ShaveHair_How?

[chard]

i want to render the hair and shadow only. anyone knows how to adjust the setting to achieve this? need help (shave and HAIRCUT)

[DjVoyager]

If you have applied the hair on a mesh then assign a lambert material to it (the mesh, not the hair) with 100% transparency. Shadows will automatically cast with any sort of light you create, without turning them on in its attribute...genius system!
That is all you need to do to get only the hair and the shadows, hope it helps :).

[chard]

Thanks! what setting to use in shave global?

[DjVoyager]

None, the hair should automatically cast a shadow.
If for some reason your hair isn't displaying any shadows, go to shaveHairShape's attribute > Material Properties, and make sure Self Shadow and Geom Shadow are at 1.

[chard]

Hi Djvoyager, just want to thank you!!! it works!! Happy new year!!

[chard]

hi djvoyager, sorry to bother you again, but i notice theres no shadow when i tried giving the lambert 100% transparency. only hair was rendered.. ive been experimenting but no success. did i miss something?

[DjVoyager]

That's strange. Can you post a screenshot of the render and as well as the shavehair attributes? Scroll to the Material properties area. By the way, are you using Maya software renderer for this?

[chard]

yes i use maya software renderer. heres the screenshot. the shadow was bot cast in the sphere but in the plane background. if this the case, is it possible to render seperately? like shadow only?

http://i139.photobucket.com/albums/q300/chandro1972/UploadImage.jpg

[DjVoyager]

Hmmm...that's a strange project, but ok.
Shave node doesn't have a transparency attribute or a render stat attribute, where you can turn off the visibility of the hair and not the cast shadows. So the only way you can render only the hair would be to place the camera between the hair and the plane. The camera should be looking towards the plane. Other than this I don't know how you would render just the hair shadows in one scene. You can probably render out the hair in an image sequence (if it's an animation) and have it plugged in as a Gobo to the light source.
Hope that helps.

[chard]

Thanks Djvoyager, ill find a way to make a shadow in compositing. btw thats not my project.. ill be finish by tomorrow. ill keep you posted.

[sunder]

You can render just the hair shadows only by going to the Shave Globals, turning off hair Compositing and turning on Shadow Matte. You can also turn on Output Hair Images, to get the hair rendered in another sequence.

[DjVoyager]

There's a Shave Global?! Well, now I know :D Thanks, Sunder.

[chard]

ive tried it, but doesnt work for me.. weird. BTw Djvoyager heres my
shave hairCut work.. as
http://img402.imageshack.us/my.php?image=hairrenderedqc2.jpg

sunder, is there an alpa channel in the shadow rendered? im confuse.

[DjVoyager]

Hey, great work, Chard :) The hair seems to fit perfectly. Yes, the hair will render with alpha, so you would have to compose it in Photoshop.

[chard]

Thanks Djvoyager! im still having problem with this shadow thing.. i assign lambert and did what sunders advise. but didnt work. i also tried assigning with shave background but same thing.. maybe i have to reinstall this. :-(

[DjVoyager]

Well, what kind of lights do you have in the scene?

[chard]

forgot, did it work for you djvoyager ? i mean using the shadow matte?

[DjVoyager]

Yup. Mind, it's just going to render the shadow and not the plane it's going to fall on, at least that's how it rendered for me. But correct me if I'm wrong, you're trying to render the shadows separately cuz they're not showing up on that model?

[chard]

i use spotlight, i use sss skin shader in my project and rendering both same time is impossible with my machine.. hair alone gets a lot of maya crashes.
i wish to render the shadow separately so i can just composite it.
btw, are you working in a 3d studio now? maybe you have your own website that i can visit. Thanks man

[DjVoyager]

Unfortunately, I don't have a website or work on 3DStudio :).
I am concerned as to why your shadows aren't showing, or maybe they are showing but not like how you want them. Check my hair test example here and see if the hair is doing the same:
http://www.digitaltutors.com/gallery/showphoto.php?photo=2863&limit=all

[chard]

just asking man coz you know a lot of stuff regarding 3d as i observe in this community..ill try to update it by tom maybe theres a bug. btw youve created nice volume of hair, how long it to render and did you get maya crash like fatal error?

[DjVoyager]

Actually it did take long but I rendered in layers. That gives opportunity to create volume.

Well, let's see if there really is a bug or a nit...ahem, mind the pun, in ShaveHair system. Try this:
1. Create a sphere.
2. Go to Shave and create new hair. Choose SPbrunette
3. With the hair node selected (not the sphere), go to the Shave shelf and click once on the comb icon (not the brush). The hair will flatten.
4. Select the sphere, go to side view.
5. Select the front faces, but not all, just the middle front and bottom front.
6. Delete them, the front of the hair will look like bangs.
7. Create another sphere, enlarge it enough to fit inside the first sphere, not too much though because we want to see if the shadows fall.
8. Create a spotlight and shine it on the sphere directly from the top.
9. Render.
10. Does it look like this?

[McGergs]

Chard what is your system stats?

Maybe we can help you prevent the crashing you are having in your renders.

Also what are your render global settings?

[chard]

hi Djvoyager, i can't follow the instruction. number 5.. im confuse.
i just updated the shave but still thesame. cannot render shadow only.. can you post screenshot of shadow's alpha? and just found out that hair can be put to layer, how do you render layers?

@ McGergs,
im not really good in technical stuff.. how can i get the system status? btw
i use
pentium D 3.0 ghz
2g memory
Nvidia geforce 6600.
render global ive tried rendering 2K
using mental ray. production quality.
using spotlight and raytracing enabled.

i

[McGergs]

try turning on large bsp in render globals memory settings.

Set your memory limit to 1200 MB

Have you tried using the render to layers option in Mya 6 and up. This saves some resources. You can choose objects to be rendered in different layers and then composite it together in the end with photoshop, after effects etc.

This is a good tutorial on showing layer rendering techniques. It is a nice way to help those large renders. You may have to fiddle with it a bit.

http://www.digitaltutors.com/digital_tutors/video_details.php?v=799

[chard]

Thanks McGergs! i already set it at large bsp, i tried experimenting on memory limit from 800 to 1500 and still got fatal error/and crash. but this render layers i will try soon :-)
15000 hair will take approximately 30 mins to render in my machine. the setting of hair segments 60.

[DjVoyager]

Number 5 to 7 is this. Make sure to direct the spot light on the front, and position it a little close to the object so that the shadows are visible.

[chard]

Hi Djvoyager, ive tried this before hoping my skin shader will substitute with the mesh with hair. but its impossible to render. its much easier to composite the shadow "hoping that it has an alpha" can you take an screenshoy hair shadow with an alpha?
http://i139.photobucket.com/albums/q300/chandro1972/DT.jpg

[DjVoyager]

Looks like the shadows seem to be working. They're showing here just fine.
Ok, so here's what you do to get hair shadows on alpha, following Sunder's technique. Select the hair node and go to Shave > Shave Globals > uncheck Shadow Matte. Render, and you will get only the shadows that are hitting whichever surface is in their path. Then you will import this file as a tiff or targa to Photoshop. Open up the original render and apply this alpha on that.
Let me know if you're still having problems. It seems to me that your Shave plugin is working as it's supposed to, but not sure what exactly is your project. Hope this technique is helpful.

[chard]

Thanks Djvoyager, yes for the first time ive seen it rendered with shadow only.. but the rest of instruction is not clear for me.. still on my 6th month training 3d and a lot of it really confusing.. thanks for the help!!