Who wants Sasquatch ported to messiah?

[chikega]

OK, I'll vote first - that's a big fat "YES" for me:thumbsup:

[tjnyc]

Include me in times 10.:thumbsup:

[Sil3]

Sas/FPrime combo would be sweet :buttrock:

[Labuzz]

Yesssss!

[tjnyc]

Has anyone contacted Worley about development for messiah? Did they state that they would bring products over if there was enough interest?

[chikega]

Several of us posted a request on the Yahoo!Worley forum several months ago ... maybe we should let our voices be heard once again ... going over there now..:D

[Julez4001]

SweetJulez -- chiming in with YES!

[tuna]

Yarr!

[Wegg]

I ask about Messiah support for Sasquatch every time I deal with their tech support or order new products. The big problem to me is the fact that Sas doesn't do raytraced shadows and messiah is ALL about raytracing. I think Meshpaint and some dynamics voodoo might be a better solution for us Messiah Fur . . . needing. . . .people. . .

[fwtep]

Copying my post from the FPrime thread:

Just so you know, posting here won't do much. Since Steve doesn't currently have any messiah ports why would he be reading the messiah forum? He might check in, but it's not something you'd want to count on. Send an e-mail off to Steve and let him know.

And I would bet that asking him if you can put in a pre-order now (instead of just saying "please do a port") would get his attention quicker. You can do a Search in the messiah docs for Worley for a little more info. :-)

Fred

[Wegg]

Hey Fred,

Do you think the new messiah shader tools are robust enough for someone to write their own fur shader? I know thats how they get fur in Renderman. . .

I'm just not liking the way Sasquatch forces you to deal with shadow maps instead of uber crisp controlled raytraced shadows.

[fwtep]

I don't know anything about shader writing. I *believe* everything that's necessary is in there, or that if anything is missing it can be added, but it's more of a Lyle or Fori question.

Fred

[chikega]

What a great idea!!

<in my best Darth Vader impression> "Now your failure is complete ... if you will not join the dark side, perhaps she will ..."

Just replace above with Steve Worley and Joe Alter respectively. :)

Here's Joe's email (joealterinc@hotmail.com) - let the barrage of requests begin <mou-ha-ha-ha,
mou - ha - ha - ha!>

:D

[dfaris]

I'm in

[fritz.arn]

Yes, please.

Sasquatch for messiah!!!!!

[LoScuro]

Yep yep!!

Messiah & Sasquatch!!

[tjnyc]

Originally posted by chikega
What a great idea!!

<in my best Darth Vader impression> "Now your failure is complete ... if you will not join the dark side, perhaps she will ..."

Just replace above with Steve Worley and Joe Alter respectively. :)

Here's Joe's email (joealterinc@hotmail.com) - let the barrage of requests begin <mou-ha-ha-ha,
mou - ha - ha - ha!>

:D

Gary,

Unfortunately, this is a two-edge sword. One Joe Alter doesn't do ports himself, so it is useless lobbying him AFAIK. You can looby some other company to license Shave and port it over to messiah, but Joe Alter's license agreement seems to be rather unfriendly and requires one to jump through many hoops, which in part was what killed ShaveMax with the Brazil guys. So to sum things up, it would be highly unlikely it will ever come to messiah, unless of course if the pmG guys park a boat load of cash in front of Joe Alter to license Shave. ;) Our best bet for Shave would be to use with our host apps, C4D or Maya. I would go with the Maya version as it is cheaper than the C4D version(non-network rendering), and you get up to date fixes and features, which you most likely won't see with C4D's Shave until the next version.

Lets' hear it for Worley. :thumbsup:

Cheers,

[Qslugs]

Yeah really, as much as I love the styling in shave, I wnat no part of that for Messiah. Let's hear it for worley is more like it. I'd rather have styling issues than unfinished plugs that never get finished.

[Wegg]

I'd rather see someone new step into the picture. Messiah is all new baby. Worley and Joe's pluins are what they are due to work arounds and limitations within their entended platforms. We don't have those same limitations so lets have someone start from scratch and do a bang up job of it. Maybe just fur first.

[ravioli_rancher]

Hello,

I agree with Wegg.

I'd rather see Messiah:Studio 2.5 or 3.0 implement Hair natively with the render node.

If pmG needs financial incentive, then have them offer another pre-release special.

If this team can build a completely new renderer, with support for ZBrush 2's displacement maps, then I have faith they can build a slick new hair and dynamics system.

