esha's new Foreground Blends only appear in renders (???)
Blind Owl
Posts: 501
This seems like such a useful product I grabbed it straightaway, but either I'm doing something wrong or it's limited in a way that has me thinking of returning it.
Nothing shows in Iray preview mode, which as far as I'm concerned is absolutely essential in setting up a scene and making adjustmenst. The only way I've found to make it appear is to do an actual render.
Seriously? If so, why?
I want to use this, not return it, so if anyone has a suggestion I'd be interested to know about it.
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I don't have the product but I am guessing it works like Strand Based hair so to get a preview you will need to select the item then go to:
Parameters - Line Tessallation - Preview PR Hairs - ON (default is off to save resources)
Thanks for the suggestion, Tottallou. Unfortunately, it didn't work.
Presumably others have bought Foreground Blends and discovered this crippling (IMO, anyway) limitation, so I'm a little surprised no one else has chimed in yet.
It’s how strand hair works, to keep resource management under control. It’s not a crippling limitation.
You can set up tessellation: render 2, to get some previewable visibility. But it’ll slow things down a lot.
I can't find any instructions for this product.
I haven't even looked into strand hair yet, so I didn't know about tesellation settings. I believe you meant viewport tesellation, since boosting render tesellation didn't make the prop visible.
In any case your hint worked, so thanks, eh? As a matter of fact, with 4.11's new blazing speed in Iray preview mode, any slowdown isn't even apparent on my aging rig (Win7, a pair of !080 GPUs, one a GTX, the other a TI), even with a 16K HDRI loaded and visible. Wow.
Well, now I can use the product, but (as barbult remarked just as I was typing this) the documentation could stand improving.
Preview PR Hairs is I think the setting needed.
I bumbled around and loaded one of the presets. I raised the character up and did an animated dForce simulation of lowering him onto the grass. Why is the grass poking through his shoes? Did I do it wrong?
@barbult
I have a feeling that being strand based, this product may expect your character / props to be in place before simulating. How else would it "know" where not to be?
Do you mean I shouldn't have "animated" him into place, but just placed him on the ground before simulation? I'll try that and let you know what happens. Thanks for the suggestion.
I would think you did it right - if the grass was poking through the foot at the start then the simulation would have no way of knowing it shouldn't be doing that, or of rsolving the issue. Animating (via Timeline or by starting from a memorised pose) so that the foot could push the grass aside would be the way to work. You may need to try different collision settings in Simulation Settings. You may also need to take care that the foot is hitting some of the guide hairs, if it's landing between them then there will be nothing to cause them to get out of the way.
That is what I meant. I should add that while I have the product I haven't used it yet. I also have not experimented with strand based dForce hair either.
Nope, that actually worked worse. I will have to take a look at Richard's suggestions. I wish esha would do some tutorial videos lke the ones for dForce Magnet.
You'd think so, but that was one of the first things I tried and it doesn't work. I wonder if this is an oversight on the PA's part and if it can be corrected.
And the documentation really needs to be improved. For instance, what are "H Material(s)" and why does clicking on them produce an error message? How are they supposed to be used? Why does changing the density have no visible effect, whether in the view port or in a render? How do we achieve the effects shown in the promos?
I don't have the product but those are most certainly hierarchical materials, intended to be used on multiple items at once (one main item and "sub-items" parented to it). My guess would be that they're presets intended for the "preloads" listed on the product page. As they're meant to be used on a group of parented items you'll get an error message if you don't apply them to the "parent" item for the group.
For example if you have a group with a ground plane as the "main item" and several grass clumps and flowers parented to the ground (no idea how they're actually setup in this product so it's just an example) then you'll need to apply the hierarchical material to the ground plane, and it will affect all items from the group. You'll get an error if you try to apply it to one of the grass clumps directly.
Thanks, Leana. Hierarchical materials are another thing I haven't delved into, never having felt the need.
well i see i am not the only one having difficulties with it...... I would love for one of the beta testers to come in and explain how this thing works...... Wondering if Esha knows how it works.......?
Yea and it is stupid that you cannot make it visible in test renders.
