[DEPRECATED] PIDI - XFur Studio. Please follow the link inside to XFur Studio 2, our new version

No problem, I hope it works!

 

Update to version 1.1 will be sent to the store near the end of the month due to the many improvements and new features it will include.

• Multi-directional grooming.
• Better wind speed controls allowing per-material settings.
• Improved management and performance of physics based movement.
• Compatibility with older Unity versions (5.2+)
• Conversion tools to convert existing heightmaps into XFur compatible textures
• Improved XFur Painter UI,
• New lighting model (for forward rendering path). BETA
• New styling effects such as rim lighting (for both forward and deferred)
• Improved LOD script.
• New shader variants with a higher quality (24 samples)
• Independent tiling for fur color
• Auto-UV calculations for models with troublesome unwrapping or with a secondary UV channel already in use
• Performance improvements
• Fur thickness control improvements
• Better control over skin smoothness/fur smoothness transitions
• New Fur noise maps.

 

Small preview of the multidirectional grooming in action, coming in the next update! :






Soon I will post a video of grooming inside XFur Painter

 

What if you offset the shell in a rotating pattern to make curly strand? would it be possible to make locally curly fur?

 

Hi there,

That's something I am actively trying to do, either through the shells themselves or with some "clever" UV mapping

The shell method of fur does not lend itself easily for curly fur but I am researching the best method for this, don't worry. It won't be ready for this first update, but as soon as I find a way to make curly fur without compromising performance too much I will update right away!

Thanks for your comment and suggestion, and do not worry, I am trying something fairly similar to see if it gives a good, convincing curly result!

 

New rendering method for fur coming in v 1.05 (this month's update) for both forward and deferred. Added adjustable rim lighting for softer, more realistic fur rendering






Below, the new fur rendering method rendered in linear space. Previous screenshots in this comment were rendered in Gamma space. This is using deferred rendering, default settings, 16 samples shader using a low detail noise map




EDIT : Also, though this feature is in BETA, a new triplanar version of the shaders will be included for those difficult models with UV coordinates that do not lend themselves for fur mapping.

 

Here you have a small tease of the features coming in the new XFur version for the end of this month, mainly the new XFur Painter features and the very promised multi-directional grooming capabilities and an improved rendering method

The version is no longer a small update (1.05) but a full major update packed with TONS of new features, thus it will have the number 1.1

I hope you will like it!

 

Wish granted, multi directional grooming is coming to XFur in just a few days alongside a TON of new features!

 

directional grooming on contact (kind of dynamic brush like bahaviour) like in shadow of the colossus? basically touch bending?

 

Hi there!

Directional grooming, at least in this version, is designed mostly for artistic control over how the fur looks on a character. To actually groom it and give it the look you want. Directional grooming as a touch bending method is not implemented yet but it is easily achievable if you update the Fur Directional Map in real time. To see how to update it in real-time based on a collision you can use XFur Painter's source code as a starting point.

I will try to add actual touch bending support in future updates, dont worry. And it is already doable with the features included, but you would need to do the updates to the fur direction on your own at least in this version.

Thanks for commenting!

 

The new version of XFur is ready and will be available in a couple of days.

There is an important note I want to make here : Due to the huge amount of features added with this update that more than doubles the original amount of content and features, I've decided to raise the price of the tool by 5 dollars.

This means the new price for XFur Studio will be 30 USD.

The tool will still be available for 25 dollars for everyone until the new version is approved, which should take around 3-7 days. So if you want to get XFur Studio before the price change and still get all the exciting new features that will be added to it in the upcoming weeks and months, this is the perfect time to get it

This is the full list of features you can expect packed with this new version :

