I apologize beforehand. This subject has probably been discussed numerous times before but I just couldn't find the topics. Anyhow whenever I render a transmapped hair in firefly it's very grainy and rugged looking. If I then turn on texturefiltering the skin textures look bad but the hair looks ok. I usually do 2 renders (1 with firefly and the second as p4 renderer) and combine the 2 different renders in postwork but that's not a good option if you use volumetric lights. Is there any good method of getting transmapped hair to work in firefly? I've tried all kinds of different settings but nothing seems to work.

Are you using the optimal setting for firefly renders, or setting that manually ? texture map size of hair texture ? I dislike using firefly engine for rendering because of this type of problem but it does give me good results in other situations.

You can try to lower the shading rate on the hair (and then of course in the render settings) or to decrease the resolution of the hair textures (something that i think stewer posted some time back - sounds weird, doesn't it? ;-))

Optimal I think. Manual settings. P5 only has Production and preview. The shadingrate is 0.5 normally and raytracebounces 3 or 4 and texturesize maximum. Still the hair is very rugged looking unless I use texturefiltering and in that case the skintextures look really bad. The postfilter is Box. Its especially bad with Kozaburos hair, wich usually looks wonderfull in P4 renderer. EDIT: Aha. So I'll have the hairs shadingrate at 0.2 for example and the rest of the scene at .5? Hmm..Didn't think of that. Wouldn't take take an awfull long time tho? You'd have to adjust the shading rate of each object/bodypart manually? Lowering resolution of the hair text? That sounds odd. I'll have to try that as well. Thanks for the info! :)

Message edited on: 10/13/2005 20:34

Although this is actually an inherent issue with the method of construction, the more accurate solution is to reduce the shading rate to something lower and not render backfacing polys. Also, be sure that your maximum texture resolution is properly set for the scene, and your pixel samples are high enough.

My maximum texture resolution is at maximum most of the time even tho I don't think the hair textures are that big (4019). Backfacing polys are checked off but perhaps I have not payed enough attention to the pixelsample. Thanks for the answer and tips!

Most objects will be she standard 0.2 shading rate (that's what they get when there's none set i think). If you set the rate lower for the hair (i.e. 0.1) and then also set that in the render settings only the hair should be rendered at 0.1. But that will be slower than the combining you do, i guess and you might to have to go even lower, like 0.0x...

Holy sh...That'l probably choke my computer entirely. But I shall have to try it. Thanks!