Along the lines of 'is it plugged in?' error solving questions, did you make the boots, at least, a dForce static object?
No, I don't believe that is necessary. dForce collides with visible objects, unless you disable Visible in Simulation on the object or on a specific surface of the object. Applying dForce Static Surface modifier is useful if you want to control the dForce friction on the object. I have never had to apply dForce Static Surface modifier to any object used for collision with clothing.
By default the grass has a collision factor of 1.5 which seems pretty large. I reduced that a lot and got better collision performance. However, in the very edge, I still got some poke through.
I thought I had a brilliant idea. I added a geometry shell with a mesh offset for A Touch of Dirt, so I thought I could collide with that, but it didn't work. Maybe geometry shells don't work as dForce collision items. I moved on and did not investigate that problem any more.
Eventually I got something "good enough".
I have submitted a help request saying:
"esha's new product, Foreground Blends, uses new technology, and it requires instructions! There are none. We poor users are having problems figuring out how to use it. People posting in the forum are getting frustrated with this product. I was hoping esha would provide helpful video tutorials and forum comments like she did for dForce Magnets. That made all the difference for usability of dForce Magnets. That hasn't happened for this product.
Please provide specific instructions/tutorial for using Foreground Blends. Generic dForce hair information has not been helpful."
However, unless @esha comes along to help us, I don't hold out much hope of getting good instructions.
it seems like u have 2 make sure u have 4.11
yes tinkstar you must have 4.11 for this item, apparently for many of the hair items coming out too.
I've figured out how to set grass density, etc...and have gotten it to dForce properly, but for the life of me I can't figure out the "A special blending shader makes it easy to fine-tune the colors to match the grass exactly with your scene." Short of manually guessing at the shader colors, I'm kind of drawing a blank.
Instructions would have been a wonderful thing! And yeah, though it is a limitation on strand hair and not this specific product, but a way to preview would be...kind of necessary? Having to spot render each time I want to see the grass is a giant pain in the you-know-what.
@melissastjames
There is a preview setting in the Strand Hair settings
Specifically, Preview PR Hairs
Unfortunately, I'm not seeing that option -
For dForce, rather than Strand Based, hair Generate PR Hairs and preview PR Hairs are in the Simulation group just up from the Tessellation group (both need to be On). You will also need to increase the tessellation values, Viewport Line Tessellation Sides must be at least 2
I'm afraid that doesn't work, Richard (see screenshots 1 & 2).* Nothing makes sense without some kind of manual, and better labelling. For instance, what is a "Falloff Half" (screenshot 3) and why does it appear in Iray preview mode even when "Generate PR Hairs" and "Preview PR Hairs" are turned off? What's the functional difference between a prop labelled "Lawn Square Falloff Half" and a prop labelled "Grass Square Full", and how is each supposed to be used?
I bought this product thinking it would be useful with HDRIs (as claimed in the blurb), but as anyone who's played with them knows, HDRIs demand frequent use of the Iray preview mode. Unless an update or a product manual is forthcoming, and soon, I'll be requesting a refund.
[ * edit/correction: I forgot to turn up the Viewport tesellation for screenshots 1 & 2, but I think the point of my complaint—inadequate documentation, confusing and uninformative labels, and severely limited usability, remains valid. (I always neglect/overlook something; it's the law.
]
well I have had enough of this BS with this item.
@Blind Owl " but as anyone who's played with them knows, HDRIs demand frequent use of the Iray preview "
Odd, I always use a HDRI of some sort and manage without Iray Preview. Perhaps because I found that a quick render for composition doesn't take any longer than getiing the Preview.
I probably should have said "...as anyone with my slapdash, scatterbrained work habits knows...". Using them for lighting and background, I find it easy to get something wrong—characters slightly above or below the ground, lighting not quite how I want it, need to add a spotlight or a mesh light or a reflective surface etc. etc. All sorts of fiddly adjustments that are easier to make in Iray preview mode with Draw Dome enabled. Usually a quick render will show me I missed something (that happens a lot) so it's back to fiddling.
As an aside: with a 16K HDRI loaded, DS 4.11's Iray preview mode is at least 10X faster on my system than 4.10's, which helps a lot.