Summary

Title:edit guide problem
Category:Workflow
Status:Open
Posted By:adam666 ( adam )
Date Created:9 January 2015

Problem

Description:

When I do anything to my modifier stack (reference mesh) my edit guide modifiers goes crazy and messing up the hair styles. Even if I just click on the edit poly and dont change anything. Also when adding new modifers on top(that dont change the geometry) it still faults. I tried to add a skin modifer and now its messed up about 10 groups of hair on the body of a character.

 

 

Steps to Reproduce:

Modifiers are:

 

skin (adding this killed all the edit guide modifiers)

vraydisplace (actual displacement)

displace (Viewport displacement)

tubosmooth (needed for displace modifer to work)

edit poly

Howdy,

Not sure why this would be happening. Could you post a simple scene file that shows this and steps to follow to reproduce it please?

Thanks

Michael

I cant reproduce it with a sample file. So it appears I can not change any modifiers on the reference mesh without the edit guides going crazy. I can add a modifier but not edit an existing one. I change the displacement map for the displace modifer (with a higher res map) or any distribution maps (edit the black and white values) and the edit guides(hair style) are lost. So basically once I make the initial maps and apply them I can not edit these without loosing the hair styles? Is this the correct workflow. It seems a bit limited. Is there a way I can lock in the hair style (edit guides) so I can make edits to the distribution maps or displace modifier?

Modifiers are:

Hair:

vrayornatrixmod

render settings

hair from guides

edit guides (this is what is becoming corrupted or loosing the hair style)

guide from surface

 reference:

skin

vraydisplace (actual high quality displacement)

displace (Viewport low quality displacement)

tubosmooth 1 (needed for displace modifer to work)

edit poly

I have been having this problem.

You brush the hair into position.

Then the next time you open the file the hair is all screwed up and the edit hair mod no longer works.

You have to delete it and redo. I have done this dozens of times, the problem continuous.

It has something to do with the distribution map possibly.

I have a mustache and eyebrows that are on the same model and are fine.

Very frustrating.

Yes I think if tou change the distribution map or any of the modifyers on the reference mesh (i.e skin, turbosmooth, edit poly, displace mod) the edit guide will be corrupted. I never found a fix fo this just had to save a lot and revert back every time. It was very time consuming.

 

On a side note: It would be great if there was a way to lock the edit guide so even if you made changes to other modifiers the edit guide would either add or remove guides automatically and not get corrupted. Being able to edit a distribution map would also be very handy.

 

 

Yes that would be good if you could lock the guilds after you have finished brushing and styling the hair.

I have wasted days on this problem and they don't seem to be too bothered about fixing it.

 

It very important to be confident in production that things like this can be resolved quickly.

I got bitten in the ass with this software last year on a job I had to abandon because of a bug.

I'm only using it at the moment on a personal project, I just don't trust it in production.

Maybe if you're blur you might have a better chance at getting things resolved quickly 

but as a freelancer I think you're on your own.

If we could have a scene or a consistent set of steps to reproduce the issue I would be more than happy to resolve this issue. I suppose the problem is in reproducing the issue. Something must be changing about the topology of the underlying mesh or the way that the underlying roots are generated. Are you using the "Remember" button when generating the roots? Sorry if this is a duplicate question.

Marsel Khadiyev (Software Developer, EPHERE Inc.)

I am now, the real question is why isn't this documented?

This was the first place I looked to try and resolve this issue.

How is one to know what to use this for without any information?

These issue eat up time. It would be very helpful to have proper documentation on the featureS and what they are for.

Howdy Ramous,

Your right we need to add Remember into the Guides from Surface docs. It is in the Hair from Guides docs were it is most used. This option is really used more for remembering the root positions during rendering. It might work for changing topology of a mesh but its not a common use.

It is most advised that your topology does not change under the hair. In one of your other threads about this subject I explained that turbosmooth or other options that would change topology will invalidate the stack. This similar to a lot of modifiers in max like Skin, Morph, edit poly etc. If you change the underlying topology you invalidate the modifiers above. I thought I went over this in the OX 101 videos but I will double check and add to the docs too.

Thanks!

 

Adam,

The best way to lock your guides out in order to apply them to any mesh is to collapes the stack and use Baked Guides or Hair. Then you can bake our your style and apply it to any similar mesh and ground it. Here is the Baked guides docs:

http://ephere.com:3000/projects/ornatrix/wiki/Baked_Guides_Object

Thanks

Michael

When you say changing topology are you including an animated mesh.

The typology is not changing on the character but it is animated. Skin warp has been used to bind the hair cap to the model.

Under this is a collapsed edit poly of the finished character.

Skin should not change the topology or skinwrap. The can be issues with skinwrap and when it is applied to the mesh or initialized. If you can reproduce the issue in a scene and some simple steps please do let us know. We will get right on it :)

Thanks

Michael

 I just want to make sure I understand this(and hopefully anyone else having a similar problem):

--------------------------------------------------

Remember roots - Will remember the guide root locations so when I edit a texture map(distribution or length map) the roots should not change in position. This doesn't fix the guides problem. The bake guides does!

Bake guides - to bake guides I collapse the modifier stack (collapse all) and then I can turn off/ and back on turbosmooth (only if hair was styled with turbo smooth on) or use skin wrap, set up skins but not change the topology(as in polygons or vertex count). I can then set the baked guides to any mesh that has the same topology.

- So basically bake guides allows you to detach hair from my mesh, make edits to mesh and then re attach hair without losing/ corrupting your edit guides modifer.

This script also to Retrieve guides interface and keep working on hair modifiers

myGuides = bakedGuidesInstance.GetGuides()
myHair = myGuides.AsHair()

--------------------------------------------------

If any of the above info is wrong please correct me, just trying to get my head around a solid workflow. It would be great if Epher could get a professional character/ hair artist to make a workflow video of how they use ornatrix in animation (and game) productions on characters or animals. I'm sure a lot of people would gain from this.