Is anyone using Ornatrix to make hair?

deohboeh

Should I use Ornatrix or other such software for hair? What are you using to make realistic hair? Are you using GMH2? What is your process for next-gen hair?

Makkon

I hear there's a great pipeline for making good hair with Xgen, that now ships with Maya2015, but I have yet to see any documentation for it specifically pertaining to game hair.

I'll add my question to yours, since I want to know also.

elGuapo

Not specifically for games, but here is an interesting demo on using XGen for doing long hair:


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBzQGgMG3dg"]Maya Monday - XGen tube groom for long hair - YouTube[/ame]

JacqueChoi

The only decently made hair in games that I've seen is simply brute-force modelling with non-intersecting hair cards.

I've seen hundreds of videos, and nothing that yielded great results.


From what I've seen, there is currently nothing that beats brute force.

Gav

I still think brute force is best, unfortunately.

I use Ornatrix from time to time, and it does give decent results - sometimes. Though, like a lot of plugins and apps, it seems to just fall short of being flawlessly dependable. you'll get interescting cards, probably higher meshes than if you just did it by hand and, I think, still need to wrestle with a shit tone of UV islands.

GMH, I haven't tried, but isn't it for super high rez hair - like a way better fiber mesh? From what I saw, it was like the opposite of Ornatrix...

Baj Singh

Brute force with pre-unwrapped planes. Its still the best way to keep that organic look (imo).

weee

speaking of hair in game, AMD's tressFx in latest Tomb Raider is quite good, at least it worked on me, but since its not widely used, I can't tell whether it can stand of time.

deohboeh

Thanks for the replies guys.. I guess it's back to extrude, move, rotate, scale, extrude, move, rotate, scale, extrude, move, rotate, scale, and repeat.

@weee I feel tressFX is the next thing but it will still take sometime to be widely implemented. I saw the demo and it looks really cool but still a bit niche as most characters don't have too long hair. That said who knows what's going to happen next.

Baj Singh

If you take your hair planes into zbrush, with your alpha applied as a texture (with anti-aliasing and transparency on), you can manipulate them in there. I find that much faster than in Max/Maya.

deohboeh

Baj Singh wrote: »

If you take your hair planes into zbrush, with your alpha applied as a texture (with anti-aliasing and transparency on), you can manipulate them in there. I find that much faster than in Max/Maya.

I haven't done this.. Gonna try this tomorrow. Thanks!
I was using curves for long hair in ZB but sometimes the curves are really hard to manipulate..
That said it's better than EMRS(Extrude, Move, Rotate, Scale) method...

Dylan Brady

I'm not saying the guys chiming in here are wrong about the brute force method, but I recently had a pretty good result from
Guedin's approach:
http://youtu.be/a-TsteJQGg8
good way to get a nice base going. if you need to worry about non-intersection that would be an issue. but some engines have alpha-to-texture transparency that is sorting independent.
eh

deohboeh

Dylan Brady wrote: »

I'm not saying the guys chiming in here are wrong about the brute force method, but I recently had a pretty good result from
Guedin's approach:
http://youtu.be/a-TsteJQGg8
good way to get a nice base going. if you need to worry about non-intersection that would be an issue. but some engines have alpha-to-texture transparency that is sorting independent.
eh

Thanks Dylan! Very helpful! I think I will use this for the beard.

Gav

Dylan, that approach looks really similar to what Ornatrix does - is there much of a difference?

JacqueChoi

I've read about pixel based sorting, but I've never seen it.


I (h) Guedun, but that method will only work with black hair, where the intersections are not obvious.

It would look horrible with white ir blonde hair.

JacqueChoi

Dont mind the crappy shaders and render, but brute force is the only way to get something like this:


.

Eric Chadwick

JacqueChoi wrote: »

I've read about pixel based sorting, but I've never seen it.

Marmoset has alpha-to-coverage
http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/blending

Solves the sorting problems, but doesn't fix the hard edges you get from intersecting planes. Still have to adjust those, like your white hair example. Nice job btw!

edit... can you show a wireframe?

JacqueChoi

Eric Chadwick wrote: »

Marmoset has alpha-to-coverage
http://www.marmoset.co/toolbag/learn/blending

Solves the sorting problems, but doesn't fix the hard edges you get from intersecting planes. Still have to adjust those, like your white hair example. Nice job btw!

edit... can you show a wireframe?

Ya Totally dude!

I think alpha to coverage is simply anything that's over 50% opaque is rendered as alpha test, and everything under is screen-space stippled to 4 shades of transparency (with super or multi-sampling) that don't have any reliance on sorting,

The 50%+ Opague parts will still have a ton of clipping issues.

It's basically something like this, but blurred down a bit:



As for wires, I really do have to organize, and do an art dump for thief... to show the fun shizzle we managed to do...

So busy though.


T_T

deohboeh

JacqueChoi wrote: »

Dont mind the crappy shaders and render, but brute force is the only way to get something like this:


.

That looks sweet! Did you paint the texture or did you bake it out? Dat beard!

Dylan Brady

JacqueChoi wrote: »

As for wires, I really do have to organize, and do an art dump for thief... to show the fun shizzle we managed to do...

So busy though.


T_T

YISSSSSS please

Torch

Jaque that looks awesome, would love to see a breakdown

Also random sculpting q, do you find with tertiary details like skin pores, etc. they need to be exaggerated so they aren't lost or faded when baking? Cheers

almighty_gir

JacqueChoi wrote: »

Ya Totally dude!

I think alpha to coverage is simply anything that's over 50% opaque is rendered as alpha test, and everything under is screen-space stippled to 4 shades of transparency (with super or multi-sampling) that don't have any reliance on sorting,

The 50%+ Opague parts will still have a ton of clipping issues.

It's basically something like this, but blurred down a bit:



As for wires, I really do have to organize, and do an art dump for thief... to show the fun shizzle we managed to do...

So busy though.


T_T

Marmoset uses alpha to coverage for it's dithered alpha mode, there are no sorting issues.

devingeesr

@ JacqueChoi - Please make a tutorial on this it would be such a huge help!