Having problems with the AM Squirrel

barbult

New problem. I tried to use the tail poses with a sitting squirrel. The Tail Left pose actually made the tail go down into the ground. But worse was the Tail Right pose, which moved the squirrel away from the location that I had placed him in, and rotated him face down in the dirt.

SpottedKitty

Wonderland said:

Is there any way that could be added to the product itself? I have no idea how to this. And it would be great to have one for the tail.

I'd like to second this, both for the mouth open and for the tail. Installing the full set of Easypose dials really becomes a necessity once there are a couple dozen segments that need to be twisted and turned. I've done it manually before, with freebies that didn't have Easypose, and it's doable but a bit of a bother.

SpottedKitty

barbult said:

I tried to use the tail poses with a sitting squirrel. The Tail Left pose actually made the tail go down into the ground.

I think what's happening here is the existing tail pose is being zeroed, and the tail is curling directly out of the screen. We can't see the curve because we're seeing the critter directly side-on.

Oso3D

Snake/chain of stuff:

Expand all the segments. Select all the segments (click the base, shift-click the tail tip).

Then in parameters, you can bend/twist all the segments at the same time, then select a smaller group to tweak as needed.

 

Kendall Sears

barbult said:

Alessandro_AM said:

Hello folks, about the "missing open mouth morph", I decided not to use morphs this time to simulate jaw movements but rather having a bone that you can use to Bend/Side-side/Twist it. For me it works much better like this than having a morph interpolation between open and close status that produces odd outputs at intermediate values, often deforming the mesh very bad. I'm sorry if some feels it's a bugger but in my opinion it's an improvement.

About the tail missing poses or controls, probably it wouldn't have hurt to make some extra poses; besides that, you can still multi-select multiple tail bones and apply the transformation sliders right? Shouldn't be too much work.

Iray materials provided are there only for the base model surfaces; they do not load or produce any furred squirrel model for Iray. Unfortunately Iray is a work in progress render engine, lacking several features like a hair primitive; reason why there is need to convert LAMH fur to OBJ before being able to render with Iray.

I already had this grudge that doing furred models to be used this way on an incomplete render engine is not viable, and given that most users do use Iray today, I believe this will be one of my last animal models until there is a Iray fur solution working out of the box for it (that nvidia or I can provide somehow).

The current Iray fur problems are mostly an issue of user expectations and lack of readily available, up to date, documentation. The product page says it has Iray presets, but it doesn't explain what is involved in using the product in Iray. The product page has no link to your video about Iray. The video does not even explain Kendall's crucial tip about how to save and reload the Fiberhair. The latest LAMH manual I have is for version 1.5, with no mention of Iray. The LAMH blog at furrythings.com (linked in your signature) appears to have been abandoned, with only one update since 2014; it has no current information about the plug in at all.

I agree with your observation that most Daz Studio users are using Iray now. In the forum you mentioned an effort to make the current fur easier to use in Iray. I think that is a good place to concentrate your effort in the immediate future, before making more animals. I understand your frustration with Iray not having all the features you need to implement a robust fur solution. I think you can ease users' frustration with the current solution by making sure accurate and complete Iray usage information is available and linked from the product page.

I will see about updating the docs with some of the "Tips & Tricks",

Kendall

Paula Sanders

Please don't stop making your animals. Not all of us use Iran. I use all 3delight mats because I have found they export much better for use in Vue. I love your animals and was looking forward to more rodents. I told my squirrel who was on my deck that I was going to make one just like him. He has an extra long tail and it was curled over his head. I think he was using it as an umbrella.

your animals are the best out there. I have been hoping you would make dogs and cats. I use all your fur with your plugin. They export so well.

Oso3D

So I finally got back home from vacation (which was amazing) and load up the squirrel, wondering what the problem might be...

Selecting the head and then the jaw and manipulating 'bend' is opaque?

Um.

 

Wonderland

barbult said:

Wonderland said:

barbult said:

Richard Haseltine said:

Alessandro_AM said:

Hello folks, about the "missing open mouth morph", I decided not to use morphs this time to simulate jaw movements but rather having a bone that you can use to Bend/Side-side/Twist it. For me it works much better like this than having a morph interpolation between open and close status that produces odd outputs at intermediate values, often deforming the mesh very bad. I'm sorry if some feels it's a bugger but in my opinion it's an improvement.

Perhaps an ERCed pose control on the figure to control the bend would be a compromise?

Yes, I used Create New Property to create a Mouth Open ERC control for the Jaw bone, and it works great.

Is there any way that could be added to the product itself? I have no idea how to this. And it would be great to have one for the tail.

Here, I'll attach the Mouth Open control I made. You (or anyone else who wants to use it) can manually install it and it "should" work for you. I offer it free with no strings attached. I am not a professional morph maker, so I can't guarantee that it will work for you or won't cause some other problem. If the product gets updated to add a control like this, mine may conflict. You can always just drag mine from the data folder to the trash if that happens.

