Ornatrix 3dsmax: Wet Fur?

Hello hair-makers, I have a simple question and would like to know if anyone out there might share a tip or advice. I am at the final stage of a rigged lion model (for production), Ornatrix was my choice for fur creation and I don't regret the choice at all! Excellent piece of software... The client was quite satisfied with my first draft render (attached), but he asked if I could make the fur look more wet. So I started playing with two main features: Material specular amount and glossiness: by checking on-line references I have noticed that wet fur looks (obviously) shinier, so I thought that increasing the specular value would lead me to the desidered result. However, a grey specular color + a low specular value (0,3) tend to make the whole material color much lighter and I can't seam to reach that wet effect... Hair clustering: wet hair creates a lot of hair clusters. Is adding a Ox Hair Clustering modifier with a high number of clusters a good solution in your opinion? Any other thoughts or ideas? Thanks for the help Marco Attached Files:
18 July 2015 #6336
Michael McCarthy	Good question. I think you are on track with both the specular and clustering fronts. Using the hair clustring modifer would be a good choice. Are you using Vray to render? Thanks Michael
18 July 2015 #6337
extensoft	Yes Michael, I am using Vray. I am glad I am on track... I am starting to understand that achieving the desired result might be a matter of multiple choices and this makes my task more challenging.. A few considerations: I have a Frizz modifier. I keep it because all Lion's long fur references I have do have a noteable amount of frizz. However, a high frizz value (0.8) separates hair strands and nullifies the clustering effect. - Is this correct? I have both Strand Clustering and Hair Clustering modifiers. I use Ox Strand Clustering to create large hair clusters and Ox Hair Clustering to create those wet smaller hair clusters. I am not sure this is a good technique. In any case, I am having troubles understanding Ox Hair Clustering Gen Count value. At a certain point, not sure when though, the effect doesn't seem to work, I guess this happens when the number of clusters is too high in relation to the number of hair strands.. But how do I know? I am using an HDRI light. Do you think that adding a few area lights might be more effective to make the material's spec value prominent? Thanks! Marco
23 July 2015 #6354
Michael McCarthy	Yes I can see how to much frizz would break up your clusters. Also if you have clusters a high clusting Gen Count will loose the effect as you are building more clusters untill only there is only a few hairs in a cluster. Lastly I think it would be good to use some area lights for extra specular. It will be hard to get the reflections from HDRI only in some cases. Thanks Michael

Posted by:		extensoft
Data created:	17 July 2015