Running Clydesdale - Update

Hey,

I have been battling fur maps for most of this week and continue to do so, but at least I have some progress to show for it. I managed to add in the hair an tail to the horse and am currently working on the feathers("leg hairs"). I fell like I am very close to completing this effect if I manage to solve the issue that I am having with the baked textures on the fur. I have tried several ways to replace them with newer textures, but it has become nearly impossible to get rid of the previously baked versions. I have tried re-baking, deleting the color maps, manually re-applying the texture maps, rebuilding the networks, among other different possible solutions.

Something else I need to work on is the lighting of the scene. Right now I have a very simple two light setup and an IBL. I want to put a card down to catch the horse's shadow

I got this test render done a couple days ago, but continued to play with the motion of the hair. This playblast shows the most recent version.

At this point simulation and baking take up quite a bit of time on the Clydesdale model, so during that time I am taking the opportunity to advance on my next project which is to fur this Renamon...

The animation is ready and I and just started on getting the mesh ready for the fur by dividing it up into more appropriate pieces than the Clydesdale. It might seem like common sense but I wasn't really thinking of this at the beginning of that project. So here is the first bit of useful information that will come out of this blog


Fur tips

1) Divide the mesh into sections that make sense and avoid leaving seams in very noticeable places just like you would when cutting up UVs. This way it will be easier to conceal the seams left by the patches.

2) Leave some overlapping polygons when cutting the patches to avoid getting gaps between the geometry. You can easily compensate for the overlapping fur by fading in with painted baldness maps around the edges.

3) If you need to smooth the geometry after cutting the patches, make sure the edges don't end up standing out of the mesh too much. This will make for very noticeable and sharp creases or dents in the fur and the geometry.

4) Keep the patches as even in size and density as possible, and the easier  it is to lay out the UV's the better.

5) If you are furring a finalized animation as opposed to a rig or something still  being edited, you might want to cache out the animated geometry. This will save you loads of time because Maya won't have to calculate the skin cluster anymore.

6) Pressing the "3" button to smooth preview the mesh will not get rid of the geometry faceting when it comes to rendering fur. You are actually required to go in and run a smooth operation on the geometry to get this result.


Note: All the tips mentioned above are meant for the default Maya 2014 and below, with no plugins or scripts. The new tools for hair and fur in Maya 2015 work in a very different manner and don't require many of the steps I had to take.
These tips are also solely based on my experience and research, and, as confident as I may be in them, they can still be wrong. Please do your own research before putting them into practice, and feel free to comment on whatever your findings are.