Multi-threading support enabled!

I finally added support for multi-threading, which allows to use all the processor cores available and allow concurrent operations, with a huge benefit in terms of speed.
Incredible how moving a large amount of hairs is now so fast!
I will apply multi-threading to all those routines that require lot of calculations, and this will be a HUGE asset to be used in the future with dynamics and physics applied to hairs.

Panda: furred!

Lately I'm stressing Look at my Hair searching for bugs, flaws and testing how it works. 

This project was quite demanding as it contains about 350k hairs, but there were no issues to report.

Attached the render and the interface screenshots showing fur setup.

Badger: furred!

Finished playing with a european badger (Meles meles) I started some time ago (about 1 year IIRC).

Posed it very quickly, furred the whole body, and here are the renders (added an HDR toning in Photoshop in the second image).
Last image, the figure without fur: the poor animal looks very sad there, am I right?

Fur coats

Some more test renders with a fur coat and Victoria4.
No styling at all, just enabled all the coat follicles, grown the hair, rendered.

In the leopard-scheme fur coat, I wasn't very precise painting the texture (see the areas highlighted in red in the no-fur image, which show the issues that break the tile pattern), but you get the idea: colors are transferred from the object texture to the curves automatically (that's optional of course).

First grass experiments

Look at my Hair can be used to model and produce even grass and similar.

Here is a quick test I did, two renders with a little bit of glow added in Photoshop.

Considerations
It could look better, because right now, as I wrote some time ago, curves are rendered so that they are always facing the camera. This is particularly good when you do hair, because even being flat ribbons, that way you will always have the illusion that they have a "tubular" section, like they are in real world.
However this is not the best approach for grass and grass-like primitives, which actually are flat ribbons and they should not face always the camera.
I'll decouple that parameter and make it optional, so that users will be given the choice wether to have curves facing or not facing the camera.

Also, there is no possibility yet to add a random variation to root and tip widths; with that, strands would look less uniform and more realistic, especially with grass.

Fur everything you like!

I just finished adding the possibility to import and "fur" any kind of object (and not only Poser/DAZ figures).
This opens for an infinite range of possibilities: I just finished furring a simple sphere with 70k tiny hairs (simple render attached). Tomorrow I'll fur some more objects and post the results.

China girl

Building up on the model from the previous "spherize deformer" session, I decided to render the image and here it comes.

Spherize deformer in action

This movie demonstrates how the "spherize" deformer can easily drape hair on the figure and create a nice hair model to be styled further.
Notice also how the deformer can be applied only on unmasked areas and how the spherize deformer works in both vertical directions.

Giraffe: furred!

Another test render on the Giraffe: really few hair on this (about 140000), considering the large follicle area.
Rendered with mid-settings, about 12 minutes.

Giraffe with fur

Original figure

Fur and Hair RenderMan shaders

I was finally able to embed RenderMan shaders specifically designed for hair and fur.

It's a wonderful add on that allows to use such shaders directly in DAZ Studio, and the quality of the output is way much better than the usual ambient occlusion shaders that often are used with hair.

I ran some quick renders (low quality settings, shading rate=0.75), only 20000 hair very thick (35x than average human hair), one distant light, with colors ranging from blonde to black and low specular intensity.

I'm now going to code the GUI interface so that it will be easier to play with those some more...

Snow leopard: furred!

Another test ran on the Snow Leopard original figure I designed about two years ago.
I used lowest render settings (easy to tell by the poor quality visible especially on hair tips).
As usual you get the standard and furred render to compare the difference.

Furred version

Standard figure

Hair integrity during transformations

This short movie shows how hair integrity (i.e. position, density and orientation) is maintained during node transformations, even in delicate spots such as bulges and cavities.
In this case, I have a Genesis leg covered with fur (and note that no styling at all was done on those hair, they are just as they come out of the 'equalized guide hair' deformer), and I demonstrate how hair positions are properly calculated when the Genesis knee is bent backward and to its original position.

Shader Mixer on RenderMan curves: done!

No renders today but an important new anyway. After struggling for quite some time, trying to have the Shader Mixer modifying RenderMan curve surfaces, today I finally succeeded!

So from now on it's possible to use the Shader Mixer to freely load, save, create, edit any kind of shader and use those directly on RenderMan curves.

Koala quick composition

I made this in a rush: as usual, set the follicles, styled the guide hair, refined a bit the fur and rendered.
The tree has been added in Photoshop, and it's clearly visible that it doesn't fit well.
Anyway, the aim of this was to show how a short fur can indeed make a difference on models...

Koala: furred!

Original figure

American buffalo

Another example of how Look at my Hair can incredibly add to the realism of a figure.
In this example, I covered the front part of the body with fur, did some mild combing, and rendered almost 200.000 curves in less than 20 minutes, mid settings.

American Buffalo: furred!

The original figure