The fur in Rocket & Groot

Panupat

How do you think the raccoon's fur were done?  I thought they could be real fur rendered to look flat for a moment the way they really affect silhouette, but they also look too painterly to be real fur. Especially the clumps look so hand-painted.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzbhK2KVxls&list=PLg6R6yXKSLYBUf6lW9SLlp_Qy_1soxXUI

What do you think? Alpha planes like how we do in games?

ant1fact

My guess would be a few alpha cards where they knew it would affect the silhouette. Most likely hand painted

thomasp

if this footage is offline-rendered then it must have been easier to use a toolset for particle hair: far easier styling, no skinning needed, builtin physics - and grooming is an established discipline.
with a solid strand shape that starts wide at the root and ends in a spiky tip and perhaps a high setting for clumping i would imagine you're already halfway there.

throttlekitty

thomasp said:

if this footage is offline-rendered then it must have been easier to use a toolset for particle hair: far easier styling, no skinning needed, builtin physics - and grooming is an established discipline.
with a solid strand shape that starts wide at the root and ends in a spiky tip and perhaps a high setting for clumping i would imagine you're already halfway there.

I'm not too used to using fur, but wouldn't those clumps leave some hard-looking normals? In some of those shots I see the lighting blending nicely across the surface. But I'm picturing a regular surface with clumps sticking off, not a whole surface with matted down fur + sticky outy clumps.

thomasp

throttlekitty said:

I'm not too used to using fur, but wouldn't those clumps leave some hard-looking normals? In some of those shots I see the lighting blending nicely across the surface. But I'm picturing a regular surface with clumps sticking off, not a whole surface with matted down fur + sticky outy clumps.

if you turn off self-shadowing for the fur and steal the normals from the underlying character then it blends rather well even with default shaders. keep in mind that these guys likely render out in passes and with masks too and treat certain surfaces differently in compositing.