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blinxpro
07-01-2006, 03:07 PM
Is it possible to use Hairfx to generate a forest? Or, perhaps a field of wheat? Not just simple grass.

I can see this as being very useful in a number of different ways. If it could simply replace hairs with objects.

Any ideas?
supremepizza
07-04-2006, 04:06 PM
It's possible and very cool. Render times can get Long-long. Very long when instancing all that geometry. I like the randomness the hair modifier gives it vs. the particle spawn method.

There's a cool tutorial somewhere out there that involves vertex painting and creating environments with hair. Sorry but I forgot where it was. If you find it post me a link I'd like to see it again.
supremepizza
07-04-2006, 04:14 PM
I'm sorry I thought you might want to know how.

Hair modifier->Tools->Instance Node->Pick

Then choose the geometry you want. Make sure you have "Merge Material" box checked to pickup the material from your geometry.

There's a short tutorial in max for putting leaves on a dog within max.
Matt-Clark
07-09-2006, 02:18 PM
Should be pointed out that the above advice is for Max's hair rather than Hair:Fx
Steve Green
07-09-2006, 04:18 PM
Just to complicate things further, the Hair in Max 8 has problems with instanced objects (flipping normals, messing up mapping), which it doesn't have in 7.5.

- Steve
blinxpro
07-10-2006, 07:30 AM
I am avoiding MAX Hair like the plague. I really prefer HAIRFX. I do appreciate the suggestions.

I have been all over the Hair FX docs and haven't found anything related. Any MaxScript possibilities?
Steve Green
07-10-2006, 08:14 AM
I think the only way you could get close with HairFX would be messing with the shape profile, but you would be limited to flat trees. I think Blizzard used this method for the feathers on a crow in Warcraft.

You'd probably be better off using maybe a combination of Scatter for the closer trees and maybe something like the free version of Forest by Itoosoft, or facing particles to bulk out the distance.

Unfortunately, Max is a bit limited by RAM on the amount of geometry it can load for forests. If you have Vray, there is a proxy object which gets around this, but you can't use it for animated meshes.

Cheers

Steve
supremepizza
07-17-2006, 08:01 AM
Should be pointed out that the above advice is for Max's hair rather than Hair:Fx

Oops... :banghead:
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