Furly problems.

#1

Hi there Jeremy.

My bunny has a few problems that I hope you can tell me how to solve.

Firstly, painting the Fur length attributes effects the entire surface. The ears and legs have been subjected to this and the areas in which I did not paint over became so much shorter than the initially and I can’t find a way to lengthen them. The attributes of the fur surface did nothing. Painting basically messes up the initial settings.

Secondly, I can’t seem to get the fur to pick up the reflected lights even though they have been included in the fur shadowing attributes.

Hope you can help.
thanks
Tze Yi Ang

#2

For the fur length I have found out that if you set it globally it normalizes it to your global value you set initially.
Say you set the global fur length to 7… you begin to paint and suddenly your fur snaps to a smaller size. This is because maya in her awesome assumption on user demands normalizes the length from 0-1 to 0-7. You will need to repaint the whole thing or flood it and then scale it down; either way you gotsa paint ze values.
By refelected lights you mean like specular lights or you mean environment reflection lights?

#3

It’s environment reflected lights. If you look carefully, green light is being reflected from the green floor. I used 2 spot lights to do the job. However, it seems that only the nurbs surfaces are effected and not the hair. And remember, that I added the lights to the Fur shadow atrributes.

Please advice. Thanks.

#4

ok I see what you mean now.

  1. select the fur feedbackNode
  2. open window->attribute SpreadSheet
  3. goto render tab
  4. you will see “visible in reflections” set it to 1.
    see if that works…
#5

Once you start mapping the fur length in a particular fur description, you should set the maximum fur length through the Map Multiplier under Length>Details. Once you start working this way, you might want to map the fur length on all the surfaces in the fur description. Some of them could start with a “flood” to whatever default value you’re using, such as 0.5.

-jeremy

#6

I don’t think you could make the fur reflective. There’s no reflectivity option in the fur description, and that could be because the fur renderer doesn’t even see the geometry or surfaces near the fur.

Light the fur with lights, and don’t expect raytraced reflections on the strands of fur. In fact, turning off raytracing might be a good move for this whole project.

-jeremy

#7

I am curious as to why you want reflection on your fur. Most of the time specular color of the fur is usually very slight; glints to be more precise. Wouldnt you save a lot of render time by not trying to ray trace reflections and just use spotlights? Doesn’t fur have a lot of diffuse with shadows giving it volume?

edit:
jeremy nailed it thanks for the input. Yeah ray tracing is a huge no no for fur or hair in general unless you wannna make neon tubes but thats another topic…

#8

As I had said earlier, the reflected lights are actually 2 green spotlights. The is NO GI and NO raytracing.

And I’m not trying to make my fur relfective. I just want it to pick up the green light of my 2 green spotlights. It should look slightly green.

thanks

#9

Ah! I understand your problem! Since you are reading Chapter 8 now (right???), take a look at Figure 8.5 and how a green light illuminates a pure red ball. :slight_smile:

-jeremy

#10

Do you recommend using auto mapping for Fur shadows?

The Red book that you recommended says that it is not a good idea and that even auto focus should be turned off also.

thanks

#11

You want real shadow maps for most (if not all) of the lights on the fur. Like I was saying in class, auto shading is just a cheat, like a gradient getting brighter at the tip and darker closer to the surface, not real shadows.

-jeremy

#12

I noticed that the Teletubby ground blocks the reflection spotlights even when I have unlinked them. The nurbs surface of the bunny does receive the light though, just not the fur.

I have to ensure that the spotlights have to be above the ground in order for the fur to receive the light.

I also notice shadow artifacting on the bald ear area. Anyway to get rid of it?

thanks

#13

BTW, I’ve just redid my 3rd kitchen. Any comments?

thanks

#14

Oh, so your problem was that the fur renderer didn’t know about light linking? OK, that makes sense.

Kitchen could use softer fill from the sky, and the highlight on the side of the table looks a little hot.

-jeremy

#15

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