texturing fur

Tadao215

hey, ive searched the forum and i havent seen any tutorials on texturing fur.

im using 3dsmax to try and model out this little guy:




does anyone have an idea about how i can go about doing the fur for this guy? ive tried using the hair and fur modifier on a cube (just to experiment) and then converting the hairs into a mesh then projecting that mesh onto a low poly to get a texture, but my computer doesnt have enough memory to support that.

any ideas? tutorials?? thanx

pior

I think the point is not how to bake/render/paint fur to a low poly mesh. The question is, what kind of model do you want to make? Do you have a specific target in mind?

If, like your post suggest, you just want to make a lowpoly model (simple polygon surfaces) that looks furry, then consider looking at some great examples done in the past like Kingdom hearts and Viva Pinata. You'll see that their approach was to stylize fur one way or another in order to completely avoid the issue of realistic rendering. KH did it by using very smooth shading (polar bear look somehow) and on the other side of the spectrum VP did it by overstating each and every single hair.

If you want to go for a more technical/crafted approach you could go for overlaid shells and profile fins. This give more of a short grass look. Shadow Of the Colossus. Also it is possible to place alpha planes perpendicular to the scalp and bake hair plugin results to that, but it mostly works for dark types of hair. (Gears of War)

Lastly, if you want to go even fancier you cann try out advanced pixel shaders. ShaderFX has a fur preset that grows 'screen' from a simple polygonal object. I think Starfox on the Gamecube did that, but it might be simple shells, or a mix. Also maybe Lost Planet but I'm not sure.

Good luck!

Tadao215

hmm.. interesting.. can you tell me more about this ShaderFX?

pior

http://www.lumonix.net/shaderfx.html

Tadao215

ok, thanx alot ive installed ShaderFX and now ive opened 3dsmax but now where do i go to use it??

Tadao215

dumb question, i just installed it in the wrong place thats all. thanx pior

ImSlightlyBored

yeah man lost planet uses the same technique
its pretty old school, theres a doc knocking around about how it was achieved in shadow of the collossus. Theres also a tut for it on UDN.