New Hair particle test and comparison

[JoOngle]

As most of you probably know by now from the Peach pages at Blender.org you have
seen the new-to-come particles - but perhaps you are wondering if they will be easy
to use - and intuitive to create hair with - the answer is YES - they are!

I'm testing some quick hair done with my character above and you can see the render
comparison and numbers in the image as well. Please note that the renders are quick
and dirty and have no extra fancy features or compositing so there are some artifacts.

As you may have noticed - the new strand-renderer that is WAY faster than the
older method of just rendering the strands as meshes, but we do have the option
to select between rendering methods, obviously ray-traced strands have
their advantages as well as the speed-disadvantage (see image for comparison).

The Grooming tools are easy and intuitive to use. And we have plenty of
stuff to "tweak" children particles with in the new particle menues (play with it...
there are so many hidden features you'll go bonkers!)...as you may notice
the kid in the above image has curls...yes...I did not paint those curls on..thats
one of the features it has...you can select curling amongst many other
options - even AFTER painting the hair on!

Exciting times folks!

[Ace Dragon]

Viva la Blender and its new state of the art particle and strand rendering and editing.

Good times, we have reached the level of the Big budget apps on this department.

[Blenderer]

Graphicall.org? Which build?

[tarkata14]

Awesome! Blender is getting so advanced lately.

[ZanQdo]

Originally Posted by Blenderer Graphicall.org? Which build?

any recent "BF" type build

[blenditall]

That guy's hair doesn't exactly look light and poofy, but I guess that's not the point..
The point is DOWN WITH 3DS MAX AND MAYA AND WHATNOT!

[Borgleader]

Originally Posted by blenditall That guy's hair doesn't exactly look light and poofy, but I guess that's not the point.. The point is DOWN WITH 3DS MAX AND MAYA AND WHATNOT!

I vote blenditall for president. He speaks truth.

[phoenix123]

I can so not wait for the new system to be officially released, this' exciting stuff to say the least!!!!!!!

[8bit]

viva la revolucion!

[jackblack]

For some reason I can't figure out how Jahkas particle system works. could someone tell me the basics or point me to a link or some thing. I create a particle system, but never see it. I know there's something I'm doing wrong.

[Blenderer]

First time I looked at it, I could comb hair from top to bottom of strands, went out, came back, now it will only let me come it near the ends and it won't let me style the hair near the roots anymore - whats going on? (First time there were no control points at the end of the hairs, now there are).

[jackblack]

Also I see that they are different than the old jahka particle setup. A tutorial or a link to one would be nice (I know I'm being redundant, but I wanted to specify).

[JoOngle]

No the Jahka particles has been improved VASTLY since last time, and there are
new features activated now - It is also partially incompatible with the old setup so anything made before with Blender hair particles will possibly look a bit messed up so the new hair particle generator will have to be "re-used" to "re-do" whatever particle hair your characters used to have - but I see this as a SMALL PRICE to pay for this new awesome particle generator. We have TONS of new customization tools...curling of hair...clumping of hair....any effect (there are MANY!) can even be combined with each other and one can be used with textures, colors and much more to shape hair, best of all is that they all can be used in combination with the GROOMING tools.

Yes - I realize that the addition is somewhat daunting, but I - WILL - try to make a new instruction manual at least for the particle bit so you all will have an easier time with particles, I promise that Jahkas particle generator - even with LOADS of features are fairly straightforward and easy to use - in fact - much easier than it was before to
make hair - way easier.

And as far as I know - (I'm an earlier 3dstudio max user) this one is even easier
to use than the commercial hair-application sold back then....I remember having to
work pretty hard on placing "hair guides" all over in order to get hair properly shaped..

...with Jahkaks new tools....putting hair in place is a BREEZE!
Look forward to it!

[SergeantOreo]

Yes - I realize that the addition is somewhat daunting, but I - WILL - try to make a new instruction manual at least for the particle bit so you all will have an easier time with particles

That sounds good. Isn't Bugman already documenting the new particles in his physics book though? (which I can't wait for!).

[JoOngle]

Oh he is? Didn't know that - thanks for that information, don't want to waste my time by double-documenting stuff

[blenditall]

Originally Posted by Borgleader I vote blenditall for president. He speaks truth.

Why thank you

[kbot]

Originally Posted by blenditall Why thank you

You get my vote too!

[Salvadore]

Yes the render times are very impressive, but not nearlly as impresive as the machine you described at the bottom of the image,
Did you say Quad Core 2.4 GHz and 8 GIGs of RAM,
good god man, that thing is awesome,
it would take a normal computer its entire life to render out 26 million verts.
I am buying me a quad core g5 power tower today Jim!!!

[rexprime]

you should give "CuteBear" some fur

[JoOngle]

Salvadore
You´re in luck - these machines are dirt-cheap today, Intel has slashed their Quad core down to Duo-core prices, Ram has NEVER been cheaper (yes, it will go up again, they are at ridiculus prices now...you can get 8 GB of ram for less than 150 bucks these days).
I bought mine from hewlett packard for about 1700 dollars with a cool Nvidia graphics card, and good sound card, dual layer dvd burner, cool cabinet, 15-cards cardreader, 500 GB harddisk...so it´s pretty cheap for such a hefty machine.
@rexprime
Hehe...you must have looked over my shoulder at work - I actually did that as the initial test