Render Setup Xgen hair primary visibility layer override.

[chrismeyers3d]

Hello,

I'm in Maya 2018 update 4, MtoA 3.1.0.

I'm trying to create a primary visibility override on Xgen hair(interactive groom). In order to comp it in after and add some transparency. It's very thin transparent hair so using transparency in the render is expensive.

I've successfully created overrides with a regular mesh but the same method seems not to work with an Xgen hair description. I've tried many things again and again including using an override set, caching the hair, not caching.

Any help is appreciated including alternative workflows.

[teddude75]

Hey Chris, to make hair layers is pretty easy. First, create two layers and name them "with hair" and "without hair". Then, under the "without hair" layer, select all objects that don't have hair and create a collection and add those objects. Then, select your xgen guides, description, and the mesh of the character and create another collection and right click and give it a material override (surface shader that's black). Now, under the with hair layer, make a collection with just the guides, description, and character mesh. And that's it, to get them to render click the eyeball icon and clipper icon for each layer. To render a sequence use the token <RenderLayer>. If your path looks likes this

C:\Users\username\Desktop\hairProject\images\<RenderLayer>\images it will create a folder for each layer. The clipper icon has to be on for each layer not the scene.

TED

[chrismeyers3d]

Thanks so much for your answer @ Edward Conry

So I take it that it is not possible to override primary visibility of Xgen hair, interactive groom?

[teddude75]

Yes, each layer has a collection of objects and you can omit an object or do an override. Both would remove the object from the render.

TED

[chrismeyers3d]

Thanks again @Edward Conry for your answer. I appreciate you taking the time.

I haven't been able to get the Xgen interactive groom, primary visibility override to work. I am able to get it to work with regular mesh objects, so I believe it's specific to the Xgen interactive groom. I've tried many times.

Can you confirm that it works for you?

[teddude75]

@Chris Meyers I got it to work but I'm not sure why you need the xgen hair not to be visible. The render layers only works in geometry shape, nodes transform, lights, cameras, and shaders etc, not so much xgen. The work around is the transform node for your xgen hair. You can do a absolute override for that visibility (pretty weak). That's the same as hiding the hair in the outliner. Now, you can stick the hair shader on a render layer and render that separate. You can even use AOV's with light path's to render just the hair. I think that your hair transparency might be an issue in comping. Like the example I posted before the surface shader won't be transparent like your hair. So you will need to render your hair shader with matte color on and all objects in your scene visible (without hair render layer) and render just the hair shader with all the object primary visibility off. I hope that will answers your question. I might have a better idea if I knew what your plan was. But Good Luck!!!

[teddude75]

@Chris Meyers

[chrismeyers3d]

Thanks again @Edward Conry

My aim is simply to be able to adjust the transparency of the hair in comp. Maybe it's a bad idea. I thought that's the best way to do it.

I've moved on and am simply rendering the character with hair all in one layer. I will eventually look into other workflows.

I greatly appreciate your help.