Integrating 3D models with photography
Interested in integrating your 3D work with the real world? This might help
# 271 06-05-2012 , 12:23 AM
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under the physicalsun1 you have shadow softness and samples directly below it. the samples will sort out the grain of the shadow softness

Jay

# 272 06-05-2012 , 04:54 AM
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Thanks dave & Jay. The 190 is on the back burner until my shipment of memory arrives. @dave, the grass paint effects converted to polygons works great.

The simple scene I created to experiment with DOF. An "infinite" plane with lots of spheres spaced equally.

Without depth of field and a sampling level of 32 gives reasonably soft shadows (Shadow softness set to 3). With depth of field turned on and even with a sampling level of 512 I still see graininess on the out of focus spheres.

It is this graininess I want to get rid of.

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# 273 06-05-2012 , 10:59 AM
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I dont no for sure but could it be your render quality setting..............dave




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# 274 06-05-2012 , 11:25 AM
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I suspected as much as well as the only way I could eliminate it was to increase the min/max sample levels under Raytrace/Scanline Quality section in the render options.

# 275 06-05-2012 , 02:28 PM
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Not sure the professional solution, but what if you render a depth pass and do the DOF in post?

# 276 06-05-2012 , 04:30 PM
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Thanks stwert. I actually want to try both methods.

Edit: While experimenting with DOF I encountered something that at the time made me say WTF but after thinking about it, it actually makes sense. The plane I use has only 4 vertices. On on each corner. When all the vertices fell outside the camera far clipping plane, the plane did not appear in the render.


Last edited by PixalZA; 06-05-2012 at 04:38 PM.
# 277 06-05-2012 , 08:24 PM
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Instead of using DoF on the camera, your best bet is to render out Zdepth passes and use those in comp instead then you can blur to your hearts content.

Also try using maya Hair for grass too not fur, you'll be surprised!!

Jay

# 278 06-05-2012 , 08:59 PM
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I just did a test too with maya Hair for you....the results after 5minutes were great...
see what you think. You can flood a polyplane with with a hair system and then overide the clump width to spread the clumps out, saves using loads of hair.....less is more as they say

Jay

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# 279 06-05-2012 , 11:59 PM
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Sweet Jay...as you have said there is more than one way to skin a cat (still havent worked that proverb out yet LOL)

cheers bullet


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"A Darkness at Sethanon", a book I aspire to model some of the charcters and scenes
# 280 07-05-2012 , 04:46 AM
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Thanks gents for all the advice. Who would have thought: green hair user added image

# 281 07-05-2012 , 07:52 PM
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An evening of creating some punked out hair. It definitely has possibilities. (Thanks Jay)

Couple of questions:
  • [1] How can I vary the length?

    [2] Is it possible to drive the "Hairs per clump" as a function of the distance from the camera? Thinking of creating a bunch of grass tiles so that I can decrease the "hair" density the farther away it is from the camera.

    [3] How do I keep the hair inside the bounds of the plane on which it is created when I increase the clump width? For what I want to do it does not really matter. I can use this for overlap.

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# 282 07-05-2012 , 08:10 PM
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I think I would use maya fur you have a lot of controls that you can paint on to it, this is just the preset with the length ajusted..............dave

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Last edited by daverave; 07-05-2012 at 08:14 PM.
# 283 08-05-2012 , 07:23 AM
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Thanks dave, I have tried it as well. I just did not post it here. I have tried paintFX, fur and hair. I prefer the paintFX, the only drawback is that one has to convert it to polygons for mentalray. As you pointed out with fur it is very easy to get good results. I found that hair a little bit more finicky to configure. It's not as intuitive as paintFX and fur (Had to go back to the manual a couple of times).

# 284 08-05-2012 , 08:52 AM
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If you are going to use fur change the map size to some thing bigger say 1024............dave




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# 285 08-05-2012 , 09:21 AM
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Will do that. Thanks dave.

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