Is AM's fur as good as Sasquatch?

#1

HI,

I’ve been away from AM for a couple years now, using LW/messiah instead. I’m just wondering how things are looking on the AM front these days. I miss its animation power and ease of use. My main interest is with the new hair/fur features. I read somewhere that they rival Sasquatch. Is this true? That seems quite the claim. Anyone able to offer their experience/two-cents with the feature?

Thanks,

-Brian

#2

It has a lot of things that Sasquatch doesn’t have. For instance it casts shadows from any type of light. Something that bugs the crap out of me about sasquatch. And it has built in animatable guide hairs that are very easy to control. I was very impressed with it the one time I had to use it.

#3

Sweet.

OK, two questions.

  1. As far as the quality of the hair goes, does it LOOK as nice as Sasquatch?

  2. Does it render as fast? I’ve heard the hair promise before from hash, only to upgrade and get a useless feature. The hair in previous versions rendered slower than molasses!!! One thing I love about Sasquatch is the speed in which it renders.

-Brian

#4

I really didn’t push it far enough to know if it is of a higher quality. I haven’t seen anything that has blown me away but I can’t help but think that isn’t Hash’s fault because the tools look to be very complete. I can’t remember if there was a way to color the tips of hairs differently to their base. . . I seem to remember being a little surprised at that feature not being included but. . . I could be wrong.

I’m sure if you limit yourself to the same maddening limitations Sasquatch constrains you too. . . it would render very fast. It didn’t render fast for me because I’m a fan of raytraced soft shadows. . .

#5

Here is the documentation of the new hair:

 [http://www.hash.com/htmlHelp/v11.0/Technical_Reference.htm](http://www.hash.com/htmlHelp/v11.0/Technical_Reference.htm)
 
 In brief(ish) you can:
 
 control ALL surface properties allong length - last time I checked you could even make hair reflect.

vary most hair specific attributes allong length such as width and kinkyness

use multiple hair emmiters in one hair material

apply an image to the hairs (with an alpha channel)

There is quite a bit of control over things like how bowed (3d) the hair looks and whether it points towards camera (eg grass doesn’t point towards camera).

 Hair properties can be controlled with decals and materials
 
 etc. etc.

I can’t say how fast it renders compared to others but I can say that some optimisation has gone on since the thing was first written.

My only gripe is that you can sometimes see colour banding if you vary the colour of hair a allong its length a lot. You can get around this by using an image but this increases render time. You can also set more cps allong the length of the hair to smooth the transition but this will effect the way that the hair moves.

There is a lot of control over dynamics. I just tried the collision detection and it seems to be working pretty well (at least on the test that I did).

#6

The new hair is really nice, and versatile. I have seen hair, grass, feathers, even forests generated with it.
I haven’t any experience with this Sasquach thing, since it isn’t for A:M… But I’ve seen some pretty nice hair in A:M.
This one was posted by Colin Freeman in a W.I.P. thread on the official forum (I hope he won’t mind me linking to it):

Oh–the feathers on my “dodo” avatar were made with hair!

#7

While I do love the design. . . and I highly doubt I would be able to acheive the same results in Sasquatch. . . I can’t help notice the aliasing issues on the tips of the character’s hair. Is that a result of not enough passes?

#8

Yes. Also, topic starter, look in the “masters thread” for more hair examples.

#9

Thanks for the replies people!

-Brian

#10

Here is an example I’m working on, a really furry character named KONG!

#11

Wow! That is amazing. I dont see how anyone can fail to be impressed by that. Btw, your modeling tutes on the new Hash CDs are fantastic :buttrock:

#12

Here is a quick Hair test that I put together . . .

ftp://ftp.hash.com/internal/greg/Hair_Test.jpg

I think A:M’s hair is MUCH more powerful then Sasquatch.

take care,

Greg Rostami

#13

That link doesn’t work…for me anyway.

#14

Hey Greg, I would like to have a look at your examples but I get “access denied”.

#15

Sorry about the last post guys . . . here is the new link:

http://www.hash.com/users/greg/Hair_Test.jpg

take care,

Greg Rostami

#16

What about collision detection folks ? I posted a new thread ( I didn’t want to steer this one off on a new tangent :slight_smile: )

I’m trying to get my models scalp to act as a collision object.

( 69 views , yet no replies . )

Thanks

#17

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