Even if it takes five years. :)

[lmilton]

Originally posted by Wegg
Do you think the new messiah shader tools are robust enough for someone to write their own fur shader? I know thats how they get fur in Renderman. . .

I'm just not liking the way Sasquatch forces you to deal with shadow maps instead of uber crisp controlled raytraced shadows.

I don't see any barriers to someone doing writing a fur shader. m:s 2.0 Plugin API gives more shader-specific abilities (casting/tracing) and greater access to data. And of course, if there *is* something missing, we'd work directly with developers to find solutions.

So, yes. It's doable. But like I've said in the past, we're very serious about the renderer... one way or another, there will be a top notch solution for fur/hair in later versions.

-lyle

ps: if anyone is interested in doing fur or hair shaders and would like more info, we can start a separate thread and I'll be happy to answer your questions. Or you can contact us privately.

[Wegg]

They already have the dynamics engine. I have used it several times. Maybe just some object instancing like. . .

http://www.evasion3d.com/projects.html

http://www.polas.net/plugins/cloner.html

Only something that doesn't work with a modeler. Something that just happens at render time.

[ljilekor]

yep, yep, yep

[Qslugs]

Wegg, I agree with what you mentioned previously about doing something all new. They do already have the dynamics in place, I assume it would work just fine for guide hairs. I think the shading might be there as well. I think the only parts left would be styling and interpolation. I know there are a few plugs for Lightwave that handle that quite well, not sure about how the other messiah supported apps would handle styling though.

Also, here's the tutorial for using the external shave app to make guides for sasquatch

(I case someone missed it the first time it was mentioned on flay)

http://www.digitez.com/Tut_ShaveToSas.html

In all fairness I did link to an embeded page on the authors main site. I assume that if anyone is to use this technique they should drop the author a email and thank them for the technique :)

[tjnyc]

I would prefer not to go with actual rendering of polygons, but rendering curves much in the same way it is done with renderman. The guide curves can be created and used as particle geometry and attached to a surface, with variables for length, scale, kink, friz and so on. The dynamics does seem to be there, the only problem would be with shadows, most fur/hair setup utilizes shadow maps, raytraced shadows tend to exhibit many artifacts, and often require brute force super sampling to get production quality. It is hard to say without looking at what the API offers, but it is possible to create uber soft shadowing much like in renderman to be used for fur and hair.


Cheers,

[tjnyc]

Here is my outline for a possible hair/fur system.

1. Be able to render a curve. (important, if you can't render a curve everything else goes out the window)
2. Create guide curves.
3. Using the particles system and with expression create instances of hair with varying attributes definable by the user. Without particle id this would be very difficult, luckily messiah supports this.
4. Apply dynamics; spring, wind, gravity, friction, and lag.
5. Create custom surface, light and shadow shaders for fur/hair.
6. Fur coloring and combing using texture maps.

Does anyone see something missing or off, let me know. I'll probably start cracking on this as soon as 2.0 is released. But don't let me stop the petitioning going on for Sas. No need to recreate the wheel if one could be made available.


Cheers,

[tjnyc]

Check this out. I think this will be doable.

http://stabacco.deathfall.com/images/hairrendering/render.jpg

http://stabacco.deathfall.com/hair_rendering.htm

A user will create their hair patch surfaces, add dynamics as you see fit, and then generate hair using what will amount to be a script that create hair curves based on your hair patches. Attach hair shaders or create your own. The animation should be bakeable from the patch.

The only thing is that it is for long hairs and not fur and no variable for clumping, but that could be added in.

Now all I need to know is if curves are renderable?

Cheers,

[dfaris]

Originally posted by tjnyc
Check this out. I think this will be doable.


http://stabacco.deathfall.com/hair_rendering.htm

A user will create their hair patch surfaces, add dynamics as you see fit, and then generate hair using what will amount to be a script that create hair curves based on your hair patches. Attach hair shaders or create your own. The animation should be bakeable from the patch.

The only thing is that it is for long hairs and not fur and no variable for clumping, but that could be added in.

Now all I need to know is if curves are renderable?

Cheers,

I like this idea. make your hair out of polys nurbs whatever, shape it the way you want then run that script and it will generate hair using the curves fron the polys/nurbs. now if the script would generate layers also that would be even better. And make the layers a user setting and a way to give it materials hmmm I like this idea.

[pelos]

well, i am no a big fan of sas, i belive there other easy way for hair as also other aplication, is true, we know sas for LW, but, if these guys can create there own program, there own render, with great features, dont you thing the can do some interting thing for a hair solution?:thumbsup:

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