If you said I would be working on hair styles and dresses a mouth before I found AM I would have said “your nuts”. And look at where I am now.

I have to say I do like the effect the hair system has on the animation but there is a lack of tools to work the hair. And I would like to open a discussion on possible new tools and tweaks for the hair system. And add them to the AM:Reports system.

1 A brush mode to lengthen and shorten a group of hair emitters like the normal brush mode.

2 The ability to select and manipulate more the one hair emitter at a time.

3 The CP and emitter shaft to change color shade when selected and if it is on the opposite side of the model where brush mode dose not touch it should change to a darker color. So you can see what will be effected by the brush modes.

4 A mirror mode for the hair...???

5 something to select groups of CP's by any patch instead of the CP's them self.

If you have some ideas post them.

Board Rules
Specifically:
No "Wish list" or feature requests

Sorry then delete it.


It was just to hammer out a list before I put it in the AM report.

Yeah, that is a surprise.. well, I would create a separate request for each of those, that way they can pick and chose which report they would like to complete (if any).

It's just from past episodes we know that these threads almost always turn into counter-productive Feature Orgies. The goal is to use what you have to make movies. If the suspicion is that some programmer holds the keys to your success, you will never finish anything. (20 years of experience talking here.) However, the next time we do a programming push, A:M Reports is usually the first place we look, so listing your feature requests there keeps them alive.

I hope that makes sense.

Absolutly... A:M Reports is a great place...

@DJBREIT:
You should write this in several reports there and best to create an image for what you want to do, if possible!

*Fuchur*

'3D Hair' in general is wacky. My 'Maya' colleagues won't touch it. I've seen some good YouTube samples out there from some other apps, but not many. Pixar did a good job of it on 'The Incredibles', but didn't say it was easy...and then resorted back to 'helmet-hair' on their next feature... Monster House...hrmm

I've been playing with A:M's hair feature for years now, primarily trying to get collision-detection to work. I know there are limitations, but there are 'out of the box' solutions out there, so keep experimenting.

Not Pixar.....it was done by the guys that did Polar Express. Pixar did cars next. Which might support you point more but then they did Ratatouille.

Depends... fur is widly comon... long hair on the other side is not.
However there are a few examples available where it worked well but with a high afford (ie Final Fantasy)...

*Fuchur*

Even better do a case study with exact steps and images showing EXACTLY how you want it to work. As Martin described it to me a while back; "Create a step by step tutorial as if the feature already existed." Not only does this help the programmers if they choose to pursue your feature you will soon discover "problems" with the features you want, forcing you to define them better. The more work you do for them up front the better. If you request a feature... but don't explain how it works, the programmers have to do everything. Doing a case study like this is actually kind of fun and you really see how complicated it is to come up with the solutions.

It's like when someone asks me to "do a website" and they don't say anything else. How many "pages", links or topics? What is the theme or focus of the site? Who is the target audience? etc. I tell them to answer those questions, create an "outline" and come back. My sister got real upset at me when I did that.

-vern

Vern- Was that your 'hot' sister? Maybe you should post a pic...

ON A POSITIVE NOTE- I'd like to recommend a 'forum' for those of us who have delved into the hair feature to share what 'pearls-O-wisdom' we have discovered...I'll even go so far as volunteer the 'Newton Physics' forum to be a split 'Newton & Hair' forum, for lack of a better name.

Yes it dose make sense and you right.




Yes this dose sounds better then having one big report. And it it would be easier for the programers to tackle a small list or one tool at a time. But I do have to put some of them together since they are depended on one another.



Hmm..... I may have some solutions but I will have to dig into this a little more to see if they will work. So I will put this on my hit list.



I hope to change that



Well I won’t need it for my self. Being an engineer I do have to work throw problems and solutions in my head ever day. But it would be useful for the programers to get a better understanding of each tools and features. On a side note there where other tools and features I did not post on since I did run into some problems. And until I find a reasonable solutions to the problems they will have to sit on the back burner.

Also the mirror mode for hair had :???� on it because of the calculation problem . But I think I have found a solution. Instead of having it turn on like the normal mirror mode and slow it down even more . Make it act like a key frame mirror. So when you finish one side of the hair you just hit a button and the other side will mirror it.



Yes this place needs a R&D department for the users. A lot of users have found a lot of novel solutions to problems. But unless you know who to ask it can be hard find that solution. Also having a R&D forum will allow you to set up and consolidate the different R&D projects, tutorial and tips and tricks that are currently scattered all around the forum into a sorted liberty.

It will also give use a place to focus on tools, features and problems. Ether to come up with a solution to the problem or to outline the problem, tool or feature so the programers have a better understanding of the topics. So when it is submitted to an AM report the programmer will have some additional info on the topic. Just some thoughts on that comment.

Thanks guys it may not be the info I was looking for. But it was valuable non the less.

I will submit what I have to AM report and let them take it from there.

I gotta say, Martin, I've been playing with the hair features in the EXPENSIVE proggies lately, and there really isn't much missing in A:M. There really isn't ANYTHING those other programs can di that A:M can't. And particularly in the area of hair (Thanks in part to the new hair shaders) there is very little room for improvement.

