benwest

A couple of questions on wire dynamics.

We are having difficulty getting the lookup values to adjust the wirecapture along the length. ?It appears to be a uniform capture radius only without the effect of taper the capture region along the length. We hope to get a tighter fit for our capture.

Also,

using wire objects in dops is it possible to have the width vary along the via an expression involving length or point number reference?
This would be very useful for self collisons using wires.

Unfortunately the multi scatter approach results in a much flatter look. It doesn't effectively convey credible sense of depth. Additionally areas on the front side of mesh will appear translucent while backlit. This shouldn't be the case. We can generate the correct look in Vray but are hoping to exploit some of the benefits of Mantra while in Houdini.

Any other ideas?

We would like to render in mantra using sss but we are having problems with the mantra surface shdaer. Thin edges become transparent rather than opaque. Adjusting the attenuation improves the look at the thin tips of objects but we lose the overall look of sss we are after. Short of painting an attenuation map, we'd like to access the refraction angle while in sss.

Any ideas would be welcome.