hair and eyelashes

[anakinskywalker]

Have you tried Maya Fur or Paint effects?

[Tarscher]

since i am a maya beginner i would like to see a step by step tutorial. I 'd like to build eyelashes like on julians site site here (http://www.cg-art.i12.com/news.html) and I think he doesn't use fur.

kind regards
Stijn

[RichSuchy]

personally I think joe Alters Shave and a Haircut is the way to go... But that is a plug in, you would have to purchase it.

http://www.joealter.com

[stallion151]

just like annakin said, have you tried Maya Paint Effects?
There are plenty of tutorials for that.

http://www.boris3d.de/cloth.html (http://)
http://www.boris3d.de/pfx.html (http://)

and when you get stuck just ask us. But the best way of learning is experimenting, and just sticking through your problem until you understand why Maya is so annoying. :scream: :applause:

stallion151

[craigs]

This is something i've been looking into recently, it's not just get the hair to behave correctly, it's also getting it to render correctly.
I've recently been trying a process of using cloth(syflex) to wrap deform curves nd using renderman to render them out as Ri-curves, but I still have to get a good shader working on them.
Shave and Haircut I beleive has connections into renderman, or you can use the native maya renderer, i don't think mental ray supprots rendering of curves, although i might be wrong on that.
The problem i found with maya fur, is that it's based on the normals, and when you bend a surface, the fur tends to stick out from the normal rather than lying flat to the surface, i think you could use attractors on top, but that could get a bit messy.
It would be great if someone could post and indepth tutorial on a really good process for controlling the motion, and the look of hair.
I've tried paint effects too, but your limitted to the maya render with these, although you can now convert them to polys in maya 5, but im sure that would make your seen very heavy, i've tryed this and so far not got very promising results.
I definately think rendering curves give you good results, and you can control them with cloth simulators.
Sur if anyone can add ideas to this, please do so.
Regards
Craig
:thumbsup:

[RichSuchy]

i believe mental ray has a new hair object class or some such, but Im not sure of the specifics... Joe's plug in utilizes it and he is working with the people who make MR as I understand it to make it beter... its in Beta now.

[RichSuchy]

Originally posted by craigs
This is something i've been looking into recently, it's not just get the hair to behave correctly, it's also getting it to render correctly.
I've recently been trying a process of using cloth(syflex) to wrap deform curves nd using renderman to render them out as Ri-curves, but I still have to get a good shader working on them.



I havnt yet tried Syflex though I'd love the oportunity to play with it. Ive been trying to make maya cloth work for me, but sometimes I just can't explain some of the unexpected results I get from it.

I had to make a pleated skirt... those darned folds are a pain.

back to topic. I was considdering using layers of cloth for hair. Hair tends to move in sheets on a model anyway, but I dont have the skill to make a volumetric shader, I would be stuck just painting maps on each sheet.

Joes plugin is nice you can lock the hair to those cloth sheets if you want, so I wouldnt have to write a shader... and for messy hair I could use a diferently designed wig that can blow free.

[tomb]

I've just added a new tutorial on my site for creating eyelashes. http://www.screamingghost.com/ . This is the same method Dr Julian uses.

BTW Rich Syflex is a beautiful plugin. I tried using Maya Cloth for the first time recently and I never knew it was that slow and tricky to use.

[RichSuchy]

Originally posted by tomb
I've just added a new tutorial on my site for creating eyelashes. http://www.screamingghost.com/ . This is the same method Dr Julian uses.

BTW Rich Syflex is a beautiful plugin. I tried using Maya Cloth for the first time recently and I never knew it was that slow and tricky to use.

Hey thats much better than my method! and makes it easier to do blend shapes as well. On thing though.. I used to use a 3 sided cone with 3 hight divisions... that worked well once sub-d was applied, but now that Im using MR I need to use a square cone, with tine quad, cap at the top, so that Mental ray will render it. Your way gets around that too because I dont need to worry about keeping the geometry simple enough to edit easily with latices and by hand.

Very Nice, Thank you.

I think Ill redo my lashs this way to practice it and keep it in memory.

[craigs]

Doe's anyone know if Mental ray support rendering of curves like Ri-Curves, or doe's it actually support rendering of fur.

[RichSuchy]

Originally posted by craigs
Doe's anyone know if Mental ray support rendering of curves like Ri-Curves, or doe's it actually support rendering of fur.

Mental Ray doesnt support Maya fur, I dont know about the Ri-Curves

BUT Shave Supports Mental Ray in version 5... apparently 4.5's implementation was too dificult to make it worth supporting.

[tomb]

Originally posted by Rich Suchy

BUT Shave Supports Mental Ray in version 5... apparently 4.5's implementation was too dificult to make it worth supporting.

Yeah that was funny. I was rendering with MR Ri-Curves Shave 2.1 and they looked fine then I upgraded to Shave 2.2 and they stoped rendering because Joe dropped support for Maya 4.5. Anyway Ri-Curves seem to render very fast compared to Shave native or geometry renders.

[ceql]

mmm, great tutorial Tomb, Thanks! :applause: :beer:

/me will save and bookmark for later use! ;)

[Gremlin]

dude, tomb's tutorial is da beezy... i like the way he does those eyelashers right thurr! :D

such genius... *drool*
Cheers,
:beer:

[craigs]

SO inderstand you can render curves so to speak through shave to mental ray, but can you actually turn just a simple B-spline curve in the maya gui into a MR_curve and render it..
This would be lovely, anyone know the how/if procedure..
Cheerz
Craig:)

[kiri]

hey tomb, i followed your tutorial, and it worked really well!
but... ive modelled my character with polygons, so is there a way i can do your eyelash thing with polys (not subD)???

i managed to follow to do the whole thing up until the end just by converting first, but how can i then get the eyelashes to "stick" to my poly character (for when i move the eyelids etc)??


thanks a lot!!

[Atwooki]

kiri:

how can i then get the eyelashes to "stick" to my poly character (for when i move the eyelids etc)??

What you need is the 'curveOnPoly' mel script; you can find this on 'highend3d.com (crvOnPoly.mel)

tomb:

Excellent tutorial!

Atwooki

[kiri]

hey Atwooki, cant seem to find that script on highend, are you sure its the right name?

[tomb]

Hi Kiri,
you can extract the curve off a poly surface just as easily. Just make the surface live then draw a curve directly onto the polygons where you want the lashes to be rooted :)

Originally posted by kiri
hey tomb, i followed your tutorial, and it worked really well!
but... ive modelled my character with polygons, so is there a way i can do your eyelash thing with polys (not subD)???

i managed to follow to do the whole thing up until the end just by converting first, but how can i then get the eyelashes to "stick" to my poly character (for when i move the eyelids etc)??


thanks a lot!!

[kiri]

thanks tomb, i decided to go with the mel script that lets the curve be made from the poly edges (thanks atwooki), since by making the surface live and drawing the curve on, i cant find a way to have the curve (and lashes) respond to movements on the base mesh.

anyway, thanks for the tut! :)

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