When Hairy met LightWave

[WilliamVaughan]

Proton,
http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?t=46865

Post #118

This took me and a large portion of the community a year. In the end, we cracked it. ( Pun intended).
E.


Congrats...that was a fun read....great work!

[valu]

Hi EdBittner,
I agree with you and Proton, as far as push your own hability and stress the tool, the way it is.
And I talk about this all the time with my friends and co-workers, but we are here as beta testers, and we are helping develope a tool.....in this particular case FFX, if " WE " don't tell Newtek how to improove the tool, how they
gonna know how mutch to push.

I love FFX, and I'm doing a lot of work with it already. It's not perfect, but it "REALLY DO" the job. But Newtek is developing the Tool, and what we are doing here is Helping them to help us is our work.

If they don't like imputs, why to do a Beta forum ??? :hey:

[Cageman]

Hello Chuck, I already know that changes are saved with the scene, however this is a big problem if we want to work in a work environment where someone is working in the hair, while another anime character, because then we can not combine the two things.
This would be solved if we could save this information in a external file, or save it whit the object. So we can then load the hairs on animated character.

Thank you! Roque

A very good point and a great feature request. I suggest that you also post this as a feature request directly to the developers using Fogbugz. Simply copy/paste what you wrote! :)

[W@v3r4dd1ct]

now that is when william goes mad :)
great work proton

After 2 mins still laughing hahahahhahaha

cheers

[wacom]

Couldn't agree more esp. as far as rendering goes. Too many people want a click of button solution. Worse they compare or ask for things done in XYZ application "as seen on TV or the Movies" without thinking that someone took the time and experience to create it.

On a certain level it's like clip art vs. illustrating.

Hey, I'm guilty of feature lust from time to time, but I have to say a lot of people gave up on the new LW hair tools before giving them a go- and most of them were complaining about "render quality" what ever that means. I touched the new solution only for a day and was amazed at the results and render time...but that was after playing around with other hair solutions and having some slight KNOWLEDGE of what on a basic level drives an OK hair/fur render.

Things like having a back light etc. for many renders, or driving the shader at the correct incident angle, hair thickness and transparency from root to tip, seem to be VERY similar AND important from one application/renderer to the next.

I'd like to make a suggestion to the community here that I hope comes across the way it is intended.

It seems that a lot of users are quick to dismiss. I'd like to suggest going into things with a “can do” attitude. I have to have this conversation with students all the time and once they get past the “not possible”, “I don't know how” or “I can't” attitude they seem to accomplish things that they never knew they could. Also, you have the opportunity to accomplish things that even the programmers weren't aware the software can do.

It's all about problem solving with the tools that you have at hand instead of waiting for the tools of tomorrow. This is what has made LightWave users what they are in the past. When your CG Supervisor called for a flag blowing in the wind, we didn't give up and say we needed Dynamics..... we ran a procedural though a segmented poly plane and gave them a flag blowing in the wind. We have had dynamics for awhile now but we created the effect long before the tools came about.

This is how studios like Digital Domain, Cafe FX, Eden FX, Flash Film Works and other studios have been able to accomplish amazing things with much smaller budgets, smaller crews, and a lot less time then some of the larger studios.... of course some of them have grown bigger like DD over the years.

I'm not saying we shouldn't push for new tools...Hell, I push for new tools all the time, but I don't let it slow me down with the tools I have in hand right now.

If everyone took some time to work with the tools and explore what they are capable of we could end up not only pushing the tools farther...but we could get the development team incredible feedback that would in turn, give us even more powerful tools.

We are all going to approach problem solving from different angles and we all have different methods...so we could all learn from each other. In a 6 minute conversation with James Willmott, he introduced me to the ability to Clone a FFX object....that changed everything about the way I setup the hair/fur..... get what I'm saying here?

If you'd like to see a certain look produced with any given tool....go for it...attack that problem and come up with a solution....when you hit a roadblock, share your findings and your problem and see what the collective can introduce as possible solutions. I'd like to through out this quote that I tell my students:

“I know everything I need to know to do the things I've already done”

Meaning...you are constantly going to be asked to do things you've never done...accept that you haven't done it and know that you'll be able to do it once you've done it....you'll then have that experience to throw at the next challenge. This is what makes us production artists.... Problem Solving.

There is no hidden Star Wars button or Setting in our industry...we have to work at getting good results. With that said... I can't believe the amazing results with the default settings of FFX...right away you get great looking hair....and it renders incredibly fast.

The tools will continue to improve but they are working NOW....are there still bugs that need to be squashed and improvements needed...of course...but has that stopped us from creating amazing work in the past...not me...not any of the amazing artists that I look up to....

I'll close with this.... The next time you “wonder” if something is possible...say “I bet it is, just need to figure out how to do it” and I believe you'll have far better results then giving up before you begin.... it's called a self fulfilling prophecy.

No go and create and share your results...... you can do it! (in the voice of Rob Schneider, althought if you could hear me say it it would sound like a robot....which is also what my Zombie voice sounds like...and well...every other voice I try and do )

-William

ps- Really good to see more artists exploring these tools!

