[mythwarden]

Hey all ;-)

The goal of this post is to get a collection of links to various places that relate to CG Hair in Maya along with recent developments for it.

Hair has improved in leaps and bounds from when I first started working in CG seven years ago. I�m curious as to some of the latest technologies or possibly other artist�s paths to realistic and long flowing hair.

Thanks for taking the time to reply. ;-)


-myth

[MarshallX]

Im watching my watch for replies to this one, sorry I cant help you tho man!
Try here, not sure if there is or not... www.highend3d.com

[Steven Stahlberg]

Long animatable hair in Maya? Sorry, all we have so far seems to be PaintFX, which is very difficult to work with. There was a tut on the Alias site on how to combine PaintFX with the Cloth module for better managing the movement, never tried it, seemed to be very cpu intensive.

[Lunatique]

I think most people still use strips of geometry and then map a hair texture with alpha channel on it. It seems to be the most practical way still. I can't imagine how friggin' long it would take to do it any other way. I mean, Aki's hair took more than 50% of the rendering time for Final Fantasy...or that's what I heard. Could be a complete exaggeration.

[ March 20, 2002: Message edited by: Lunatique ]

[mythwarden]

Marshallx- Thanks man...that actually did help, it's a great site.

Steven- I'm experimenting with Paint FX right now for doing hair. If it's a pain for a master like you, then perhaps I should hold off on it till something better comes a long.

Lunatique- I used strips myself for doing hair for a long time. After watching clips from Final Fantasy, I hadn't been sure if there was some new plugin that they used or a trick I wasn�t aware of. It turns out they did each individual hair separately.

Thanks for taking the time out to reply. ;-)

-myth

[mythwarden]

I found a good program for doing long hair in CG that will supposedly, be coming to Maya 4. I downloaded the demo of "Shave and Haircut" and liked what I had seen.

Turns out that they integrated this program into Softimage XSI V2.0

Anyway, here's a link for those who carried a similar interest in this subject.


Shave and Haircut

-myth

[lowlight]

Hi there, Mythwarden

I have a thread I posted on the subject of Long hair in Maya in the Highend3D forums, which includes links to different approaches and solutions. Here's the link
I hope it helps

[ March 27, 2002: Message edited by: lowlight ]

[mythwarden]

Thanks for taking the time out to post those, lowlight. Some cool stuff. ;-)

Did you by chance download the demo for Shave and Haircut? I was having a lot of fun with it. I'd suggest checking that one out too.

-myth

[lowlight]

Can't say that I have since I use Maya. Did they start making S&H for Maya already?

[mythwarden]

Looks like Softimage XSI V2.0 took over Shave and Hair...So likely you won't find it coming to Maya after all.


XSI is well worth checking out if your a Dev working with Cinematics or other high end work.

Otherwise its pretty expensive.

Here's a linkSoftimage XSI V2.0

-myth

[ March 28, 2002: Message edited by: mythwarden ]

[lowlight]

Actually...there is a beta of it floating around for MAYA that I'm sure you can find in the "Shaveman" newsgroup forum at E-Groups. The creator has been posting some of his WIP betas there...I believe..

[mythwarden]

I'll check that out. Thanks for finding that.

-myth

[Loki]

lowlight: my friend Steve is working on 'Shave' right now. A plugin for Maya. I think it's pretty cool - or must be, looking at the rings under his eyes ...