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LAMH Fuzzy Kitty

VortigensBane

Busy Bee
Well, this started out as a project for the Big kitty, but now that there's an eensy-weensy kitty, I just had to goof around making it fuzzy too...
lamh kitten 001.png


Already decided to trim up the legs a bit more, and then I need to brush the body hair a bit, so it looks a little less like kitty just got out of the shower...
 

Dakorillon (IMArts)

Dances with Bees
Contributing Artist
That looks so good!

One thing, to my mind that needs more fur, is the toes. They are so stark, it needs between the toes filled in.
 

VortigensBane

Busy Bee
Pouncing fuzzball...
lamh kitten 003.png

Haven't re-worked the toes, or fixed the pads yet, but right now I'm trying to replicate the random tufts of longer fur that kittens have sticking out all over. I think I'll need to make the hair strands on the body thinner too. They look pretty wirey right now.
 

Chris

HW3D President
Staff member
Co-Founder
Wow, this is soooo awesome. From what I've heard from others, LAMH is so buggy and crashes a lot. How did you manage to get passed those issues?

Impressive!!
 

VortigensBane

Busy Bee
LAMH is buggy and does crash alot... unless you have learned (usually the hard way) how to avoid it. There are certain things that almost always cause the plug-in to crash. Once you know what they are, don't do them, and usually you're fine. As I write this, though, the plug-in did just crash, but saving the preset every few minutes really helps, both for the plug-in to behave, and to not lose your work... Fear not; fearless fuzzball has not been lost!

When I try to work on a LAMH preset, I always use a scene which is completely empty except for the single figure I'm playing with.
I set the figure resolution to "base" and the subdivisions to "0" - and save the scene - before opening the editor. I usually go through manually and delete all the geometry created by previous LAMH sims as well, since that really seems to bog down the plug-in.

Once the figure is loaded into the editor, the first "crash alert" to avoid is "un-checking" a surface in the pop-up menu for selecting surfaces to grow hair on. For some reason, this always causes it to crash.
Once I have grown the guide hairs, I always save the preset right away. After that, after each major change, I add a numerically increasing name to the preset and save it again.

After that, the primary thing to avoid is moving the base figure while the editor window is open. That will also often crash the plug-in. I don't preview hair density either, since that is also pretty buggy. Other than that, saving incrementally ever few minutes works pretty well, and if the plug-in does crash, you haven't lost very much. I have never had a problem with re-loading the presets once they are created, so the set-up is the only hard part, and, in my opinion, the end result is worth the hassle... :)

This particular preset has two layers: a dense, shorter undercoat (700000 hairs), and a very thin (3000 hairs), longer overcoat to provide the wispy out-of-place hairs. I also had to decrease the diameter of the hairs drastically from the default, because the kitten is so small that the standard-sized hair looks like rope.
 

Rae134

Renowned
CV-BEE
Contributing Artist
It helps if you have a more gutsy computer than I do :p hahaha

I can't create, but could (when my daz would render) use presets.
 

Chris

HW3D President
Staff member
Co-Founder
LAMH is buggy and does crash alot... unless you have learned (usually the hard way) how to avoid it. There are certain things that almost always cause the plug-in to crash. Once you know what they are, don't do them, and usually you're fine. As I write this, though, the plug-in did just crash, but saving the preset every few minutes really helps, both for the plug-in to behave, and to not lose your work... Fear not; fearless fuzzball has not been lost!

When I try to work on a LAMH preset, I always use a scene which is completely empty except for the single figure I'm playing with.
I set the figure resolution to "base" and the subdivisions to "0" - and save the scene - before opening the editor. I usually go through manually and delete all the geometry created by previous LAMH sims as well, since that really seems to bog down the plug-in.

Once the figure is loaded into the editor, the first "crash alert" to avoid is "un-checking" a surface in the pop-up menu for selecting surfaces to grow hair on. For some reason, this always causes it to crash.
Once I have grown the guide hairs, I always save the preset right away. After that, after each major change, I add a numerically increasing name to the preset and save it again.