 

Thanks, I will try it! In the meantime, I couldn't even get it to render correctly in 3Delight with the full version of LAMH installed... What am I doing wrong? Do you have to do special trickd in 3Delight too?

[email protected]

In the product, you will see that, for each squirrel, there are two versions: one loads with the LAMH preset, the other doesn't (in 3delight, LAMH will look like green guides all over the figure). For the fur to render, you need to load the right actor. If that's not the issue, say so and we'll try something else.

Wonderland

Uthgard said:

In the product, you will see that, for each squirrel, there are two versions: one loads with the LAMH preset, the other doesn't (in 3delight, LAMH will look like green guides all over the figure). For the fur to render, you need to load the right actor. If that's not the issue, say so and we'll try something else.

I tried first the default one that loads that has the green guides over it, then I tried adding the 3Delight material shader to the rodent, then I tried also adding the 3Delght shader to the LAMH group. All three renders came out the same, with no fur...

Alessandro Mastronardi

Wonderland said:

Uthgard said:

In the product, you will see that, for each squirrel, there are two versions: one loads with the LAMH preset, the other doesn't (in 3delight, LAMH will look like green guides all over the figure). For the fur to render, you need to load the right actor. If that's not the issue, say so and we'll try something else.

I tried first the default one that loads that has the green guides over it, then I tried adding the 3Delight material shader to the rodent, then I tried also adding the 3Delght shader to the LAMH group. All three renders came out the same, with no fur...

First af all, try resetting render settings: go to te Render Settings Pane, select the 3Delight render engine, click "Defaults" button.
From the Content Library, load one of the squirrels from the Rodents by AM->Breeds->Squirrels->3DL LAMH folder; the squirrel with the green guides over it should appear in the viewport
Click render

These are the steps to produce a minimal 3Delight render. If it works later on you can build your scene, pose the model and add lights. Or convert to Iray and render with its engine.

 

Wonderland

Alessandro_AM said:

Wonderland said:

Uthgard said:

In the product, you will see that, for each squirrel, there are two versions: one loads with the LAMH preset, the other doesn't (in 3delight, LAMH will look like green guides all over the figure). For the fur to render, you need to load the right actor. If that's not the issue, say so and we'll try something else.

I tried first the default one that loads that has the green guides over it, then I tried adding the 3Delight material shader to the rodent, then I tried also adding the 3Delght shader to the LAMH group. All three renders came out the same, with no fur...

First af all, try resetting render settings: go to te Render Settings Pane, select the 3Delight render engine, click "Defaults" button.
From the Content Library, load one of the squirrels from the Rodents by AM->Breeds->Squirrels->3DL LAMH folder; the squirrel with the green guides over it should appear in the viewport
Click render

These are the steps to produce a minimal 3Delight render. If it works later on you can build your scene, pose the model and add lights. Or convert to Iray and render with its engine.

 

That's exactly what I did the first time... I didn't even bother to pose it or light it, I was trying to see if I could get the fur to render. I couldn't in IRay or 3Delight. I reloaded the squirrel for 3Delight and just did tests for the fur. Could not get it to work.

[email protected]

That's strange. There seems to be some fuzziness around the tail, did you try scaling up the figure? If so, you need to lenghten the hair in the LAMH tab. If not, try it just by loading the figure with the guides but without reapplying the materials (it already loads with 3delight presets). The problem could be caused by applying materials to the guides, so this is the most likely suspect.

Wonderland

I didn't add material to the guides until the third test. Yes I did scale up the rodent but the guides seemed to follow. Do I need to scale that separately?

Alessandro Mastronardi

Wonderland said:

I didn't add material to the guides until the third test. Yes I did scale up the rodent but the guides seemed to follow. Do I need to scale that separately?

No, the guides should follow automatically. Can you just try the standard routine, so that I can see what result you get? Maybe send me a screenshot of both the viewport and render result?

Wonderland

Alessandro_AM said:

Wonderland said:

I didn't add material to the guides until the third test. Yes I did scale up the rodent but the guides seemed to follow. Do I need to scale that separately?

No, the guides should follow automatically. Can you just try the standard routine, so that I can see what result you get? Maybe send me a screenshot of both the viewport and render result?

It's after 2:00AM here so I'm actually about to go to sleep but here was my result of the plain 3Delight render. I didn't pose it except for moving the tale up a bit or light it or even frame it, it was just meant to be a quick 3Delight test because I couldn't get the IRay version to work yesterday... Before it rendered, it looked just like this with green dots overlaid on top of it. I'm already in bed with my iPad so can't do a screenshot right now... Oh and this one was supposed to be the fluffy tailed one.

Alessandro Mastronardi

Ok, send me an update as you will try again. Cheers.

Wonderland

OK thanks 

Alessandro Mastronardi

Just submitted an update with fixes for the Tail Left and Right poses, and four pose controllers to open the mouth, bend tail up/down, left/right and shape it to S. Will be there as DAZ updates DIM and installers.

deathbycanon

Not sure if this has been posted yet, but I just use this tutorial to do my iray fur: http://howto3drenderart.com/blog/fur-in-iray You have to pose your figure 1st or it's a pain to figure out how to parent which part, like I forgot to pose the tail, then had to figure out that group 0 & 1 are the tail, then parent that to the very last tail portion. You can find the presets under Animals/AM/rodents by AM/squirrels/3Delight LAMH/ LAMH presets 

It will NOT save, so finish it or be prepared to have to do the steps over again. 

ETA - usually it actually does parent, but this time it didn't, probably something I did. However it lags my computer horribly to try and pose with the fur on, so I always try to be sure to pose 1st! 

Oso3D

For reference, I find that the fur looks good:

Apply Iray uber.

Set Glossy weight to 1, glossy reflectivity to .2, glossy roughness to .3 or .4 (depending, lower is more glossy)

Set translucency to .2

And that looks pretty good.

If you want to save on processing time further, you could skip translucency and set cutout opacity to 90% or so. This helps 'soften' the edges and lines of the fur to make it look more natural (IMO).

 

deathbycanon

timmins.william said:

For reference, I find that the fur looks good:

Apply Iray uber.

Set Glossy weight to 1, glossy reflectivity to .2, glossy roughness to .3 or .4 (depending, lower is more glossy)

Set translucency to .2

And that looks pretty good.

If you want to save on processing time further, you could skip translucency and set cutout opacity to 90% or so. This helps 'soften' the edges and lines of the fur to make it look more natural (IMO).

 

Great tip, thank you!

Martial

here a Iray  render using obj export and postwork

DustRider

Stryder87 said:

Alessandro_AM said:

I already had this grudge that doing furred models to be used this way on an incomplete render engine is not viable, and given that most users do use Iray today, I believe this will be one of my last animal models until there is a Iray fur solution working out of the box for it (that nvidia or I can provide somehow).

Nooooooooooo....... you're stuff is awesome!  Don't punish us poor little 3Delight plebs because of the latest flashy thing not being fur-friendly!!!

Sad panda is sad.... 

I agree with all of the other posts asking that you not stop making your fury little critters. It's not your fault that the user has to do a little bit of work (and maybe learn something along the way) to get your fur to render in iray. You are providing a workable solution that otherwise would not exist for iray. The blame in this case falls squarely on Nvidias shoulders for not implementing hair in Iray. Otoy did it with Octane what, 2 years ago (using GPU/Cuda), yet the developer of the tech can't/won't do it for Iray? I really wish people would keep in mind that the vendors here are real people, with real feelings too, who put a lot of effort into their products.. I truly hope that the negative comments about this awesome product (and/or your other products) won't cause this to be the last one.

I see that you have already added some pose controls, but in the for what it's worth department, I almost always use the parameter sliders, universal tool. and active pose for posing, so the original setup works quite well for me. It was actually amazingly easy to pose the tail with active pose and the pose tool rotate "ball", then if needed use the universal tool and/or sliders to refine it.

Thanks for this great little critter!!

 

Digital Delirium

I am only new to DAZ so apologies in advance if my terminology is a bit off! I have managed to render the squirrel in iRay using this tutorial from Allesandro... 

I am using the full version of LAMH and am having a few issues as mentioned below...

1. If I follow the tutorial mentioned above and save the file, the next time I reopen the file the exported fibrehair is not in the file anymore in the scene panel (the obj and jpeg files are still in the geometry folder.)  How do I reimport the hair into the scene? Also, is it possible to change the default directory of where LAMH stores these files as I have all of my content dtored on another drive and dont want to fill up my primary drive.

2. I would like to be able to scale the squirrel and the hair together for rendering in iray. Can someone please help explain how to do this.

Much appreciated!

Digital Delirium

I noticed that there is a new update for this product which fixes the tail issue that people were experiencing.  I have downloaded it and when I went to install it through the DIM it tells me that the install failed.  Has anybody else had this issue and if so... does anybody know what the fix is?

Thanks.

Charlie Judge

LeapinLeroy said:

I noticed that there is a new update for this product which fixes the tail issue that people were experiencing.  I have downloaded it and when I went to install it through the DIM it tells me that the install failed.  Has anybody else had this issue and if so... does anybody know what the fix is?

Thanks.

Yes. That upate failed and also three other updates failed to install.

Alessandro Mastronardi

Try to uninstall it, delete the package, and reinstall it again (all these operations can be done within the DIM). If it still doesn't work open a support ticket, unfortunately there is nothing I can do for DIM issues.

SimonJM

Just downloaded and installed it via DIM, and all was fine.  Loaded it up in DS and the Pose Controls for tail (Left-Rigth, SHape S, and Up-Down) amd Mouth Open seem to wrok fine.

Charlie Judge

SimonJM said:

Just downloaded and installed it via DIM, and all was fine.  Loaded it up in DS and the Pose Controls for tail (Left-Rigth, SHape S, and Up-Down) amd Mouth Open seem to wrok fine.

DIM installation of the rodent polymorph update is now working for me also.