I tried recreating (deleting and recreating from scratch) the particle system about 6 times, each and every time roughly the same parts of the model exhibiting these geometric fur “fly-aways” (notibly the tail) and geometric regions of different grain (torso).
I am using subdivision surface, but I tried getting rid of it and even modifying (changing the seams) the mesh and even changing the material texture but it’s always coming out roughly the same way.
I set the Particle Settings Emitter to Hair, Advanced, Even Distribution, Random, Emit From Faces, Number 15000 Children 3 to 5, Interpolated.
free edit
subsurf preview and render both 2
make sure particle system is below subsurf (arrows on right in modifers)
check checkbox ‘usemodifer stack’ in particle system, you might need to uncheck advanced to see it.
It’s hard to tell in the screenshots. One thing you can do is in the children, increase the randomness setting a little bit. It is highly dependant on your scale, try .01 - .1 this will make the haira little crazier/bushier more unkempt which I would expect a wild wolf to look like. But it will help fill in areas with less hair.
I can’t see all your settings, but for fur like this you shouldn’t have your hair segments at more than 3, with 2 often working just fine. An advantage to lowering the hair segments is that it will increase your particle budget. Meaning you can increase your parent particle numbers, or your children numbers without affecting memory/render time.
Changing the segments means ‘free edit’ change the segments, and then recomb.
I forgot to ask about rigging, I’m assuming with fur I should create the armature and weight paint first before starting with hair particles? Or is it the other way around? I’m not sure about the order, because I think if I rig for animation afterwards I would have to add the armature modifier to the stack and that would require that the hair particles be re-edited from scratch again?
Ok, thanks. I did do some experimenting and adding an armature/rigging after fur “messes up” the fur comb, so I guess it’s best to add fur after armature/rigging.
??? hmmm, I’m using blender 2.70, I can’t see clearly in the video but what version did you use? I think it works for your version. Mine has problems if I do that exact same thing.
You also want to make sure the scale on your wolf is 1,1,1. You can look in properties panel (hit n) also the armature should be at a scale of 1 before auto weighting. If your scale on the wold is not 1, and you have a hair system when you apply the scale (ctl a) it will probably make the hair system go beserk, affecting the length greatly. That’s the only other thing I can think of besides the blender version.
Ok, thanks I’ll grab a new version this weekend. I recall the 2.70’s had some armature bug a while back, but it pertained to Blender crashing, not causing hair particles to get messy.
Yeah, you probably know this but you can keep multiple blender versions on a machine, it doesn’t overwrite old versions. I usually keep the past 3-4 versions around in case I need it. And I just put a shortcut to the .exe in my toolbar. Show a render or two of the fur, I have a few cool setups for fluffy fur effects in cycles if you are interested.
Oh yes, thanks, I use Mac and Linux/PC (but not Windows), on Mac I can only figure out how to install one version but I was able to install multiple versions on Linux. Haven’t tried Windows yet. I’m using Blender Render btw, the post-team needs to work in that claiming cycles is still kinda new and there were a few issues with things Cycles could not render.
I did see a lot of posts about issues with hair/fur in Cycles Render, it’s do-able but I don’t want the rest of the post-team mad at me if we run into a hitch later on. I’m sure I’ll be back in a month with more questions and issues with fur as I’m still new to working with hair/fur.
Rendering video of hair in cycles is tough, there’s these noise patterns that emerge and they look terrible. You can keyframe the seed, and run special compositing despecklers, but you will almost certainly get a cleaner, though somewhat less realistic, render with BI.
Just promise that, even if it’s not in the script, you render out a scene of him (or her) howling at the moon.
Just about blender and Mac, you don’t have to install it, simply copy its parent folder wherever you want, and you are free to rename this folder as you prefer.
Thanks for the tip @sourvinos I will try that. So basically just move the “active” version of Blender to the applications directory?
@Photox, oh yes, the first rendering once I get it rigged will be a howl. Now, I think I have managed some decent lighting with fur now, I’m using a higher Number 20000, but I still find I need a high Children of 20 or so.
there’s no active version, if you double-click a blend file for opening, the system will open it in the most recent version available, wherever you put it, or you can double click on the icon (or aliases) of a specific version of blender, or drop a .blend file over it to choose a particular version.
So where you put the various blender folder(s) is not relevant at all.
Now, I think I have managed some decent lighting with fur now, I’m using a higher Number 20000, but I still find I need a high Children of 20 or so.
