http://www.joealter.com

Shave's integration into Maya is so smooth, that you might just think it's
just a 'plugin'. It is not. It is a complete modeler, a full dynamics
simulation system, it is a complete renderer, and it is a compositor. Most
'plugin's that have such deep integration are entirely closed systems, and
make you do everything their way, or the highway. Highend companies want
more.

FEATURES

Every hair solution has to deal with rendering. Although we give our
renderer away with the base license, we don't skimp on rendering.

Superior Self and Cast Shadows - "Deep Accumulation"

Shave renders a Deep Accumulation for all shadows. This means several
things. With Shave's Deep Accumulation, light filters into the hair mass,
creating a natural softness that you just can't achieve with a Z-buffer.
This
lighting model much more naturally emulates the way light interacts with
hair, and has much the same effect as Pixar's Deep Shadow method.

Integrates with Maya's render

Shave's render, integrates tightly with Maya's own. Not only does it match
camera, aspect ratio, aperature, etc.. but it also works with Maya 2D post
process effects like depth of field, and fog . Additionally, if you want to
render the hair -with- Maya's render (or any render for that matter) you can


just turn on 'polygonal model' hair generation.

Not Just for Hair and Grass

With shave, you can actually replace hair geometry with anything you can
model. This feature, called 'Instancing', allows you to grow things like
trees, leaves, cows ... anything.

COMBING
Shave works from a 3 dimensional flow feild bounded by something called
'hair guides' (left). When guides are emmitted from a surface (nurb or
poly),
a whole field of them are created. The number of guides relate directly to
the number of CV's in the emmiting surface. They define the general shape of


the hair.

The actual hair can be previewed at lower counts in the viewer, is an even
distribution accross the emission surface, and has nothing to do with how
many guides you have. Initially the hair is grown as a straight
interpolation
ot the guides, then displaced by parameters suchas 'kink' and 'frizz'.

Creating so many guides assures good local control on hair shape, and steady


dynamics. But controling and combing so many guides comes with it's
challenges too, which is why we include a custom interface just for combing.

DYNAMICS

Shave's guides have our dynamics engine built in.. To create dynamic hair
with Shave, you point and click.

Each and every hair guide you create with Shave is a dynamic,
bi-directional, gimbal lock free, dynamic chain. Dynamic properteies can be
set with sliders and panels, but can -also- be painted with wieghtmaps and
textures.

Download File Size:4.24 MB

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