[johnliebler]

Hi, Ive been trying to use FiberFX on the image in this WIP thread:

http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?t=91098

and I've run into a question, which I haven't found answered yet. I coundn't get the hair to wave the way I wanted in the strand modeler, so I made the hair guides by rail extruding several one point polygons along a series of splines (as seen in several tutorials). However, I couldn't get the two point polys to act like strands. The only way I could get successful strands, was if I started with splines, and used the strand maker to create the strands. As far as I can tell, a "strand" is a two point poly chain with a one point poly at its root, and a decreasingly valeud weight map along it. When I tried to do this manually, I got a squiggly mess, where Lightwave thought that all the strands were joined together ( I suspect it has to do with point order). Anyway, I ended up cloning and moving the curves from the rail extrude, applied strandmaker and got a somewhat satisfactory result, but my question (finally!) is: How would one go about using a 2-point poly wig (not from strand-maker) along with FiberFX?

Thanks for reading this far,
John

[glspear]

Hi William, how do you use the clone feature in fiberfx as in the "Teddy bear" tutorial?

cheers

[WilliamVaughan]

Hi William, how do you use the clone feature in fiberfx as in the "Teddy bear" tutorial?

cheers


You need the open Beta...that feature was added after 9.5 was released

[glspear]

Thanks for the reply William, I was wondering it looked like you right-clicked and it wasn't happening for me. it was driving me crazy.

[sunpowerkidz]

Kungu Fu Fur

Hey William still looking for the elusive feathers image. Can one get the FiberFx numbers you used to achieve this image...looks almost like feathers...sort of.

Thanks

[WilliamVaughan]

which image

[gordonrobb]

Not sure if I should ask this here, but will anyway.

Using 9.6. When ever I put anything in the clump, stray, tuft etct, the patterns seems to go with the underlying polys. Even if I use a texture it still shows the polys. I have attached this image which granted has too high a setting, but shows what I mean.

Is there no way to spread the clumping more randomly?

[gordonrobb]

Oh, btw this is what I came up with trying to do an overgrown bit of grass.

[cagey5]

Have you tried feeding a procedural [Turbulance is a good place to start] into bump.

[fgreen]

Moved to a new post in General Support.

http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1100725#post1100725

[fgreen]

Moved to a new post in General Support.
http://www.newtek.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1100725#post1100725

[Simon-S]

http://www.newtek.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=63347&d=1221591422

I'd love to know some Fibre FX settings for this kind of fur. Been trying to recreate this look but failing miserably.

[WilliamVaughan]

This video shows the EXACT settings for that fur :)
http://www.3dtotal.com/team/Tutorials_3/video_hair_system/hair_system_01.php

Enjoy

[Simon-S]

You are a legend! Thanks :)

[alkart2003]

Has anybody had problems with FFX showing up with VPR? I doesn't seem to work for me. I've tried differnt objects and turned on volume only and nothing still works. Also it is rendering slow in an F9 render. We were hoping to use it in future productions but it still seems unreliable.

[Greenlaw]

Has anybody had problems with FFX showing up with VPR? I doesn't seem to work for me. I've tried differnt objects and turned on volume only and nothing still works. Also it is rendering slow in an F9 render. We were hoping to use it in future productions but it still seems unreliable.

It's working fine here in VPR and f9; in fact, it's working well enough in our tests that it will probably be used in the next job where we need hair/fur.

You might already know this but the first question asked of new 10.1 users having problems is: Did you use clean configs? As explained in the installation notes, LW 10.0 config files are incompatible with LW 10.1 and they will definitely cause problems with FFX and other 10.1 features.

Hope this helps.

G.

[alkart2003]

Nope. I tried new config files for 10.1 and still no luck. FFX wont show up in VPR with any object. Could there be anything else?

[jasonwestmas]

Nope. I tried new config files for 10.1 and still no luck. FFX wont show up in VPR with any object. Could there be anything else?

Camera Icon, is it highlighted in the vpr viewport? VPR won't render volumetrics without that on.

[alkart2003]

O.K. I am able to get some objects to appear with FFX in VPR and some won't. I'm not sure why.

[alkart2003]

I tried a model of a T-Rex I am working on just to try out FFX and it wont do anything. Things with lower poly counts work better than higher polycount so far.

[isaac3d]

I'd just like to say a big thank you to William Vaughan for all the videos about Fiber FX.
I'm a newbie to Lightwave and especially Fiber FX so you have really helped me on the learning curve. It is clear that you are a teacher and a good one.
Your videos have really inspired me and I'll be playing with Fiber FX to make some nice hair (I hope).
NewTek should have you on their payroll. They would sell many more copies of Lightwave if people understood how to use it the way you have shown.
Maybe you could help them re-do their manual too ;)
Thanks again and keep up the good work.

[valu]

Agreed ! [Thumbsup]

[jasonwestmas]

The second biggest mistake with FFX is that the scale of the model may be too large. Try to stick closer to real world sizes and FFX will be far easier to use.

[Shnoze Shmon]

I had some time this weekend to test drive Fiber FX in 9.5 and wanted to share some of the images.

Just curious, why you went back to 9.5?

Also, I haven't gotten around to watching all of your Fiber FX so I wanted to ask if every technique you used on these is in those tutorials?

One more thing. In order to make a stripe or other distinct geometry, in the hair/fur, what controls do you use?

Thanks!

[Shnoze Shmon]

ummm... I really should have looked at the start date of this thread... and the fact that there were multiple pages... lots and lots of pages...

boy am I embarrassed...8~

[dwburman]

Back then William Vaughan was employed by Newtek. He's since moved on to other things, though he still pops in once in a while. :)

[sony]

funny