• 64 different fur shaders ( instead of the original 12 ) split as follows :
  - 32 Specular based shaders (Forward & Deferred), with and without shadows, with and without multi-light support, in 4,8,16 and 24 sample versions. For each variant, UV mapped and UV Free Triplanar versions are provided.
  - 32 Anisotropic based shaders (Forward ONLY), with and without shadows, with and without multilight support, in 4,8,16 and 24 sample versions. For each variant, UV mapped and UV Free Triplanar versions are provided.
• UV Free (Triplanar) Shaders. Shader variants that require no UV mapping for the fur are included.
• Directional Fur Grooming. Fur can now be groomed through a special texture map or by using XFur Painter and grooming it directly using a brush over the mesh.
• New Fur Noise maps. 2 New Fur noise maps allow more variation over the look of the fur, to produce coarser/softer results.
• Conversion tools. The new conversion tools let you assign and combine up to 4 texture maps into 1 single XFur compatible data map with just a few clicks.
• Wind Simulation improvements. Wind can now be controlled on a per-material basis. The Wind component now has its own Gizmos for an easier use experience.
• Higher compatibility. XFur can now run on older Unity versions, starting with Unity 5.2 instead of Unity 5.4
• Improved Rendering. Rim lighting, better occlusion and shadowing, anisotropic highlights as well as improved transparency handling produce a more realistic result.
• Improved XFur Painter. Better UI, easier control and a smoother experience.
• Improved physics handling. Physics based fur movement is now handled on a per-renderer basis without creating unnecessary copies of the materials.
• Improved LOD script. LOD calculations have been sped up.
• New tutorials. New tutorial videos have been added to the package to help you get started with XFur and XFur Painter in minutes.
• General rendering and performance improvements across all shaders and components.

Again, the price of XFur Studio will be raised to 30 dollars with this huge update, but you still have a few days while it is approved to get it at its original 25 dollars price.

I hope this update will be very helpful for you, and be sure to keep following this thread/giving suggestions for more features you need or want to see added to XFur in the future

Have a great week!

 

Very excited for these improvements. I can't quite get the look I need with v1, but these improvements look very promising.

 

Hi there,

Thanks, I hope this update will help you!
Besides, I am adding several tutorials to both the package and online to help people get used to the system more easily. If you need some help to give fur a particular look for your project, please feel free to contact me

Also as a tip, first modify the values on the material until you have your fur looking "kind of" right (but with longer, thinner fur than the final result you expect) and THEN use XFur Painter to control all the finer details

One of the tutorials I will release online next week will involve painting fur from zero over a dog model, so maybe it will be helpful!

 

Question: We may want to create a tint mask for our animals (a simple greyscale texture where we would mask out the parts of the texture that shouldn't have the albedo or fur color tint). The artist says "in your fur shader code, the spot where the tinting is happening would be just multiplied (or some similar math operation) by the mask, so that it doesn't tint those areas you don't want." I don't know anything about shaders....would this be feasible with xfur?

thanks
Dave

 

It would require a small set of changes to the main XFur_Helper.cginc file (to add support for this mask to be applied between the main color and the fur color) but it is doable yes. Depending on what you want to mask is which values you should multiply, but it is perfectly doable

If you do not have anyone who can check the XFur_Helper.cginc code for you, I can try to send you a modified version of it either later today or early tomorrow that allows you to use a mask, I just ask you to please send me an email with a detailed description of what you want to mask with it so I can know which values I need to mask and try to send you a small patched version for your specific needs

 

A small tease of another new feature included in this update :
The XFur Map generator


How does it work? Well, it is easy. Let's say you have some heightmaps from a different fur shader that required you to store the Fur Mask in the alpha channel. XFur, since it packs a lot more information on its Fur Maps, stores this data in the RED channel.

Rather than having to use an editing software to switch the channels of these textures and create an XFur compatible map on your own, you can simply drop your heightmap into the fur mask slot, select the Alpha channel as the source from where to read the data from, and then click on generate map.

The tool will generate an XFur compatible map that stores the fur mask in the red channel as expected. You can drag up to 4 textures to easily generate XFur maps containing fur masks, length, thickness and occlusion information.

You can also use it to generate XFur grooming maps from existing textures.

