10.111 2min 35sec 10.506 1min 56sec
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10.111 3min 33sec 10.506 2 min 34sec
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The HAIR module now supports multi processors and multi core processors. This means a good improvement in rendering speed. Even though hair rendering speed was fast before you can never have enough rendering speed especially when rendering animations. Note that for hair preperation only a single core is used. However where there are multiple HAIR objects then multiple cores will be used in the preperation process. Here's a reworked version of my Toon dog and the rabbit from the tutorial DVD. The rabbit has multiple HAIR objects.
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10.111 2min 35sec 10.506 1min 56sec |
10.111 3min 33sec 10.506 2 min 34sec |
Hair can be made to bend in the direction of a target object. This is done by enabling Bend on the HAIR material and changing the mode to Object and dragging in a target object. This creates some cool effects. You won't see the effect in the viewport unless you change the preview mode to Hairs. Here's a little animation showing the result. I've also enabled dynamics so that the sphere displaces the grass.
Grass bending in direction of target object |
On both the render and shadow tab of the HAIR render settings there are new antialiasing settings. The render tab now has a User AA setting. This gives you a filter slider where you can more precisely control the AA. Values over 100% increasingly make the hair increasingly more blurred. What all this means is that we can get even better renders although more accuracy does come at the cost of speed. Good thing rendering speed has been improved. Here's the image from the documentation to show different AA percentage strengths.
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User antialiasing settings |
In addition there are also 3 new mode settings: Smoothing which is more or less the same mode as earlier, Area which is more precise than the default smoothing mode and lastly Subpixel whish is the most accurate but the slowest.
The shadow tab now has AA settings. Previously all we had was a check box to either have AA on or off. We now get the same drop down box with various AA options including the new "User" mode with the filter slider.
On the render tab of the HAIR render settings there are new options for sampling interpolation. The previous sampling method was Vertex. We now also have Pixel and Root Tip. Pixel is the most accurate as there's no interpolation. Obviously rendering is slower. Vertex is the default and a compromise between speed and accuracy. Root tip is the fastest and suitable for test renders or short hair like fur. Here's an example to demonstrate that the render results are different.
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10.111 Vertex sampling |
10.506 Vertex sampling |
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10.506 Root tip sampling |
10.506 Pixel sampling |
The Add Guide tool has a new Strength setting that controls the interpolation of guides as they're added with the tool. This gives a lot more control as you may to style the guides slightly differently or you may just want them to match the other already styled guides. The previous guide interpolation was always at 100%. Here's an image showing the differences. The documentation suggests 70% is a good value to use.
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Guide Interpolation Strength |
There's a new parameter for defining hair shadow density. This is a setting which consists of a slider on the HAIR material Illumination tab. Often hair shadows are too strong and you'll want to tone them down. This is what this setting does. This saves having to have HAIR specific lights with their shadow density settings reduced and other scene objects excluded. Sadly if you want to use the Ray Tracing option on Rendering and Shadows Tab to produce actual shadows of individual hairs then altering the slider has no effect. I'm not sure whether this is a bug or a limitation. In other modes moving the slider changes the density without any problems.
The HAIR module light tag has 2 new options similar to the 2 new settings in the render settings. These are user definable AA settings and user definable shadow density settings. The idea with the light tag is that you can set up different settings for each light and they interact with the hair on your models. This gives more control rather than using the global settings from the render settings. Again, with Ray Tracing moving the shadow density slider has no effect on the rendered shadow.
A new parameter for the Paint Guides Tool with which the interpolation of newly painted Guides can be controlled.
It's really hard to fault the HAIR module. With 10.506 a great module gets even better.