mtpeak2

Sorry Steve, can't find Andy's tut. Will's tut was on his website, which is down.

I don't think so, they just used less density and thicker hair, from what I can see from the video on A:M Films.

I guess you didn't see my post from feb 16. You'll have to look at your keyboard to see.

I took a break from rigging Kong to work on another great ape. Avalanche Software donated the orangutan model to the extra DVD (and other models), but it had no hair material. So far this is what I have. I haven't done any grooming yet. Any "grooming" look you see is through the dynamic settings. Still need to adjust the length and density in areas and adjust the hair group. I'll probably never get it to look as good as Avalanche, but I'll certainly try. There's also a monkey which I may do as well. I don't know if I'll rerig him, but he's in desperate need of a hand gizmo.

Pressing the function key (fn) and the print screen (prt sc) at the same time doesn't work? Here's an image showing the function key on a compaq laptop.

Looks great Paul.

Kelley, are you on a desktop or laptop? HP?

Thanks guys. No I'm not finished yet with the rerigging. Adjusted the gamma and added softness to it.

Drag and drop the camera and lights from your chor into a new chor and save the new chor as a file, no project needed.

Thanks Sebastian. Want to test Kong out in a scene. I took Jim Talbot's Jungle Queen set and place Kong in it with a quick pose. I had to lower the density of the hair for this to render, still experimenting with the settings. I have to play with the lighting too, it's a bit dark.

Thanks guys. I'm in the process of reinstalling the updated squetch rig now. I'll keep you posted.

Thanks Kat. Yeah, a nice jungle scene would be nice, though I still have alot to do on Kong.

Thanks Masna. Here's the closeup. The problem with these setting for the hair, which I was trying to avoid, was render times. This took 32 minutes to render with default lighting, not very practical for animation. The mouth shape is bugging me, need to do something with that.

Here's the render. Rendering a closeup now.

I gave the hair material another overhaul. Half the thickness, half the length (except forearms) with 4 times the density. I'm rendering now.

Thanks Holmes and Gene. I was considering posting the rerig, possibly multiple rigs as well. Is this better Nancy?

Actually, this Kong came from Ooltewah, TN. Realistic is not necessarily the goal, the model would need an extreme overhaul, if that was the case. The face would need alot of tweaking for that to happen. All I'm trying to do is make a better hair material.

I don't think Kong was a mountain gorilla, though I could be wrong. I didn't change the hair group on the model, this is what Will had already. I could add the chin to the hair group. Here's a better look at the face, the camera angle and focal length kind of distorted the face in the first image.

Thanks Mark.

Will Sutton's Kong model is a great model. Awhile back I rerigged with the squetch rig, but when I imported the model into the rig, I lost the hair grooming (which is fixed now). Well, I finally came back to it and I redid the hair on the character. Unfortunately the squetch rig is an older version, so I'll rerig again to update it to the newest version once I get the hair right. The original Kong model looked a bit puffed out to me with hair turned on and rendered. So, I made a few changes to the model to suit my taste, most of it was to the hair material. Here's what I have to far.

On my HP laptop, I have to hit the function key+print screen for it to work. The function key is at the lower left of the keyboard (blue "fn" key).

The gorilla looks pretty good. There is a few things that look odd to me though. The back of the neck usually doesn't curve inward (could be the pose) and gorillas usually have a bigger gut than that.

As for the face rig installer, probably not. There's only a handful of people DL'ing the 2008 rig, which isn't even worth the effort to update anymore, if there is problems.

Found a few parent bones in the spine being out of position after exporting the model from an action. Posted a new updated installer in my first post. To fix a model that was rigged with the last update, open your model and the new installer into the same project. Open the relationship folder of the new installer. Go into the spine folder and open the "Header Controller, Chest Controller and the Pelvis Controller" poses til you see relationship 1. Drag each relationship onto your models name in the PWS. Now turn OFF the IK Arms, IK Legs and all the spine poses in your models User Properties. Create a new action with your model and export your model from the action. Start a new project and open your exported model and turn the IK poses and the spine poses back ON in your models User Properties and save your model. Sorry for the inconvience. This update does not include the new finger controls. I'm not sure if I'm going to add them or not. Since Steve is the only one that gave me any feedback on the controls, I don't think it's worth the effort to implement them into the installer. Sorry Steve.

Yes, the plugin mirrors the weights too. That's why I reccomend weighting as much as possible before running the plugin. I updated the installer instructions with the new settings.