And of course, you can use it to easily compose textures for any other purposes

 

Thanks very much for that offer. I think I should wait and make sure that this upcoming version of XFur will satisfy my requirements before I ask you do do that, but hopefully it will!

 

No problem!

And if possible, I would like to know in which parts is XFur currently falling short for your specific project so I can keep improving it and making it more usable for more users

Thanks again, I hope this version will be very useful for you!

 

As another tease, here is a pic of our own German Shepherd 3D model using XFur shaders (Triplanar variant) instead of the ones included with that package, and after being painted in XFur Painter. Whole process took slightly over 20 minutes :




This is rendered in deferred mode with a low samples shader (16), and of course a longer time in XFur Painter or some additional tweaking on the Fur Data Textures with GIMP or other image editing software for an even more precise detail painting would improve the results even more

 

While we wait for the new version to be released, here is a small preview of the new documentation too, showcasing new lighting models and shader variants :





The approval process should take just a couple days more, so this new version will be available for everyone very soon

Also there will be new videos and samples both in the tool and online in the upcoming days!

 

These look great! I do think it would be helpful to show lighter fur/objects some as well -- I found it harder to get an equally-nice appearance with lighter fur.

I'm using another fur shader, and xFur v1 was about comparable in appearance (so wasn't worth the effort to tweak all my animals with it) -- but v1.1 looks like a big step forward, so I'm looking forward to trying it.

 

Here is a small video test with the same dog as above, just using a much clearer texture instead (kind of a wolf-like pattern and coloration) as well as much longer fur

I didn't paint this one as the previous one mainly for time constraints, this is more of a quick take.

Hope it helps to give you an idea of the kind of results you can achieve with v 1.1!

 

XFur version 1.1 comes with 2 new video tutorials and more are coming soon (this time, for Youtube so you don't need to download them along the tool).

Hopefully it won't take too long to be approved and you will be able to take full advantage of all the new features that have been added these past days !

 

Hi,
It's work in left model & right model show grey material.

(Checked in samsung s8)

 

That's the intended behavior since the model on the right is only using the default Unity material (I needed it to test on my own device since mine doesn't support the shader)

Just a heads up :
To make this new update of XFur Studio work on high-end mobile you will probably need to make a small change in the shader's code of the shader you will use (for a high-end mobile I recommend to not go above 16 samples versions of the shaders or it might be too heavy for the device) and change #pragma target 3.0 to #pragma target 2.0 wherever it appears.

This in order to make sure it compiles in a full GLES2 compatible way

If you decide to purchase our tool and have any troubles doing this change, please contact me with your invoice number and I'll make sure to mail you a patched version.

As another warning, again, this tool is not intended for Mobile devices so I cannot guarantee that future updates will not break compatibility with mobile devices nor that I will be able to give you mobile-specific support for all issues.

But I hope that, since it is working well, it can help you with your project

 

Thanks for the Response. I want to buy for ios arkit devices.but my worry part is how it will look in ios & what about performance.

 

I see...
Sorry I cannot provide more help for this. I do not have any way to build a iOS version on my own and test it right now as to give you more information about this. If the performance impact on the Samsung was not heavy, I guess it wouldn't be heavier on similar devices running on iOS, but sadly I have no way to test this.

 

XFur Studio v 1.1 is now live on the Asset Store at its new 30 USD price!

Packed with new features, more than 4 times the amount of content of version 1.0, with support for older Unity versions and improved across all its components, I hope this update will be very helpful for all of you!

