G Fur plug-in on UE4

Olingova

Hi everyone!

I've been trying to use this plug in "G Fur" for Unreal engine 4 ( http://gim.studio/gfur-user-manual/ ) and already ran into small troubles for creating splines here : http://polycount.com/discussion/201035/extruding-splines-along-vertex#latest

But it looks like i still got troubles...

I would like to use the Fur Splines to guide the fur (basically wihout thoses guides the plug-in isn't really usefull for me) but can't make it work: my curves are well placed on the vertices of the mesh but whenever i assign them fur jsut disappear, even with really simple test as this cube:



With such a simple shape i made sure that the curves well start on the points but it looks like i can't get it right, am i missing something?

thomasp

seems like the splines do not make it across to unreal in a format the plugin can work with. i'm familiar with the term spline from max - doesn't maya just call them curves across the board? might be a hint in there that the plugin was originally written with max output in mind.

i'd look into conversion of curves into different formats in maya: nurbs to bezier or the like - whatever is available and see if/what works.
also i'd make sure that any curves are actually being exported correctly from maya. e.g. by importing the FBX into another app that can interpret them - max or blender come to mind.
lastly there may be transforms on those curves - depending on how they were created - and they might not line up with the cube in unreal after import.

Olingova

Hi there!! I took a look at your suggestion but couldn't have any good result, but i downloaded 3dsMax2018 and worked from there and it looks like everything is working well again!! Hope this can help people being stuck as i was, most of the times solutions are so simple you don't think about it first, thanks for taking the time to help me

Olingova

Hello there!! I thought i was rid of every problems, but after playing kinda a lot here are my constatations / news problems : 

-Definitely, Maya isn't a viable choice for now. Even if you succeed to create the curves they won't be recognized by the plug-in, so better go on 3dsMax and create it using the Hair and Fur.

-Ambient Occlusion can be kinda tricky, it looks like the mesh topology is really quickly visible; as you can see here, so better keep it low.

-I still got some problems with complex shapes; my curves are good this time, even removed the potential rigging / skinning problems, and did different try with differents Splines (Some of them being simple curves along the normals) and it looks like still some of them are not calculated. I put the minimum furr lenght in positive, but it doesn't change anything. So, based on what i read before (as seen here: ) could it be a bug related to complex convex/concave shapes?


Of course, without any curves it works fine but just grow along normal with the same lenght.

Here is a view of the curves to show that they well fit on the vertex perfectly:



Thanks for taking the time to come and help!! Can't wait to be done with the workflow for that plug-in, they DEFINITELY lack of documentation for the moment

thomasp

well i don't think downloading another expensive piece of software is really a solution for most people out there.

this is how fur is done elsewhere (model from final fantasy XV):

Olingova

thomasp said:

well i don't think downloading another expensive piece of software is really a solution for most people out there.

this is how fur is done elsewhere (model from final fantasy XV):

Yeah of course!! just trying to give hints for people wanting to use that plug in; the main advantage over classical plane fur is the physic simulation; here i needed it because we are trying to produce a VR games where those kind of details count a lot, but definitely for most cases classical fur created with alpha planes is the best solution. Just thought about desperate people (like i was) who'd type "G Fur" on polycount to look for help i actually solved the other problem too; Skinning related, so now we can let that topic die in peace!! Thanks a lot for the help and comment

Mark Dygert

You can also investigate Nvidia hairworks. It works in a fairly similar with physics simulations and hair tuning in the engine for performance.

Getting integrated into unreal is a bit cumbersome (get a custom build of unreal from the nvidia git repository) but it is fantastic once you get it up and running, both in features and in performance. It has Maya and Max workflows, their stand alone app is pretty good also.

Olingova

Hi there!
I never heard of that before, i will definitely take a look because i was kinda worried about performances of that plug in but i guess Nvidia hairworks can't run on playstation, but just in case i ll check that! Thanks for the tip!

Obscura

Or could it. Im also kind of curious. I see no reason for why not. Or is it amd hardware? I have a little bit of experience with it, but its very little. Performance wise its better than the shell method like this plugin. And yeah it has nice editing options. But... For some reason It cannot work together with another Nvidia released tech in Unreal. Like vxgi and hairworks won't work together for sure.

Olingova

Obscura said:

Or could it. Im also kind of curious. I see no reason for why not. Or is it amd hardware? I have a little bit of experience with it, but its very little. Performance wise its better than the shell method like this plugin. And yeah it has nice editing options. But... For some reason It cannot work together with another Nvidia released tech in Unreal. Like vxgi and hairworks won't work together for sure.

Yeah unfortunately the playstation hardware is Amd