Softimage modeling guidelines
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FurDesigner calculates the hair placement
on the basis of the undeformed object geometry. Because of that always
freeze the basic transformations before entering FurDesigner.
Ex: If You get a new grid primitive
with standard dimensions of 10 and then scale it to a width and height
of 1. In FurDesigner this object will have an area of 100 square units,
instead of 1 as you would expect. Freezing the object will get the area
right.
General
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If you want to check out a new styling on
an object, but you are not sure if it's right, use the Copy button to copy
your existing styling to the copy buffer. If the new styling turns out
bad just use the Paste button to restore the styling from before.
Note that the Copy button copies from
the hilighted object only, and the Paste button pastes to all selected
objects.
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If everything goes wrong and an object is
totally messed up, initialize the Fur data on the object by unselecting
the object in the object browser, then press and hold the right shift key
and select the object again. Now all data is reset to the default values,
i.e. all styling is gone.
Texture Mapping
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Density maps are useful to limit the growth
of hairs in parts of an object. But it can be difficult and take a lot
of keys to define the right KeyMap. A way to make maps with high contrast
or fine detail is to use Softimage Paint, to paint a map directly on the
object. The map should be UV-mapped in Softimage to give the same mapping
in FurDesigner.
After painting the map you map it on the
density channel using the "T" button.
The same technique applies to the other
channels.
Working with lights
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If you have a scene with many lights in Softimage,
and use it in FurDesigner the hairs may get to much light. If so adjust
the exposure slider in the Display settings menu.
Dynamics
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When using the wind functions in the Dynamic
Settings menu, use the Color channel to do the styling, as this makes the
wind effect more easy to see. When the parameter is set turn on the other
channels.