working system at some point.

But that would include styling, dynamics, interactions, animation and transfer 
as well
as actually beautifully endering using an elaborate shading and rendering model.

That´s a lot asked for in an upgrade and I doubt this can get enough momentum 
due
to it´s speciality, there´s other areas that might soak up all those ressources,
like first of all revisiting the rendering situation across the whole programm,
including creating, handling and rendering volumetrics.

Or not to forget, the amount of effort it certainly takes to make "Send to" 
work flawlessly.

"Send to" is a very good example of supporting wave two, even if it feels like 
it didn´t
bring anything new, it actually creaked open some of the doors in the way.

Caching is another thing that has brought a lot of benefits.

Cheers,

tim

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Mario Reitbauer]

I'm doing a hair job right now with zbrush + softimage ice (melena).
I will post the result as soon as we are finished and recap my experience
using ice.

What many people were allready mentioning is the lack of styling tools for
curves/strands. So you are limited to what you get out of Zbrush.
The next limitation in Softimage is that you can't rly create enough
strands, it's just getting too slow as soon as you add filler to your
styling so I thought (cause I render with arnold) we gonna try to write a
procedural for this to add filler hair at render time.

Other then this the Melena nodes and compounds are quite amazing but need
some time to set your styling up as you want it.
You definitly need to dig into it and use it several times to find out your
best workflow and how and when you connect which compounds to get to a
decent result.

So lets see were I end up. In the end it might be best to use Houdini
together with zbrush or like mentioned Yeti.


2014-02-16 12:04 GMT+01:00 Tim Leydecker :

> Hi guys,
>
>
> my emaildatabase got fragmented between seperating machines, please allow
> for
> delayed responses.
>
>
> Thanks for the many ideas and insights shed on Melena and Kristinka as
> well as the
> thoughts and opinions on how to potentially best implement a system in
> Softimage.
>
> Personally, I identify at least two groups of users, the first one capable
> of going
> in and actively developing a working system, the second group benefiting
> from such
> developments rippling into either a (commercial) plug-in or even
> functionality that
> makes it into a vanilla installation. Often with some delay and a limited
> feature set
> but out-of-the-box functions none the less. Sort of the 2nd wave on the
> beach.
>
> As much as I´d like to perceive myself differently, I must say I am part
> of group two.
>
> I may be able to find good workflows and good combinations of tools but
> there´s
> limitations in how far I will be able to push beyond already existing
> tools.
>
> As such, for now, I am looking forward to giving yeti a run for it´s money
> and
> going for Maya as a common factor in bringing things together.
>
> This may be disapointing when seen from a Softimage fan boy perspective
> but I think
> it is obvious that being in wave two, I can not afford to limit myself in
> the choices
> between existing tools, as I already limited myself to those existing
> tools.
>
> Still, for Softimage, I would like to see a fully working system at some
> point.
>
> But that would include styling, dynamics, interactions, animation and
> transfer as well
> as actually beautifully endering using an elaborate shading and rendering
> model.
>
> That´s a lot asked for in an upgrade and I doubt this can get enough
> momentum due
> to it´s speciality, there´s other areas that might soak up all those
> ressources,
> like first of all revisiting the rendering situation across the whole
> programm,
> including creating, handling and rendering volumetrics.
>
> Or not to forget, the amount of effort it certainly takes to make "Send
> to" work flawlessly.
>
> "Send to" is a very good example of supporting wave two, even if it feels
> like it didn´t
> bring anything new, it actually creaked open some of the doors in the way.
>
> Caching is another thing that has brought a lot of benefits.
>
> Cheers,
>
> tim
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Toonafish]

hey Mario, how do you solve the problem of creating hair on displaced 
geometry ? I'm currently using Melana and Kristinka strands in 
combination with SI hair, and it's really a hassle sticking the hair to 
the displaced geometry.


btw, reducing the particle display percentage of the pointcloud speeds 
up the display speed when using a lot of strands. But you prolly already 
knew this ;-)


- Ronald

On 2/16/2014 13:37, Mario Reitbauer wrote:

I'm doing a hair job right now with zbrush + softimage ice (melena).
I will post the result as soon as we are finished and recap my 
experience using ice.


What many people were allready mentioning is the lack of styling tools 
for curves/strands. So you are limited to what you get out of Zbrush.
The next limitation in Softimage is that you can't rly create enough 
strands, it's just getting too slow as soon as you add filler to your 
styling so I thought (cause I render with arnold) we gonna try to 
write a procedural for this to add filler hair at render time.


Other then this the Melena nodes and compounds are quite amazing but 
need some time to set your styling up as you want it.
You definitly need to dig into it and use it several times to find out 
your best workflow and how and when you connect which compounds to get 
to a decent result.


So lets see were I end up. In the end it might be best to use Houdini 
together with zbrush or like mentioned Yeti.



2014-02-16 12:04 GMT+01:00 Tim Leydecker >:


Hi guys,


my emaildatabase got fragmented between seperating machines,
please allow for
delayed responses.


Thanks for the many ideas and insights shed on Melena and
Kristinka as well as the
thoughts and opinions on how to potentially best implement a
system in Softimage.

Personally, I identify at least two groups of users, the first one
capable of going
in and actively developing a working system, the second group
benefiting from such
developments rippling into either a (commercial) plug-in or even
functionality that
makes it into a vanilla installation. Often with some delay and a
limited feature set
but out-of-the-box functions none the less. Sort of the 2nd wave
on the beach.

As much as I´d like to perceive myself differently, I must say I
am part of group two.

