Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:

I believe that render speed is not really an issue if the final result is
astounding.

Thomas

Isn't render speed always an issue, unless you never plan to do any animation,
or do no more than one in a lifetime?

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On 14-2-2014 11:56, Mr wrote:
>
> Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
>
> I believe that render speed is not really an issue if the final result is
> astounding.
>
> Thomas
>
> Isn't render speed always an issue, unless you never plan to do any animation,
> or do no more than one in a lifetime?
>
>
>
Within certain limits, I am willing to sacrifice render time to higher 
quality, which is always the case of course and so a bit meaningless ;-)

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On 14-2-2014 11:49, Mr wrote:
> don't forget you can also anymate the hair with dynamic simulations and force
> fields in Blender, you even have tools to comb /cut them with a pressure
> stylus...
>

How are Poser and Blender related to each other?

Thomas

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Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
> On 14-2-2014 11:49, Mr wrote:
> > don't forget you can also animate the hair with dynamic simulations and force
> > fields in Blender, you even have tools to comb /cut them with a pressure
> > stylus...
> >
>
> How are Poser and Blender related to each other?
>
> Thomas

I would say quite similar to the way poser is related to poseray, you can import
the same formats except you might get the completely rigged character more
easily, using either the collada (DAE) format or the new FBX import in a few
months when it's mature. There may be a few extensions here and there to test
like
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Import-Export/Poser_Tools

Using Blender you also get a few other well rigged characters using MakeHuman to
diversify your library which have every right to use in commercial projects for
free.

The idea of the Blender to POV-Ray exporters (there are two of them currently)
is not to replace Poseray but to add a tool to the toolbox, one worth it of
course.

If there are some specific features you would like tested for interchange I
would be glad to help. Don't hesitate, but please, provide files if possible as
I don't have Poser installed.

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On 14-2-2014 14:30, Mr wrote:
> I would say quite similar to the way poser is related to poseray, you can import
> the same formats except you might get the completely rigged character more
> easily, using either the collada (DAE) format or the new FBX import in a few
> months when it's mature. There may be a few extensions here and there to test
> like
>
http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Extensions:2.6/Py/Scripts/Import-Export/Poser_Tools

I suspected so, without being sure. Poser exports the collada format. 
Not, it seems, fbx.

As far as hair is concerned, Poser is quite complex in terms of doing 
all kinds of hairdressing actions, including wind and gravity. However, 
through Blender there might be some additional things to do I guess. I 
am presently particularly interested in the hair export to POV-Ray.

>
> Using Blender you also get a few other well rigged characters using MakeHuman to
> diversify your library which have every right to use in commercial projects for
> free.

Poser Pro has a couple of MakeHuman figures in its library.

>
> The idea of the Blender to POV-Ray exporters (there are two of them currently)
> is not to replace Poseray but to add a tool to the toolbox, one worth it of
> course.

I understand. I think that is very worthwhile.

>
> If there are some specific features you would like tested for interchange I
> would be glad to help. Don't hesitate, but please, provide files if possible as
> I don't have Poser installed.

I have to ponder all this a bit more and shall come back about this 
later. Providing files in the Collada format should be no problem.

Thanks for the info. A new incentive to start on Blender one of these 
days...


Thomas

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Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:

>
> Thanks for the info. A new incentive to start on Blender one of these
> days...
>
>
> Thomas

On our site there are people who used earlier 3D-max, but now use Blender, and
are happy

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Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
> Your experiments are the best hair simulations I have seen so far. One
> way or another, it would be worthwhile to see if this could be used for
> Poser Hair exports through Poseray: If the /lines/ there could be
> exported as splines, sphere_sweeps would be an easy matter. Hmm, would
> need also an automatic sphere_sweep builder for so many hairs... ;-)
>
> I believe that render speed is not really an issue if the final result
> is astounding.

Thank you sir! Inspired by your suggestion to try this with Poser dynamic hair,
I exported a quick hair test from Poser 8 to OBJ and wrote a little program to
parse the hair guide vertices into multidimensional SDL arrays suitable for use
with sphere_sweeps and spline sweeps.

