Xgen Rendering Interactive Groom

[randaidan17]

Hi everyone,

I recently updated to Maya 2017 and am using the Interactive Groom to apply fur to a snow leopard character I made. The grooming tools are great, however I'm having two main issues so far. 

1. When I reassign the fur shader from the default hairPhysicalShader to an Arnold Hair shader, it doesn't appear in the viewport. This isn't a major issue, since it does render correctly when I use the Arnold renderer. If it helps, I'm using a 2015 Macbook Pro with a Nvidia GeForce GT graphics card. 

2. This is the bigger issue. Using groomable splines, there is a way to assign a file texture to drive the color of generated fur according to location on the mesh. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ37NdhONBA .(For example, a texture with spots can generate fur with spots.) Is there any way to acheive a similar effect using interactive groom?

Any help would be greatly appreciated, and hopefully it's not to much trouble

[Anifex09 · Accepted solution]

So something I love about Arnold for Maya is that you can connect the Arnold shader while keeping the original shader in your case the hairPhysicalShader. You can do this by instead of assigning the Arnold shader to replace the hairPhysicalShader just go to the hairPhysicalShader's Shading Group Node - under the Arnold tab just right click and add your Arnold hair shader to the Surface Shader Input. Arnold will use this shader during render time - the viewport will use the hairPhysicalShader

[randaidan17]

Thank you so much, that actually worked perfectly, at least now I can see the fur while I work on it. Now I've just got to figure out how to insert my fur texture to the interactive groom, but again, thank you so much!

[Michael_Todd · Accepted solution]

To drive the color of the fur, you can just add a texture to the root and tip color slots in the hairPhysical. You can then hook the outputs from the hairPhyscial to the aiHair slots (though the hairPhysical will render in Arnold) to the corresponding inputs on the aiHair shader.

If you need to use a texture to drive the density, you can add a texture to the base node for the description:

There are docs on the new Ineteractive grooming here:

XGen Interactive Grooming

Cheers

[randaidan17]

Thank you so much, I've got it set up now so that it renders properly using the default hairphysicalShader, the only last thing I am struggling with is how to hook the hairPhysical outputs to the aiHair inputs? Sorry if this is more of an obvious one, I'm not too familiar with shader nodes yet.

[Anonymous]

Hi man, so to get your textures working on the aihair shader you hook them into the root color and tip color via the out color of the physical hair shader (if you want something even more drastic you can also hook them to the specular slot), so to do this drag from the color-out node on the physicalhairshader and drop on those slots (tip, root and spec) on the aishader.
Hope this capture helps 🙂
cheers!

[Michael_Todd]

The HairPhysical Shader will render as is in Arnold as well, you don't have to use it just as a viewport shader.

[Anonymous]

hi

i am using interactive x-gen in maya 2017 and render-man for rendering.

in result it does not render the hair.

what is the problem??

[Michael_Todd]

Renderman does not yet support the Interactive Grooming system. 

[Anonymous]

hi
thanks for your attention.
I tried another way for making hair with x-gen so i can use render-man, I
face every time to use x-gen on my character an error:


[image: Inline image 1]

[Michael_Todd]

was there meant to be an image attached?

[Anonymous]

no

[Michael_Todd]

More info about the error or warning would help

[Anonymous]

 Hiya,

Ive just tried to do the node layout to match the image you uploaded. But I still cant get the fur to project the texture or colour map. Is there a setting or preference I need to do in xGen for it to work as it only projects the texture map underneath the fur. Can you let me know what im doing wrong?

Many Thanks Sian

[Michael_Todd]

you need to turn on textures in the Viewport to see the textures applied to the hair. It'd the little checker box next to the light bulb in the menu bar above the VP. Or hit 6 on the keyboard

cheers

[Anonymous]

Hiya 🙂

That wasn't the issue, it was to do with my conversion of my texture map into a Ptex to drive the colour of the hairs when being plugged via the node editor. I wish it was the view port issue ahah  

Many Thanks Sian

[Michael_Todd]

The interactive grooming system doesn't use ptex, actually, just regular textures.

[Anonymous]

Oh weird, as i had to use a ptex map to actually drive the colour to match my texture map. As other wise it projected the standard texture map on every individual hair spline. But it being a Ptex drove the colour to match the texture below 😕

[Michael_Todd]

IGS CAN use ptex files, it's just not dependent on them. If the bound mesh has UV's file textures applied to the hair will just use those..

cheers

[Anonymous]

Ahh okay good to know 🙂 Thankyou