How to apply Paint FX to a large area in Maya for collisions?

[Anonymous]

I'm trying to do this because I need the grass to collide with my character as he moves through it. However, I can't seem to get this to work with X-gen because my character passes through it. It's because of this that I'm trying to use Paint FX instead, which I know can work for what I want. The problem is that it's supposed to be a huge field of grass, so I wanted to just make the whole thing Paint FX grass.  At the moment, I'm not sure how to do this in a way that will work. I can't just use the Paint FX brush for something like this, because that would be outrageous.  Does anyone know how to get this to work either in X-gen or Paint FX grass for a large area? I need the grass to collide with my character most importanty.

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

There's a great breakdown on making paint fx collide with objects here! In the video they do a still render with a sphere but this workflow should be adjustable so you can make it work with your character.

As for Xgen, does any collision not work or specifically just your character? You could test this by making a simply sphere with some Xgen hair and then have a sphere collide with it to make sure you have everything set up correctly.

Please let me know if anything changes!

[Anonymous]

I understand how to do that, but I wanted to know specifically how/if you can apply it to a large area quickly.Place holder characterred circle is to show where character is

(The red circle is there for size comparison between the character and the field.)

I like using paint fx grass but, the problem is that if you have a large area to cover you have to use the paint fx brush; (At least as far as I know.)  If I want the grass to look the way it's supposed to I'd have to have the brush really small.

This would be a tedious effort and maybe not even worth it. I can't make the brush bigger to make it easier, because if  I make the brush bigger the grass becomes bigger too. It becomes so disproportionate that it's no longer believable.

The grass is big because I had to make the brush big.

When I tried it, it made the astroturf grass look like bamboo.Perhaps I could resize it of course, but my question specifically though is if I can just apply paintfx to the whole field without having to make it a tedious process.

Is there a way to apply paint fx to the whole area all at once without having to use the paint fx brush (since I would have to make the brush really small to apply to an area like this.)

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

If you go to the Generate drop down there's an option that says Auto Paint.

From there you can select grid and it will paint along the edges/verts of the model and you can simply tweak the settings to get a desired result or even paint in wherever there may be gaps depending on your settings but the auto paint should take care of most of it if not all of it.

[sean.heasley]

Hi @Anonymous

I'm just checking in again to see if you need more help with this. Did the suggestion I provided yesterday work for you?

If so, please click Accept as Solution on the posts that helped you so others in the community can find them easily.