Shave and Haircut...Opinions Please!

[AdamT]

I paid full price, so I guess I think it's worth it. ;) But it will *really* be worth it when it's updated with the current Shave engine that's being used in the new Shave for Maya. You can read some discussion about it here: http://www.postforum.com/forums/read.php?f=6&i=68287&t=68287

[bcbarnes]

I just got SH at the reduced price, and I think it is worth it. The GUI is a bit different - if you're used to C4D's GUI, the shave GUI for doing the hair styling feels a bit "hobbyish" - although supposedly it was designed like this to make the styling really easy - I'm not that good with it yet so it's hard to say. THe results, however, are truly impressive. Full dynamics, reflections and transparencies if you want them, and great quality. I've done a couple of heads, animated the spider that comes with it, and done a field of grass, and was very pleased in all cases with the results. Especially the fact that you can "disable" the hair while you are animating your character, so that the editor doesn't slow down too much.

The renders can be quite long (anywhere from a minute to several minutes per frame per hairy object) but that's the price you pay for all that functionality.

[robertkist]

SH is nice, mostly because it is superior to all the other C4D hair plugs, that also means there is no way around it. To style the hair a 2nd application is used, that is called from Cinema 4D. I don't really like it, because the interface is awkward compared to Cinema's. Render times can be very long if you have not a lot of ram (512 and less).

However there is a workaround you wouldn't guess first: Setting SH to use less RAM speeded up things considerably for me. The manual says it is slower, but this is wrong for people with little RAM, because your computer needs less temporary memory on your harddisk.

As conclusion I can just say, there is no real way around SH for C4D users, since there is no real competing product available.

[medula]

I paid full price. I feel it's worth every bit. I also look for forward to the new engince as Adam has stated. :thumbsup:

[Bucko]

OK, if I understand things correctly, Shave Tracer is a volume "material" put un an environment object much like that used by Pyrocluster and it makes all Shave effects available in the rendering instead of as a post.
Will this give me reflections, see through transperancies, the cool instance feature of Shave?

The Shave tracer is NOT available yet? So none of this may in fact work as advertised if we buy with discount?
None of the screenshots at Joe Alters site show hair in reflections so it would be greatly appreciated if someone on the C4D Shave beta could post a hair rendering with reflections, transperancies to see if it actually works.

There may be HUGE differances between how Shave Tracer and the regular post effect - Look at Pyrocluster to see totally different shots in Post compared to Atmoshperic.

[AdamT]

Just one note: transparencies are available under the current plugin. You just have to add a special Shave/Transparency tag to the transparent object.

[bcbarnes]

... and ofcourse, in the current plugin you can always use the "polygonal" hair object and get full transparencies, reflection, refraction, etc.

[ThirdEye]

I hope one day we will have S&H integrated into C4D as it is in XSI :rolleyes:

[AdamT]

Originally posted by ThirdEye_01
I hope one day we will have S&H integrated into C4D as it is in XSI :rolleyes:
That'd be nice, but I don't see the current setup as much of a disadvantage. It would be nice if Joe modernized the operation of the Shave interface, though. Like, it sure would be nice to have a mouse-wheel zoom feature.

[ThirdEye]

I heard that Softimage is the only company allowed to fully integrate S&H in its program, but i'm not sure about it... :shrug:

[mecha]

:thumbsup: Thanks!!!

I will probably be picking up Shave based on your opinions, but I have one quick question.

I have seen alot of fine / realistic hair created with Shave and Haircut...great, that's what its supposed to do.

What I want to know is can it also create cartoony hair. ie. thick strands, spiky, etc. The kind of hair game characters have in Final Fantasy, Tekken, Dead or Alive, etc?

I know this can be done with bones and basic geometry, but can Shave do it quicker? I do not want to export for games, I just like the look and wondered if Shave was flexibe enough to do this.

Thanks again!

[bcbarnes]

I'm not sure what kind of look you're talking about, as I'm not really up on the games that you mentioned, however, Shave can create any "object" for the hairs. You can, for example, give Shave tree object, and it will grow "trees" - like creating a forest or something.

I haven't played with this much, but it seems to be a pretty useful "out" for growing lots of different stuff.

[Thalaxis]

Originally posted by Bucko

The Shave tracer is NOT available yet? So none of this may in fact work as advertised if we buy with discount?

Maxon have stated that the next update will be free to current users, so if you buy with the discount now, you'll get ShaveTracer when it's available for Cinema.

Also, the only thing keeping it from working as advertised already is a few bugs, which Maxon and Joe Alter & co are working on fixing (well, from what I understand most were fixed with the new engine, so it's now at the point of integration testing with Cinema).

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