Hello Mathaeus, I was wondering what your thoughts were on animating hair near the mouth. Like a beard etc. I am using follow curves. And when the mouth moves for lip sync, the distance between curves changes. Hairs then relocate to different curves. Is this something I would have to use kH Stick To Strand Extrusion for? Convert my strands to poly, and envelope?

Cheers.

For now, only way how I used animated deformations of emitter's surface, is something along 'fur' examples - that means, meshes as emitters, 'vector field' nodes (in case of mesh as emitter, 'vector field' will use values supplied by 'kh Init Mesh Static' -and this should reside bellow deformers in stack). Also 'Splay Fur', and modifiers such as Curls, Bend.

Anything other, especially 'form' nodes, might be too slow and hard to mach the deformations properly. kH Stick To Strand Extrusion will work properly *only* with non-deformed NURBS surface - only SRT is allowed.

Only convenient and 'safe' way to use deformed NURBS, AFAIK, is to add another, deformed copy of NURBS surface, and deform everything in another layer. For now, there is no node in pack that allow this. Sorry.

Of course, it's possible to simulate the point cloud. Now, only supported is 'one point dynamics' that actually just bends the strands - not nice for long strands.

I see that I should be using polymesh for fur emission if animation is needed. Also use Init MeshUV Emitter on ice tree on polymesh after any deform operator. And, if using Vector Field, also use Init Mesh Static before deformation operator.

I find that when I explore for correct UV name in Init MeshUV Emitter node, Polymesh will collapse all points to 0,0,0. (instead of taking UV projection) And, Pointcloud will act randomly when changing peramiters in Emit Fur poincloud. I.E. strand emission type seems to change from Random Emission Type to quasi Grid Emission Type, and when changing emission Rate, strand are randomly eliminated from emitter.

But..... when emitter is animated with point cache, strand location does stay constant.

I have uploaded my scene HERE as example.

Thanks.

I have no idea, honestly. Also I'm unable to open this with my XSI version.

Anyway, here's a short list of 'common' issues:

- SRT of emitter, not at world origin (position 0,0,0, rotation 0,0,0, scale 1,1,1)

- SRT of Point Cloud, not at world origin

- cluster called 'Sample', that has texture projection. You can get this name by importing from aanother apps. This is an old issue, for example, this was a cause for crash when exporting to FBX, sometime around XSI 5. It seems that ICE also don't like this name. Anything else than 'Sample' (samplee, bob, zample...) seems to be fine.

- units: not 'real' problem, but all defaults in kH nodes, are for 1 SI Unit = 10 cm - a lot of queries for closest location, have already set their cutoff distance for this convention. In case of 'big' models, nodes won't catch what they need.

- ICE tree on mesh emitter in modeling region: not 'real' prolem, but tweaking of texture projection won't update in point cloud, at least not immediately

- texture projection outside 0-1 range : not 'real' problem, but many nodes expect the 0-1 range.

- overlapping in texture projection - big problem, it can mess up values, used later in ICE tree.

- edges on mesh, not disconnected at seams of texture projection - big problem, it can mess up values, used later in ICE tree.


If fixing of all that still can't help, only what I can suggest is to use the standard XSI hair. It should fit very well for fur stuff, and you'll be able to bother SI guys with potential problems.

Cheers

hi, I rarely post here but this tool made me interested to do some stuff with it
however i am having problem to make to guides grow
here is my screen shot,


do you know what is my problem?:(


thanks in advance

Hi there,

First of all, did you have the compounds installed. If you building ICE tree from scratch, the all compounds from pack should be in folder, recognized by Softimage (something like users/......./ your SI version/Data/Compounds ).

Other than that, I sow something like this only a once, that NURBS surface 'doesn't respond', but this become solved after trying to tweak some points on NURBS surface.

Generally, kH nodes are not tested with closed NURBS surface as emitter - it only *might* work with nodes that you'll use later,
These nodes definitively are not 'generic strand tools' or something, protection against user's errors is just basic. Unless you're able to build your own system, I would suggest to start from provided samples, and follow the methods from samples.

Cheers

wow thank you so much for the response , it work now !

now i ll try to shape the hair guide ...., excuse me.1st...

my current progress ......
the technical pressure is pretty nasty for old fashioned artist like me, luckily last night one of my friend helped me to learn ICE node.

Well as you say you are an artist having trouble with the technical side of things, let's just say:
it doesn't seem to show in the end-result IMHO

Very nice indeed for being only 3 days into the Kristinka technology!