XFur studio v1.1 has the following features :

• 64 different fur shaders ( instead of the original 12 ) split as follows :
  - 32 Specular based shaders (Forward & Deferred), with and without shadows, with and without multi-light support, in 4,8,16 and 24 sample versions. For each variant, UV mapped and UV Free Triplanar versions are provided.
  - 32 Anisotropic based shaders (Forward ONLY), with and without shadows, with and without multilight support, in 4,8,16 and 24 sample versions. For each variant, UV mapped and UV Free Triplanar versions are provided.
• UV Free (Triplanar) Shaders. Shader variants that require no UV mapping for the fur are included.
• Directional Fur Grooming. Fur can now be groomed through a special texture map or by using XFur Painter and grooming it directly using a brush over the mesh.
• XFur - Map Packer Utility. An easy to use utility that allows you to combine up to four textures on a per-channel basis into a complex Xfur Data map allowing you to easily convert heightmaps and fur maps from other shaders into XFur compatible maps!
• XFur - Triplanar Fix. XFur is, thanks to its advanced mesh patcher and unique shader methods, the only fur shader with full triplanar projection that works without any glitches nor issues on skinned meshes. Simply add the Triplanar Fix component to your mesh/skinned mesh renderer to patch it for Triplanar support, remove the component and you are ready to go, in just a few seconds! It works even with models from the Asset Store!
• New Fur Noise maps. 2 New Fur noise maps allow more variation over the look of the fur, to produce coarser/softer results.
• Conversion tools. The new conversion tools let you assign and combine up to 4 texture maps into 1 single XFur compatible data map with just a few clicks.
• Wind Simulation improvements. Wind can now be controlled on a per-material basis. The Wind component now has its own Gizmos for an easier use experience.
• Higher compatibility. XFur can now run on older Unity versions, starting with Unity 5.2 instead of Unity 5.4
• Improved Rendering. Rim lighting, better occlusion and shadowing, anisotropic highlights as well as improved transparency handling produce a more realistic result.
• Improved XFur Painter. Better UI, easier control and a smoother experience.
• Improved physics handling. Physics based fur movement is now handled on a per-renderer basis without creating unnecessary copies of the materials.
• Improved LOD script. LOD calculations have been sped up.
• Full documentation and user manual. Contains detailed descriptions of the whole system, tutorials, usage tips and much more!
• New tutorials. New tutorial videos have been added to the package to help you get started with XFur and XFur Painter in minutes.
• General rendering and performance improvements across all shaders and components.

 

Amazing Fur Shader... Im loving it...

I'm making the integration for all my future realistic animals and I'm starting with the rabbit...
here are some samples!!


Fur and No Fur


I found some tiny little issues with the latest version ...
the rabbits get a little darker with the fur material:
I set the cutoff to 1 to see it better:


also also in case of the rabbit I set the fur length to a really low value 0.024 (because the rabbit has it that way ) and none of the fur direction or wind make any changes at all... maybe it has something to do with the size of the rabbit ???
with a value of 0.079 I can see the wind and the fur direction but that a very hairy bunny



Other than that is a really good fur asset... I hope you guys keep making it more awesome!!

I can share the character with you guys so you can make experiment with it if you like

 

Hi there

First of all...WOW!
I really love the 3D art you make, and those models look really really amazing! It is great to see how the shader looks in a realistic animal like that rabbit

Regarding the darkening of the look, I am not completely sure as to what is causing it but I believe you can fix it by using the new rim parameters and adjusting a bit the thickness. If you can PM me a copy of the albedo texture (doesnt matter if it is in a lower resolution) I may be able to help you better, but I will make some tests on my end to see what may be causing that darkening and get back to you ASAP.

About the fur direction : due to the new grooming features of the shaders, now all the direction of the fur is controlled through the Fur Direction Map which defaults to gray. If you want to use the fur direction as in previous versions (uniform direction across the whole mesh instead of multi-directional grooming) then you can either assign a 1x1 white texture as the fur direction map or change this line in the shader you want to use :

_FurDirMap("Fur Direction Map", 2D ) = "gray"{}

to

_FurDirMap("Fur Direction Map", 2D) = "white"{}

and it will revert the shader back to the workflow of v 1.0

This should make the fur direction as well as the wind movement more evident. Also, remember to add an object with the XFur_Wind component to your scene to control it better!

I will get back to you in a couple hours with a solution for the darkening of the mesh. If you can send a copy of the texture to test it more directly it will be very appreciated, but I will work on a quick fix and get back soon in any case

Thank you very much for your purchase and comment, I can't wait to see what else you can do with XFur !

