I'm doing a hair job right now with zbrush + softimage ice (melena). I will post the result as soon as we are finished and recap my experience using ice.
What many people were allready mentioning is the lack of styling tools for curves/strands. So you are limited to what you get out of Zbrush. The next limitation in Softimage is that you can't rly create enough strands, it's just getting too slow as soon as you add filler to your styling so I thought (cause I render with arnold) we gonna try to write a procedural for this to add filler hair at render time. Other then this the Melena nodes and compounds are quite amazing but need some time to set your styling up as you want it. You definitly need to dig into it and use it several times to find out your best workflow and how and when you connect which compounds to get to a decent result. So lets see were I end up. In the end it might be best to use Houdini together with zbrush or like mentioned Yeti. 2014-02-16 12:04 GMT+01:00 Tim Leydecker <[email protected]>: > Hi guys, > > > my emaildatabase got fragmented between seperating machines, please allow > for > delayed responses. > > > Thanks for the many ideas and insights shed on Melena and Kristinka as > well as the > thoughts and opinions on how to potentially best implement a system in > Softimage. > > Personally, I identify at least two groups of users, the first one capable > of going > in and actively developing a working system, the second group benefiting > from such > developments rippling into either a (commercial) plug-in or even > functionality that > makes it into a vanilla installation. Often with some delay and a limited > feature set > but out-of-the-box functions none the less. Sort of the 2nd wave on the > beach. > > As much as I´d like to perceive myself differently, I must say I am part > of group two. > > I may be able to find good workflows and good combinations of tools but > there´s > limitations in how far I will be able to push beyond already existing > tools. > > As such, for now, I am looking forward to giving yeti a run for it´s money > and > going for Maya as a common factor in bringing things together. > > This may be disapointing when seen from a Softimage fan boy perspective > but I think > it is obvious that being in wave two, I can not afford to limit myself in > the choices > between existing tools, as I already limited myself to those existing > tools. > > Still, for Softimage, I would like to see a fully working system at some > point. > > But that would include styling, dynamics, interactions, animation and > transfer as well > as actually beautifully endering using an elaborate shading and rendering > model. > > That´s a lot asked for in an upgrade and I doubt this can get enough > momentum due > to it´s speciality, there´s other areas that might soak up all those > ressources, > like first of all revisiting the rendering situation across the whole > programm, > including creating, handling and rendering volumetrics. > > Or not to forget, the amount of effort it certainly takes to make "Send > to" work flawlessly. > > "Send to" is a very good example of supporting wave two, even if it feels > like it didn´t > bring anything new, it actually creaked open some of the doors in the way. > > Caching is another thing that has brought a lot of benefits. > > Cheers, > > tim > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >
