Summary

Title:Strand length animation does not work during sequence render.
Category:Crash/Critical
Status:Confirmed
Posted By:steamheads ( Nils Arne Brekke )
Date Created:17 November 2020

Problem

Description:

I am using guides from shape based on splines from a bought puma setup, where the fur was provided as splines. It works great but when we want to animate the length of the hair with a strand length modifier it doesnt work during render of the whole sequence. IF we render single frames it works, but the length does not animate (from 1.0 to 0.0) during sequence render (frame 2-98). 
The fur is on a skin wrapped model of the animated puma which is skinned with bones (CAT).

I have tried everthing i can come up with. (cache, strand animation to alembic..) but doesnt work. The alembic version made the hairs look very Have also tried to update the ornatrix from 6.1.8 to 6.3.6, but gave me bugs of another sorts where the hairs changed direction when Skin wrap on the model was turned on. Had to go back to the previous version.

Please, if anyone has any suggestions how to make the cache or modifier stack update for each frame during render... help. 

Steps to Reproduce:

Not sure how to reproduce. But setup of the stack is (from bottom up): Editable spline, guides from shape, ground strands, hair from guides, surface comb, strand lenght, change width, vrayornatrixmod.

Hello Nils,

I cannot reproduce this issue. I tried with the latest build of V7, on Max 2020 and rendered with Redshift. I tried to reproduce your setup with Guides from Shape. This is the result that I get:

Please try to reproduce this in a new scene and share it here. If you cannnot reproduce it in a new scene then we have to take a look to the problematic scene. You can send me a simplified version of your scene to jeordanis .f (at) ephere.com and I will take a look. 

Jeordanis Figuereo (Product Designer. EPHERE Inc.)

Yes im sure it works in v7, but in v6.1.8 i cannot seem to make it work. So is this a bug that I will have to upgrade to get rid of? Also, I tried 6.3.6 which i think is the latest stable release, but there i got a weird direction issue where the strands switch direction when the skinning of the animal model is turned on. This didnt happen in 6.1.8 so i had to return to that version. I tried to get the hairs to turn back but without luck. 

Btw, how do you add an image here!? Do you need to have a server with an URL to that link to paste a screenshot?

Hi,

My bad. I thought that you said that this also happens on V7 for you. I can reproduce it on V6. The team is deep into development of V7 but I will see if this still can be addressed for V6. 

Regarding your other issue with the skinning, we need your scene for testing. It would be better if you send us a simplified version of your scene for debugging. 

To add an image i just clikc the Insert/Edit button and add the link to an image in the Image URL field:

Once I paste the link the image will load, as you can see. 

Jeordanis Figuereo (Product Designer. EPHERE Inc.)

Is it viable for you to upgrade to V7? Unfortunately we already finished V6 development and we are only fixing critical bugs like crashes. 

Jeordanis Figuereo (Product Designer. EPHERE Inc.)

We seem to have more problems with v6. Seems to be very unstable when working with Sinks. Especially if I press a wrong keyboard button while setting up sinks. Im trying to find out what the upgrade cost would be for us (we didnt budget with this in the project). Can someone send me an email with an offer for the upgrade from 6 to 7 so we can animate the hair and also maybe avoid the crashing?

Regards

Nils