 

I solved the issue with the rabbit and sent you the fixed materials in a PM. I hope it helps!


https://i.imgur.com/8aKoWDJ.png

 

WOW fantastic update, thank you for all your hard work on this.

 

Hello, I'm very interested in your product, but I would like to check something with you first, I know that the product has some wind effect over the fur, but for example, with and animated character this fur with react with the character movement? do you have any example for it or video?

 

Hi there,

Thank you very much for your interest in XFur Studio

Do you mean if the fur will have a physics-like reaction to the animations movement? If that's the case, then the answer is not in this version. This shader is working with the shells method and as such the movement of the fur as well as its direction is more uniform. It can be affected by movement, yes, but by the movement of the object as a whole.

What does this mean? This means that if your character is completely covered in for and it shakes its head for example, the fur won't move only around its head. If the whole character runs however, the fur will react accordingly and move in the opposite direction of the movement.

I am currently working on a system that will let the fur move in different directions as different parts of the model move (this is designed for animated models and skinned meshes like lions and such where you want the mane to move tracking the head and neck instead of the whole body) and it might be ready for version 1.2, but right now in version 1.1, the fur movement is either in world space (through wind) or a single directional movement (physics of the whole model).

Here is a small video showing an animated model walking and on idle mode, receiving strong wind from changing directions

Hope it helps!

EDIT : Sorry for the slight pixelation, Youtube messed up a bit during upload and processing !

 

Thanks a lot for your quick response, we will buy the package later today. Please keep the great work, is super great to read that you are working in this features, mean while we will working with the actual version, thanks!.

 

No problem!

I hope that XFur will be very helpful for you and don't worry, these features are being worked on to integrate them to the whole package while keeping them fast enough to be used on mid-end hardware too, and there are long term plans for both support and improvements to this tool

Thanks again for your interest in XFur!

 

I got 1.1 and am trying to use the Painter, but I'm unable to assign the mesh to the Target Mesh slot on Main Camera. I've brought the model into the scene/hierarchy, then added a Mesh collider to it, but still can't assign it. (And it's not listed when I open the window listing available meshes.) I've tried this with three different models, no difference. When I add the Mesh Collider, it doesn't automatically assign the mesh to the collider component....I thought it would, so I don't know if that's part of the problem. Any ideas?

 

Hi there,

Are you dragging the whole model hierarchy? (as in, it is a skinned mesh and you are dragging the whole rig with it?)

If your model looks like this on the scene :


and the mesh itself has a Skinned mesh component assigned



It will not work. As explained in the manual, you need to go to the project browser :


Select the mesh itself, only the mesh, and drag that into the scene :



That way, it will appear with a Mesh Renderer component instead of the Skinned Mesh one:




This will allow you to add the mesh collider without any issues and to assign it to the Target Mesh slot in XFur Painter

Skinned meshes are not compatible with Mesh Colliders, you need to drag only the mesh part of your character to the scene so it is added as a normal, static mesh. This is a MUST only for the use with XFur Painter

Following these steps, it should work without any other issues

 

Ah, got it, thanks. I did read that in the manual but somehow overlooked the key aspect.

So now I've got a new problem: My animal model has four materials on it, and the first one in the array is not the body material. But xFur assumes the first material is for the body, so it replaces the material that's there (for the mouth) with the xFur (Clone) material. Can I somehow tell it which material slot to use?

Also, the Rotate command doesn't work for me, since I've assigned the middle mouse button to another OS function. Is there another way to rotate in Painter?

 

Hi there,

I will need you to give me a moment to send you a fixed version of XFur painter (especially for the OS functions changes, since this is probably interfering with the way Unity handles inputs) as well as to let you assign the materials in a better way. It can be done, I just need a moment to do the fix and send it to you.

For the rotation, I will expose a variable so you can set it up to a keycode that suits your PC better

 

I just sent you the patched XFur Painter app set up so you can adjust the keys to ones that work with your particular OS configuration.

