My Fur Tests

[abvfx]

Hey guys,

whoo let me wipe the sweat from my brow. Its my first WIP here, and ive been here for a few years on and off, but more frequently in the last year.

So, I wanted to make a thread about my journey with Houdini Fur.

As most of you know there is a new CVEX shop in the latest builds of Houdini.

Here is the first test ive done with it, but there is more coming.

For those of you who haven't caught my first test with it, here is is.

Im obvioulsy not happy with it but its a start.

More coming very soon.

-andy

[abvfx]

ok, so here is quick a test.

Trying alot of things out. I have a small project in mind to utilize fur. Im going to try and attempt to make a little white mouse.

So here is a patch test to try and get my head round it. Its not that dense, and to get any basic result i had to use Deep shadows, with a low opacity otherwise it looks more like hay (which it still kinda looks like.) Although after crawling through tons of reference mice have quite coarse fur.

anyways its the first step.

[edward]

If you haven't tried already, maybe a fake textured undercoat could help instead of cranking the hair resolution super high.

[abvfx]

oh yeah totally forgot about that tip. I remember reading about ti when using Paint FX in Maya etc.

But most of the time it was to help fake shadows, do you mean render some fur save the image, tile it and apply it onto the surface below? Guess it cant hurt, but there are areas on a mouse where you can see the pink flesh showing?

Thanks for the comments, i will give it a go. Cant hurt right.

Guess i better finished modelling this mouse.

Thanks again

-andy

[edward]

Er, not sure actually, I just keep hearing it and thus keep repeating it

[abvfx]

well i guess it wont hurt to try both right.

anyways, been a busy few days, sorry i havent updated anything yet.

so the first step to furring something is the mesh.

Here it is.

Just simple, base mesh, no UV's, the top view is wireframe obviously, and ive painted into the Density attribute (i didnt want to use a map right now since the mouse has no UV's yet, but ti will do).

at the moment i wont be using the Fuzzy toolkit or the OTL from the thread titled My Fur Stuff, for now at least, i need to get up and running with the current toolset in Houdini (which is playing up for me at the moment, cant render)

will get some tests running, as soon as houdini is better

[ofer]

Good looking model. Modeled in Houdini?

[abvfx]

To be honest, i made a half-hearted attempt at modeling it in houdini.

I made it in wings3d, its not that houdini isnt able to do it, its just to slow, to many click, too many procedures. But for procedural modeling, perfect, amazing.

So here is a few quick actual fur tests.

Now a few things to bare in mind. I just wanted to see how it would fly first, if it would work and establish a setup.

There are a few more things i need to work out, length map, density map (more hairs in which area, dont think poly paint can tackle that, too low rez). Also, could someone tell me if sculpt or edit (with sculpt) has the ability to move, not push/pull/normal etc.

Screenshot, and two different basic lighting setups.

But for now, still styling.

-andy

Edited March 17, 2008 by phrenzy84

[abvfx]

here is a little update. I need a proper lighting setup if i am to have the fur white, so for now its either black or grey.

[Guest Swann]

here is a little update. I need a proper lighting setup if i am to have the fur white, so for now its either black or grey.

Yep, definetely good direction, It will be nice to see Hip.

Edited March 26, 2008 by SWANN

[cellchuk]

here is a little update. I need a proper lighting setup if i am to have the fur white, so for now its either black or grey.

looking good.... :thumbsup:

[LEO-oo-]

Cool! Hoep we see updates!

[daisuke]

Thats looking good! mm i'm getting sick of the mice tho.. I just found one munching on our easter egg chocolate on our stove..

[abvfx]

hehe, well if this goes well then i have a whole bunch of other creatures/animals i want to fur up, plus some animation tests, but this one is the my maiden voyage with Fur and i want to get it right, textured, SSS, lit, rigged (plus dynamic hair) and animated. So it might be a while.

Nice to see some interest though, people posting for updates always keeps me on the toes to churn something out. At the moment its nothing, just UV'ed him. Again half hearted attempt in Houdini didnt go so well, but this project is about Fur, so for the time being i cant be preoccupied with too many other aspects of Houdini.

I will get a sample file up as soon as possible but really what you see is the result of the tutorials in the help files. Anyone noticed that i wasnt posting furred up creatures before tutorials were included in the help files? hehe

But incase your wondering what my setup is for the time being then head over to my blog. Just made a new entry about Fur, my workflow and some of the studios that do fur work.

Hope its a good read.

Stay tuned for more.

-andy

[junaid]

hehe, well if this goes well then i have a whole bunch of other creatures/animals i want to fur up, plus some animation tests, but this one is the my maiden voyage with Fur and i want to get it right, textured, SSS, lit, rigged (plus dynamic hair) and animated. So it might be a while.

Nice to see some interest though, people posting for updates always keeps me on the toes to churn something out. At the moment its nothing, just UV'ed him. Again half hearted attempt in Houdini didnt go so well, but this project is about Fur, so for the time being i cant be preoccupied with too many other aspects of Houdini.

