Hi there,

is there a more efficient way than polywire to render volume trails?
On Tokeru [tokeru.com] I read:

Either use @width to render the curves directly or polywire sop to get poly tubes

I'm not sure how to use @width and moreover in case I would use it would I be able to use shaders or does @width use plain color values only?

In other words, I'm trying to do something like this, and use a metal shader on the trails:
http://blog.phoenixart.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/Strands_pgnd_f07-00000_v02.jpg [blog.phoenixart.com]

whereas now I'm getting lines like this (see attach.)

having mantra render the curves directly is the most efficient way.

what you have there should work fine, just use a smaller with value. ie, if you've put down a point wrangle and used something like

@width = 0.1;

make it it 10x thinner:

@width = 0.01;

If you want to make it more organic, you can vary width using noise or some other attribute (this example will have the widths ‘swim’ as the trails move, but gives the general idea):

@width = 0.01 * noise(@P);

there are more worked up examples of this on this odforce thread:

http://forums.odforce.net/topic/23535-noise-how-to-convert-into-line/?do=findComment&comment=138637 [forums.odforce.net]


-matt

Awesome!

Thank you so much mestela.

From the odForce examples it seems hair shader is the type of material I have to use.
I guess if I want to use a Mantra Surface I first need to use polywire or, in other words, convert the trail to mesh.

Hmm, works here. Here's some volume trails with the gold shader.

My understanding of the hair shader is that it takes into account how lots of hair rendered is translucent, semi scattery etc… If you don't mind the curves looking a bit harsh and dark, regular shaders work.