A paint roller nap

[Tony]

Heres my attempt at using hair to create a realistic paint roller.

Somehow im not satisfied so id like some input.

Thnks all

[Gene]

I would say that looks pretty good. I am thinking that the fibres tend to stay together in small clumps. Maybe try increasing the thickness of the hair and give it some kinkiness.

 

Cheers,

 

Eugene

[zacktaich]

I'm gonna echo Gene here. Make two emitters, one that's thicker and much less dense, and a second small one that just adds some thin "fuzz."

[JoshB]

I'm with Gene aka the model dude. However, if it is realism you're wanting a hair emitter is not the solution (at least not by itself). Create a cylinder. Create a tube slightly larger than the cylinder and with a little thickness--this will be the brush part. Give it a little translucency (as light will pass through the typically nylon material of the roller). Create a turbulance effect capture and apply it as either a bump or displacement map.

 

Tangent: A bump map will give you the effect we want of minor hills and valleys without changing to geometry of the brush, however, it will not cast a dimpled shadow to the ground plane. A displacement map, however, will. But, displacement maps require two things--lots of geometry to alter the surface properly, and render time.

 

Then if you REALLY want to take the realism to a whole new extreme. Add a hair emitter with the hair very very short, and bald in some areas and thick in others. Take the brush tool and swirl it all around. And that should make it pretty real.

 

Hope that was a good explanation. If not let me know.

 

J

[Tony]

Thanks All!

Ill try your idea Josh, thanks for giving me the tip. I havent done ANY turbulence so ill have to study up. Itll be fun

Realism is key for me so thanks.

[higginsdj]

You might want to either use an image or the timeline to vary the thickness of the hair over it's length and probably add some value to the kink property to make the hairs slightly less uniform - but otherwise it looks OK.

 

Cheers

[heyvern]

I was going to reply but Josh beat me to it.

 

It didn't show up (because I discovered later I mangled the material by accident) but I did a, not exactly similar, but sort of, material for that "translucent" flexible foam packing stuff for the image contest using the technique Josh described... minus the hair... didn't need hair.

 

It really looked perfect. It had those nice "big" bumps to distort the mesh for the edges, plus the wonderful little bubbly details in the bump, all done with material turb combiners.

 

Trust me on this... you do need a somewhat higher patch count for displacement but you don't have to break the bank. It doesn't need to be a bazillion patches. For instance I had a fairly simple shape for the foam... and decided later to add displacement. my original mesh had more than enough patches to work... which probably means it had too many in the first place... but still, you get my point.

 

-------------

 

You could also try a nice big ole hair image for the hair. This is where you assign an image to the hair emitter. it allows you to cut waaay down on density and it really gives a nice curly patchy hair look. Coling Freeman gave me one for Happy Bear that looked a lot like the nap of a paint roller to be honest.

 

Vernon "I need a REAL hair mat!" Zehr