So I am switching over from Ornatrix for Maya and am trying to nail down the workflow of how to get XGen Interactive Groom from a still Character to a animated character within a particular shot and then onto a renderfarm. My workflow right now is to do the following for hair on the head of a digidouble:
1. Create Scalp Geo from main head geo.
2. Do groom on scalp geo (using simply the clumping and noise modifiers combined with some combing)
3. Wrap deform that geo to the head.
4. Publish that file into our pipeline (using Shotgrid)
5. Reference that file into a shot and apply an ABC to the head geo. That then drives the animation of the hair because the hair geo is wrap deformed to the head.
6. Submit to the farm.
The issue is (which I believe comes from the clumping node) the hair changes every frame because every frame is rendered by a different machine. I have tried caching the hair out by selecting the full description (Description > Create New Cache) but when it reads the cache back in, it only renders a small percentage of the hair needed. I have tried so many different combinations at this point that I'm on the verge of just switching back to Ornatrix to deliver the work for my client. It would be great if there was an explanation of how this process is expected to go. Process being: 1. Lookdev and groom, 2. Reference lookdev into shot, 3. apply animation with ABC, 4. render file on farm.
Any help is much appreciated.