Now that I recently dumped a ton of ram into thins thing, I've got to try hair styling again. I should be able to get near realtime without hiding most of the model.

It is very nice already... but if there is something to add to make it easier or even more important: more productive, why not make it better than anything other software is offering?
It is better than most other solutions so. But there are equal solutions too... (damn hi-jackers...)

See you
*Fuchur*

SINCE we seem to be talking about CGI particle-based LONG hair for ANIMATION (If you just want stills, try *****), I have been playing with this for quite a while now, I have learned quite a bit about what works and what does not. FOR INSTANCE: Multipass(above 1 pass) kills the dynamic action of your 3D hair, it just lays flat- so leave MP OFF...

I regularly scan YouTube for CGI Hair, 3D hair etc to see what stellar examples are out there, and the BEST I've yet seen that I really want to emulate is this from a Lightwave user:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-uUavvjGGo WARNING: JUGS
Most are really bad, for example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agAyQPGg0ug...feature=related

I'm just lookin at the hair, OK? SEE how it does not pass thru the flesh? That's a GOOD thing. That's my goal, and I am DANG close, but once you add hair like this to a highly animated character, just like SimCloth, there are going to be problems with Collision-Detection.

We would all need to share notes on:

-PreRoll
-Bounce and Friction (Did you know these settings go OVER 100%?)
-Targeting...Constraint/Spring/None
-Mass/Drag
-The styling tools in styling mode

AND--- we need to take a head count to see how many of us are going down the same road

Oh yes theye sure are .good looking hair as you say

I really don't spend enough time on YouTube!

A little off topic but I may have some solution that may work in a round about way. I will start with the SimCloth. If you have a dress, pants and shirt that covers a large part of the body group select the body parts that should not be seen and set transparency to 100. This should render the body parts invisible.

Now using an off shot of that you can use the same method to make a shield so hair and or straps can use the shield as the deflector instead of the body. The shield can be placed an eighth to a quarter inch off the skin. You can add more CP’s and splines to the shield as needed to give more stuff to deflect off of. Since you wont see it there is no need to make the shield neat. But this is not an ideal method since it would add a lot of work to set it up. Give it a try and see how well it fixes some of the problems. I don’t have any thing set up to test this at this time.

PS this method could applied to the clothing and hair together. Where you first add a shield to the skin to keep the SimCloth deflected, then add a shield to the SimCloth to deflect the hair. It would be interesting to see if it would works. Or even a revers method could be used but it can only be used on SimCloth not hair.



You are so quiet right. For small projects this may not be a big problem but as some projects get bigger with more model in it the computer tens to slow down.

And to take it one step further you should be able to turn on the hair system per model instead of all at once. Since this is a big resource hog.

OK let keep it focused on grooming mode only.

PS John Bigboote If you can I would love see the results of a test. I would test it my self but I’m dealing with a migraine headache at this time. And I have limited experience with the Collision-Detection system.

I've used a combination very dense Force objects, 3x frame rates and proxy models to get nice results on my current film. Which has extensive cloth (the main character wears a floppy overcoat, all simmed) and one of the secondary characters has shoulder-length hair.

I've tried the 3X frame rate recently on long hair...and then render every 3rd frame... (good thinking) UNfortunately my results were uncommonly jumpy, was there another trick I missed?

Matt, one thing I can suggest (Though I have not actually tried, but have seen used in similar situations) is a collision shield. If you have an area where the hair is colliding more because the mesh isn't dense enough, but you don't want to add more splines to your model, make a shield that fits closely to the problem area, (Almost like a piece of clothing) that is as dense as you need it to be. Adjust it so that it collides, but make it completely transparent so that it doesn't render. I can see the 'Resurface' plug-in coming in very handy for this.

Does this help?

That is why I use force objects. No splinage, theoretically infinite density.

Hey! Ive found some good info in this tread, even the debatable post/s? ,I LOve the hair system and for 49$, cant be beat, even tho Im using 14c,PC. when the wife finds a job, I want to get the 300$ and its well worth it. As for hair, Im making mine fairly stiff so it bends just enough to look realish, for animals seems to work fine, on my Buffalo and Deer. with no jumping hairs. As for length, a length map works good and fastly done in AM /3D painter.

BRAINMUFFIN--- Yes, I'm hip to the 'forcefield' shapes... I even 'try' to use them to style the hair....
FROSTETERNAL--- Can you elaborate on 'force objects'?

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?s=&am...st&p=277362

I deleted a big Feature Request post. The only thing I'm going to allow in here is how to use existing features as they are. Up until now you guys are doing pretty good, (except for the guy with the self-righteous attitude - I deleted his post too).

SO--- to clarify...'Force Objects' are forge generators that are attached or constrained to the rig that give the hair a little extra 'push' in the direction it generally needs to flow toward...or collision detect-against...\\

VERY INTERESTING...

I’m sorry and I apologize.
That will be the end of that topic.