Maya particlesCloud problem / cotton

#1

Hey all !

I’m now working on a short film (graduate movie for school :slight_smile: )
We have a lot of forest/trees,
we decided to use matte as possible for the background, leaves mass for the middle/back, and handmade 3d leaves for the foreground.

Now i’m testing some rendering about the masses, we would like to translate this kind of 2D look into 3D (not realistic) :

look at the background red mass of leaves, not so much details, but a bit crispy, and with translusence on the border.

So I thought about using Maya particlesClouds to get a sort of cotton/cotton candy , but not so realistic. After few test, i got a shape that i like for a beginning :

at this point there is no lights, so no question about lighting/translusency already.
So i tried to import it in a scene, with a basic direcitonnal light, i like it cause it’s kind of fluffy, and the tree can desapear trough the mass, here ine the viewport I guess you see what i mean :

Proble, when I render, i get more longer render time (because of the light i guess, and there are a lot of particles), and i also get BLACKS particles, like if they where full shadowed, it is very ugly, and seems random :confused: :

So i tried to look for a way to disable self shadowing, but did not find, so i went to the MR flags and override for “no shadow” , so i get something closer to when it was with no lights, but stil some artifacts where the tree colide with it :

so, seems buggy…? or is it the tree shadow …? anyway it is ugly, and I don’t have shadows from the mass on the floor anymore.

Here is my particleCloud shader (simple, with a tweaked Cloud 3d texture) :

http://image.noelshack.com/fichiers/2012/46/1352731187-5.jpg

Any idea to solve this ?
Any other direction to get what i whant (translusency, leaves mass, etc…) maybe something less tricky ? I’m open to any suggestion, this topic is as much how to solve my problem as how to do what I want in another way…

thank you by advance :slight_smile:

PS : sorry for my bad english :s

#2

Hi all,
i finally fixed the problem, turning the diffuse amount more than 0 and removing my cloud 3D texture (it was too messy).

But I still don’t have what i want and it is too expensive, so i’ll forget about particles cloud for that, does anybody have an idea about how could I get something near to the 2D pictures I posted ?

I mean, not exactly the same, but something like a cloudy/fluffy tree ,with translusence on the edges, which take light and does not look flat.

I tried using textured planes, but it is too flat ant does not take the light (no backscatter, no translucence on the edges).

thanks

#3

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