I was thinking the other night that we have all these amazing hair objects with transmaps that create beautiful and very lifelike looking hair for people. I'm curious why something similar isn't done to create long hair on dogs and cats and other fur endowed creatures??? Of course I wouldn't have a clue how to do that...I'm just asking the question because it seems like it might be an alternative to trying to do everything with displacement (and please don't suggest dynamic hair to me...it is the one thing on Poser 5 that stops my computer dead in its rendering tracks).

Bella is my dog, BTW.

I'd like to know about this too Dialyn, for my cat Muffin. 8)

Yes I saw something like this using only displacement maps, it was sort of noise that was used for the fur, also with the specular map, very simple and amazing effect.. the hair was not so long but give the real effect of fur.. for now i use displacement maps and shader light> special>velvet that will give you the real soft look of the fur, try it out on animals.. Cath

The problem, for me, is that (a) I don't really know how to do that, and (b) a dog like Bella doesn't have long fur everywhere, but just in selected places. Some dogs and cats just have a ruff around their necks, or fluffy tails. I've seen something like this for the big draft horses so that you have a choice between feathers or not around their hooves.

I guess it's back to learning postwork.

Cath - I am interested to try what you suggested, can you expand a little please?? what setting to use?? Thanks in advance. Angela.

In poser4 you have to use transmapping to create fur or hair convincingly. This can be very tricky. The feathering on the draft horses is simply layers of mesh with transmaps, just like a hairmodel but you know ..different :) Various people have experimented with different options on making hairythings in Poser. LD has an excellent furry foxtail, Brycetech I believe has a feather boa thingy, and a conforming hair 'bodysuit' for the cat. Bloodsong made the Very-Tall-Guy-In-A-Yakhairsuit, which is built for that kind of transmapping To get all over hair would require layers and layers of short nested sheets or cones of transmapped hair all over the body of the critter in question. This will nto look good at all angles, no matter what you do and is also massively resource intensive. The poser5 hair can be grown on select parts of a body, and with tweaking can create good effects. But its still resource intensive. Personally, I'll stick to postwork.

I guess I was thinking less of a body suit and more of selected mesh, like the draft horses. A ruff around the neck would be no more resource intensive then a head of hair, would it? Would a fluffy tail take more system requirements than a pony tail?

The "tufts" of hair is a good idea. After seeing it on the horses, I'm surprised folks haven't done it on the other animals too. Making hair is just one more thing I wish I was good enough at doing.

Why couldn't the pieces be smart props? Just add the tufts to areas that you need (ears, neck, cheeks, etc). It wouldn't be as elegent as a conforming figure, but it would make adding bits and pieces more customizable and would dodge the copyright problem.

Boy, the idea of conforming tufts sounds great...maybe a nice ruff, too. Diane

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Here's an example of what fur would look like when done with a displacement map. It's very easy to do, and the results are quite good.

Someone did this for the horse, didn't they - a fluffy tail and mane prop? It would be great to get a fluffier cat!

Another approach that would work is creating transmapped dynamic clothes. I don't think that is as resource-intensive as dynamic hair, and it's more reliable. I think a good Collie-suit would require a combination of procedural and image noise, and draping props, including dynamic cloth and hair. The trick is to use each tool selectively, creating your own material groups. Dynamic hair is only needed, for example, in the places where strands are going to be visible. Dynamic cloth is only needed for the fur that moves independently of the dog. I don't have a use for this stuff myself, or I'd give it a try, just to work out the principles. I'm sure there's a prop maker out there who could come up with something quite good, given the incentive. The problem with the noise approach, which is covered in B. L. Render's Figure Creation but not recommended very enthusiastically, is two-fold. First, it creates a "velvet statue" effect because the "fur" sticks straight out and is uniform on the selected material. Second, as near as I can tell, procedural noise does not have a scaling function. (If I am wrong about this, someone correct me with details.) The pixel level of procedural noise is not granular enough to do precise details, IMHO. Of course, you can create image noise elsewhere. I suspect that procedural noise is the least resource intense approach, and I would certainly use it for the less important parts of the material. What is needed--maybe it can be done in Photoshop or faked in another 3D program?--is 3D noise. Not a dot you can "lift" with displacement, but a line you can aim. I'll be interested to see what genius comes up with an answer. We've been edging toward one for quite a while. Mick