The ability to set up which material to replace in models where the fur is not the first material has also been added and it has also been sent for approval as a small patch, so this feature should be available to everyone in a few days

Hope it helps!

 

Thanks so much for that, and so quickly! I'm up and running now. The Painter's usability is greatly improved in 1.1!

Two questions:

1) Does the Fur Direction Map override the Fur Direction inputs?

2) If I have an animal model with UV'd texture, would I want to use the Triplanar shader? If so, why? And is there an additional performance cost to it?

thanks!
Dave

 

I am glad to hear it is working well and that you are happy with the improvements in v1.1 !

To your questions :

1) A Fur Direction Map doesn't override the Fur Direction Inputs, both are multiplied by each other. If your Fur Direction values are higher, the effect of the Fur Direction Map will be more evident. By default, the Fur Direction Map is set to gray (no directions). If you want to use only the Fur Direction Inputs as in v1.0 instead of having directionally groomed fur, you can assign a white 1x1 texture to the Fur Direction Map and this will revert the shader functionality to the workflow of the older version, 1.0, where the Fur Direction Input controls the direction of the whole fur

2) The triplanar shaders are designed for models that do not have a secondary UV channel with appropriate mapping for fur. For example, models that store lightmaps on the secondary UV channel or that do not have a secondary UV map at all. The triplanar shader has indeed a slight performance overhead as it generates a uniform UV map for the fur on the fly, but this performance overhead is not noticeable in most cases as it is done per-vertex instead of per pixel.

If your model has a secondary UV channel mapped for fur in a way that you like, there is no reason to use the triplanar shaders. In fact, a character that has been UV Mapped for fur by a 3D artist will look better while using this UV map than with the triplanar shaders ( since an artist made UV map will be better in most cases than a computer generated one )

EDIT : The key when working with XFur is experimentation. There are many different shaders, techniques and methods available to get the perfect look for your fur, you just need to try the different shaders and features to see which ones suit your models and the look of your game the best

Thanks again for your comments, I am glad to hear XFur is working better for you now!

 

My fur is coming along nicely! But I'm still a bit unclear about triplanar: My model does not have a UV2 channel mapped for fur. So what is the advantage of using Triplanar on it -- versus using one of the non-Triplanar shaders?

And when I'm done painting, should I switch from the Painter/16 Samples shader to Shadows/16 Samples? Or leave it alone?

 

That's great to hear!

The main advantage of the triplanar shaders is that they give fur a far more uniform and pleaseant look if the model doesn't have a second uv channel, since the triplanar shader generates uvs designed especially for fur

And yes, after exporting your fur maps you should create a material for your model using any shader other than the painter ones. If you used the 16 samples painter shader to paint it, then the shadow/16 samples would be the best match for the final, in game version, that's right

The painter shader has many features exclusive to painter that would cause unnecessary overhead in the final game

Hope this helps!

 

Okay I'll experiment with Triplanar.

So I did some painting, then exported the maps, and stopped. But then I noticed a few things need repainting...but when I click Play, the Clone fur material has blank fur and grooming textures...I can assign my Direction texture but not my Fur Mask texture. Is there a way to keep working on the same textures?

 

Hi there

There is support to continue interrupted work in the upcoming patch. I'm waiting for it to be approved. I'll send you the preview version in a moment

Xfur painter is in constant improvement right now (mostly since XFur is less than 3 weeks old!) but don't worry, this feature is ready, it'll just take me a moment to get back to my PC to send it as a preview in a PM

 

Glad to hear that, and no rush, I can wait for it.

But another thing: Fur Direction seems to be use world rather than local directions, which makes it kinda useless as a complement to the multidirectional grooming. Am I missing something?

 

I'll check well in a second, since in all my tests it was working as intended. I'll check it in a moment and give you a solution, don't worry

 

Solution sent to you as a PM and to the store as a small patch to be available as soon as it gets approved!