I may be able to find good workflows and good combinations of
tools but there´s
limitations in how far I will be able to push beyond already
existing tools.

As such, for now, I am looking forward to giving yeti a run for
it´s money and
going for Maya as a common factor in bringing things together.

This may be disapointing when seen from a Softimage fan boy
perspective but I think
it is obvious that being in wave two, I can not afford to limit
myself in the choices
between existing tools, as I already limited myself to those
existing tools.

Still, for Softimage, I would like to see a fully working system
at some point.

But that would include styling, dynamics, interactions, animation
and transfer as well
as actually beautifully endering using an elaborate shading and
rendering model.

That´s a lot asked for in an upgrade and I doubt this can get
enough momentum due
to it´s speciality, there´s other areas that might soak up all
those ressources,
like first of all revisiting the rendering situation across the
whole programm,
including creating, handling and rendering volumetrics.

Or not to forget, the amount of effort it certainly takes to make
"Send to" work flawlessly.

"Send to" is a very good example of supporting wave two, even if
it feels like it didn´t
bring anything new, it actually creaked open some of the doors in
the way.

Caching is another thing that has brought a lot of benefits.

Cheers,

tim


















--
Ronald van Vemden
---
3D Graphics & Animation
Cyberfish Laboratories | www.cyberfish.nl
Toonafish | www.toonafish.nl
tel. +31(0)20 5289291
fax  +31(0)20 5289292
email: ron...@toonafish.nl

Re: Softimage Hair options?

[Mario Reitbauer]

Problem is that you can only turn it down to 1% :)
Actually I don't use displacement underneeth fur/hair. You wouldn't see 
it anyways.
If I would use it, I would try to push the point/strandposition through 
the displacement map and place the strands to the position they should 
be.

Doing the displacing of the position manually.

Mario


On Sun, 16 Feb 2014 21:28:16 +0100, Toonafish  
wrote:

hey Mario, how do you solve the problem of creating hair on displaced
geometry ? I'm currently using Melana and Kristinka strands in
combination with SI hair, and it's really a hassle sticking the hair
to the displaced geometry.

 btw, reducing the particle display percentage of the pointcloud
speeds up the display speed when using a lot of strands. But you
prolly already knew this ;-)

 - Ronald

 On 2/16/2014 13:37, Mario Reitbauer wrote:

I'm doing a hair job right now with zbrush + softimage ice (melena).
 I will post the result as soon as we are finished and recap my
experience using ice.

What many people were allready mentioning is the lack of styling
tools for curves/strands. So you are limited to what you get out of
Zbrush.
The next limitation in Softimage is that you can't rly create enough
strands, it's just getting too slow as soon as you add filler to your
styling so I thought (cause I render with arnold) we gonna try to
write a procedural for this to add filler hair at render time.

Other then this the Melena nodes and compounds are quite amazing but
need some time to set your styling up as you want it.
You definitly need to dig into it and use it several times to find
out your best workflow and how and when you connect which compounds 
to

get to a decent result.

So lets see were I end up. In the end it might be best to use Houdini
together with zbrush or like mentioned Yeti.

2014-02-16 12:04 GMT+01:00 Tim Leydecker :
 Hi guys,

 my emaildatabase got fragmented between seperating machines, please
allow for
 delayed responses.

 Thanks for the many ideas and insights shed on Melena and Kristinka
as well as the
 thoughts and opinions on how to potentially best implement a system
in Softimage.

 Personally, I identify at least two groups of users, the first one
capable of going
 in and actively developing a working system, the second group
benefiting from such
 developments rippling into either a (commercial) plug-in or even
functionality that
 makes it into a vanilla installation. Often with some delay and a
limited feature set
 but out-of-the-box functions none the less. Sort of the 2nd wave on
the beach.

 As much as I´d like to perceive myself differently, I must say I am
part of group two.

 I may be able to find good workflows and good combinations of tools
but there´s
 limitations in how far I will be able to push beyond already
existing tools.

 As such, for now, I am looking forward to giving yeti a run for
it´s money and
 going for Maya as a common factor in bringing things together.

 This may be disapointing when seen from a Softimage fan boy
perspective but I think
 it is obvious that being in wave two, I can not afford to limit
myself in the choices
 between existing tools, as I already limited myself to those
existing tools.

 Still, for Softimage, I would like to see a fully working system at
some point.

 But that would include styling, dynamics, interactions, animation
and transfer as well
 as actually beautifully endering using an elaborate shading and
rendering model.

 That´s a lot asked for in an upgrade and I doubt this can get
enough momentum due
 to it´s speciality, there´s other areas that might soak up all
those ressources,
 like first of all revisiting the rendering situation across the
whole programm,
 including creating, handling and rendering volumetrics.

 Or not to forget, the amount of effort it certainly takes to make
"Send to" work flawlessly.

 "Send to" is a very good example of supporting wave two, even if it
feels like it didn´t
 bring anything new, it actually creaked open some of the doors in
the way.

 Caching is another thing that has brought a lot of benefits.

 Cheers,

 tim

--
Ronald van Vemden
---
3D Graphics & Animation
Cyberfish Laboratories | www.cyberfish.nl [2]
Toonafish | www.toonafish.nl [3]
tel. +31(0)20 5289291
fax +31(0)20 5289292
email: ron...@toonafish.nl [4]


Links:
--
[1] mailto:bauero...@gmx.de
[2] http://www.cyberfish.nl
[3] http://www.toonafish.nl
[4] mailto:ron...@toonafish.nl