Maxwell Render

Hi!

I was trying out the new ICE-strand support with some strands created with Melena but I get a "Data preprocess failed"-error. Is there something that I'm suppose to do differently with strands compared to the regular XSI hair?

Cheers

Haven't used Melena, but did you set the strand shape to cylinder or capsule? I've had mixed results with KH3 (whereas some of the KH2 setups worked fine out-of-the-box).

Failing the shape thing, you could export the render mesh, then import that to studio.

Could you upload the scene? There may still be cases where strands fail with certain ICE nodes.

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Next Limit Team
Merchant of happiness

mxwl_fjg: Thanks for your suggestions but no luck. I usually work with animated material so exporting the render mesh feels a bit clunky in my case.


Mihai: You can download Melena from herehttp://opensource.nestanimation.com/melena.html then try this scene: http://www.inpost.se/xsi/melena_crash.scn


Cheers

Did you try the scene that I've uploaded Mihai?

Cheers

I wanted to try Melena but the link doesn't work anymore....do you know where I can get it?

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Next Limit Team
Merchant of happiness

Ah, I see. I built a new scene from scratch without Melena. Try this instead: http://www.inpost.se/xsi/strands_maxwell.scn

I didn't know you could build strands just like that
I think there is a problem in general with using set data and changing the strand properties, I mean if I add self.strandLength it doesn't change the length?

It will work if you add a Emit Strands node, but there is a problem with setting data afterwards. I'll attract the developers attention

Another note, the Strand Trails, Growing strands, Dynamic strands work ok from the Create menu. However the dynamic strands from the Model Library creates two point clouds (fillerhairs, guidehairs) and each of them has a strand segment value (the guidehairs pointcloud has it in the modeling stack ICE tree). They must match or you will get the same error when rendering as in your scene. This will be fixed in a future update.

_________________
Next Limit Team
Merchant of happiness

Yes, I know it's kinda confusing but in the raw basic strands are basically just arrays of points so many of the attributes doesn't do anything if you dont create a compound that make use of the attribute. I'm doing a fur rig based on strands for a feature at the moment and have been experimenting quite a bit. They are pretty powerful when you realise how flexible they are in their simplicity.

Hope it gets fixed soon and good to know about the other compounds.

cheers

So how would you go about adjusting the strand length in your scene?
(trying to learn as much as possible about ICE...)

_________________
Next Limit Team
Merchant of happiness

If you don't use the included strand framework you have to create your own nodes and calculate the positions of the different segments with the help of vector math. There is a really good ICE training DVD from 3dQuakers about creating a strand system from scratch: http://3dquakers.com/web/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=42&Itemid=84&5c9d5f0343d962b1181ec77ea8fbcf86=db7630444af4df0503936d358dcbd8a2

It's fixed for the next update. Thanks for the report.

Great, thanks!