Here's a quick test of just the hair guides themselves. The Poser model had
three hair groups: HairLEFT (red), HairRIGHT (blue), and HairFRONT (green).
Currently each group is split into a separate include file, with data written
as:

// Group 0: HairLEFT, 59 hair guides, 30 nodes each:
#declare ncGuides = 59;
#declare ncNodes  = 30;
#declare aVec     = array[ncGuides][ncNodes];

#declare aVec[0][0] = <0.0327691 ,0.513711, -0.0512924>*SCALE;
#declare aVec[0][1] = <0.0327671 ,0.519569, -0.0500553>*SCALE;
#declare aVec[0][2] = <0.0327291 ,0.525429, -0.0488221>*SCALE;
#declare aVec[0][3] = <0.0319841 ,0.531257, -0.0476847>*SCALE;
// . . .
#declare aVec[0][27] = <0.00653295 ,0.658367, -0.0168579>*SCALE;
#declare aVec[0][28] = <0.00346087 ,0.658094, -0.0117261>*SCALE;
#declare aVec[0][29] = <0.000394785 ,0.657737, -0.00659484>*SCALE;

Using this array structure it's easy to loop through the sweeps:

   #include "HairStrands1.inc"
   #local j=0;
   #while (j<ncGuides)
      sphere_sweep {
         cubic_spline
         ncNodes,
         #local i=0;
         #while(i<ncNodes)
            aVec[j][i], Interpolate(i+1/ncNodes,0,1,Rad_Tip,Rad_Base,1)
            #local i=i+1;
         #end
         texture { ... }
      }
      #local j=j+1;
   #end

All that remains now is to interpolate between these and see if I can get a nice
head of hair...
-------------------------------------------------
www.McGregorFineArt.com

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Attachments:
Download 'poserhairguidestospheresweeps.jpg' (283 KB)

Preview of image 'poserhairguidestospheresweeps.jpg'

On 14-2-2014 23:22, Robert McGregor wrote:
> Thank you sir! Inspired by your suggestion to try this with Poser dynamic hair,
> I exported a quick hair test from Poser 8 to OBJ and wrote a little program to
> parse the hair guide vertices into multidimensional SDL arrays suitable for use
> with sphere_sweeps and spline sweeps.

Great!!

>
> Here's a quick test of just the hair guides themselves. The Poser model had
> three hair groups: HairLEFT (red), HairRIGHT (blue), and HairFRONT (green).
> Currently each group is split into a separate include file, with data written
> as:

This looks promising indeed! Good job. If this could be made to work 
(and it looks like it can) that would be a big step forward.

Thomas

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On 14-2-2014 17:13, LanuHum wrote:
> Thomas de Groot <tho### [at] degrootorg> wrote:
>
>>
>> Thanks for the info. A new incentive to start on Blender one of these
>> days...
>>
>>
>> Thomas
>
> On our site there are people who used earlier 3D-max, but now use Blender, and
> are happy

I do not need to be convinced ;-) My problem is mainly the lack of time 
to start something new...

Thomas

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Le 11/02/2014 14:47, Robert McGregor nous fit lire :
> Le_Forgeron <lef### [at] freefr> wrote:
>> Le 11/02/2014 00:14, Robert McGregor a écrit :
>>
>>> If POV-Ray could auto-calculate UVs on sphere_sweeps at render time, that would
>>> be the optimal solution to this... maybe a simple patch can fix it.
>>
>> Something like u being the "position" on the sphere_sweep and v being
>> the circumference ?
>> A few questions:
>> * for u, what is the range ? 0 to 1 for the whole sphere_sweep, or 0 to
>> n-1, n being the number of coordinates ?

> Exactly: u = spline position, v = circumference
> 
> I think a normalized u over 0-1 range for the entire sweep would make texturing
> more manageable, using something like:
> 
> sphere_sweep {
>    ...
>    texture { uv_mapping
>       pigment {
>          gradient u
>          color_map { [0 rgb <1,0,0>][1 rgb <0,1,0>]] }
>       }
>    }
> }
> 

One additional question: should u (range 0,1) be spaced regularly by :
 * the defining spheres (so for N segments, first segment is 0 to 1/(N+1))
 * the length of all segments (kind of introducing intermediate steps
when two consecutive spheres are further apart than the other, when
using the first solution is used)

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