I will get a sample file up as soon as possible but really what you see is the result of the tutorials in the help files. Anyone noticed that i wasnt posting furred up creatures before tutorials were included in the help files? hehe

But incase your wondering what my setup is for the time being then head over to my blog. Just made a new entry about Fur, my workflow and some of the studios that do fur work.

Hope its a good read.

Stay tuned for more.

-andy

Hi andy,

any tips on lighting fur to get nice internal shadows?

cheers,

Junaid.

[abvfx]

Hey there Junaid,

yeah there are alot of things to consider when lighting Fur. I was reading articles/papers on how other studios lit their fur models etc. At the time, i wanted to render White fur. which by the way is probably the hardest colour to render fur. You need alot of strands and the right shadow setup, fur shader setup and the right lighting setup, especially when white fur is quite reflective and absorbs the environment around it. So it would need some GI probably but im not going to do that.

So for the tests on the previous page, i chose to render dark fur, because you can get away with a less hardcore setup.

The Fur material had a few tweaked parameters, the root colour was darker than the tip, and the specular had a very low tightness so it almost appeared to be metallic.

But this is not a setup i want to keep or advocate anyone else use. I just wanted to understand the workflow more.

There is another project i am working on, i cant stop midway, so the mouse will be put on hold for a little bit, and right now i am modelling the next life form which i will add fur.

Its multicoloured and i hope to post my progress soon.

but for suggested reading i would check out pixar's papers on fur/hair(www.pixar.graphics.com) and Sony Imageworks on Stewart Little (just search here for Fur).

-andy

Edited May 14, 2008 by phrenzy84

[junaid]

Hey there Junaid,

yeah there are alot of things to consider when lighting Fur. I was reading articles/papers on how other studios lit their fur models etc. At the time, i wanted to render White fur. which by the way is probably the hardest colour to render fur. You need alot of strands and the right shadow setup, fur shader setup and the right lighting setup, especially when white fur is quite reflective and absorbs the environment around it.

So for the tests on the previous page, i chose to render dark fur, because you can get away with a less hardcore setup.

The Fur material had a few tweaked parameters, the root colour was darker than the tip, and the specular had a very low tightness so it almost appeared to be metallic.

But this is not a setup i want to keep or advocate anyone else use. I just wanted to understand the workflow more.

There is another project i am working on, i cant stop midway, so the mouse will be put on hold for a little bit, and right now i am modelling the next life form which i will add fur.

Its multicoloured and i hope to post my progress soon.

but for suggested reading i would check out pixar's papers on fur/hair(www.pixar.graphics.com) and Sony Imageworks on Stewart Little (just search here for Fur).

-andy

Hey Phrenzy,

Thanks for the reply, yeah I have light the fur before with maya and max. but didn't do much with houdini and i was trying to lit the fur with houdini couple of

days ago for test but couldn't get the nice results with depth map shadows.. since it was single frame i could effort to render with raytrace occlusion but

obesly its not the right technique for animation and stuff, I didn't do much R&D on it, may be i should try checking out deep shadows and stuff in Houdini.. thats why i

was wondering, if you already using some lighting setup with Houdini and may be a good idea to ask you... and yeah thanks i will check out pixar and sony imagework fur.

Cheers,

Junaid.

[abvfx]

Well there are a number of tricks, when it comes to shadowing.

1, self shadows will take forever if deep or raytrace, if you really need it, go with depth map. But remember fur has a certain look because the hair above/beneath it is bouncing light so you need to adjust the opacity of the shadow. Otherwise it will look like hay.

2, I think it was mentioned here in the this thread but a while ago i bought the making of Ryan DVD by Alias. In it chris landreth explains the hair setup and says he used a combination of depth map shadows and fake shadows. By fake, he meant he painted the surface of the object that was creating the fur then colour of the shadow, so it would give the illusion of self shadowing.

3, Unfortunately the resolution will have to be quite high for depth map shadows, but also add some filtering so it isnt fake looking. Plus i guess you should keep your light source as close to the subject as possible so the fur takes up most of the space on the depth map.

Deep shadows yield the best results results though, and i suppose you could use them for facial hair, but you have to keep an eye on the density.

That all i know about shadows and Fur. again this is all relative to my experience with Fur, hope it works out for you.

-andy

[abvfx]

So since the release of 9.5 i have been trying the new fur tools. Which are beautifully constructed.

There have been a few things in particular that i have been working on. One that im showing here is the mouse project (yes its the mouse again.)

anyways, i import the geo and started to get working on the grooming and settings. Here is what i ended up with .

yeah i know, pretty crap.

So i work on it some more, used more reference and i seen a post by daniel tonight (which helped alot)

And here is what i have so far.

there needs to be more time spent on the grooming, directions etc but i think its a step in the right direction.

I don't have teh time right now to go into , but i will make a blog post about the setup, settings and observations i have notice in getting from the last image post to the image above.

-andrew

[dbukovec]

It is looking very nice. Yeah grooming, eats up time. I have done a mouse and a cat but with shave & haircut in maya.

Hold on! it will be good!