After that, the primary thing to avoid is moving the base figure while the editor window is open. That will also often crash the plug-in. I don't preview hair density either, since that is also pretty buggy. Other than that, saving incrementally ever few minutes works pretty well, and if the plug-in does crash, you haven't lost very much. I have never had a problem with re-loading the presets once they are created, so the set-up is the only hard part, and, in my opinion, the end result is worth the hassle... :)

This particular preset has two layers: a dense, shorter undercoat (700000 hairs), and a very thin (3000 hairs), longer overcoat to provide the wispy out-of-place hairs. I also had to decrease the diameter of the hairs drastically from the default, because the kitten is so small that the standard-sized hair looks like rope.

Holy crap!! Sounds like you're playing Jenga. But... it also sounds like you have the patience to properly pet the dragon without it torching you. So good for you. I do certainly hope you plan to make an actual selling product out of this for others too. I've been showing off one of these images for others to see and draw them in. People want the "full fur ball".
 

VortigensBane

Busy Bee
But I LOVE playing Jenga!!! And if I put out something to sell, I would have to render a bunch of promo images, which would take a hundred times longer than it took me to make the preset in the first place...

All kidding aside, though, I do hope to make this available - and in the near future, too.

Not happy with the lighting in this one AT ALL, but after rendering for 14 hours and being still at 0%, it was time to cut it off...

kitten guard 005.jpg


A fantastical rendition of my digital self playing with my new digital kitten... ;)

Well, sort of.
 

Chris

HW3D President
Staff member
Co-Founder
Wow, that is amazing work VB. Love it.

Good to hear you're driving to a finished LAMH product. Yes!
 

VortigensBane

Busy Bee
It struck me that since the kitten and the housecat are really "the same," the LAMH preset would actually load on the housecat too:
kitten 005.jpg


Since the fur color of the LAMH preset depends on the diffuse map of the underlying geometry, I decided to hash out a really basic tuxedo kitty, using a pure black brush and a white brush over Laurie's textures. The fur on the cannibalized housecat preset definitely needs work; I think it should probably be longer, definitely thicker, and with lots more of it. Of course, a tuxedo cat would look a lot better if someone spent more than five minutes making the diffuse map, like I did...
 

Chris

HW3D President
Staff member
Co-Founder
Yes, dang that looks great though. Surely have the right idea.
 

Dan30

Adventurous
But I LOVE playing Jenga!!! And if I put out something to sell, I would have to render a bunch of promo images, which would take a hundred times longer than it took me to make the preset in the first place...

All kidding aside, though, I do hope to make this available - and in the near future, too.

Not happy with the lighting in this one AT ALL, but after rendering for 14 hours and being still at 0%, it was time to cut it off...

View attachment 22256

A fantastical rendition of my digital self playing with my new digital kitten... ;)

Well, sort of.
I have to say, that is a very realistic looking fur on that kitten VortigensBane, you must be a LAMH expert. But not only...that human skin is also great. Did you graft it from your real self?:rofl:
Looking forward to your furry product. Looks very promising!
 

VortigensBane

Busy Bee
The human skin isn't a graft; it is the default texture for "Ivan 7."

I'm not an expert with LAMH; this is the first preset I've worked on that I'm actually pretty happy with (and I've worked on several: The Beast for Genesis 3 Males, HiveWire Horse, HiveWire Big Cat, Noggin's Chick, a fuzzy woolen sweater, etc.). I think adding the second layer of really sparse, longer hair really does the trick on this one.
 

Dan30

Adventurous
There is hair and fur for the horse and the big cat in the store? I didn't see such products when shuffling through it. Or were they just some personal projects?
I will have to try my hand with LAMH sometime, it really enhances the look of those characters. How is the Garibaldi express in terms of stability, any idea?
 
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