[Justin Hicks]

hey everyone i'm new to the lightwave scene and i have a simple question... i have a character that i'm modeling and i need it to have some form of hair on it's head...sounds simple enuf.. i've seen the tut's on hair modeling and stuff ... and they all (or mostly all) say that saslite or sasquatch is the "way to go" well i figured this was a plug-in and so i went here and there all over the internet and finally found one for download dowload'd it...and vwalla ... nothing...at all happend i cant figure out how to get the "plug-in" to do anything ... ive tryed adding plugin's in the utilities tab uhm...and it say's it's add'ed.. but now what? how do i get to use it???? any help would be apreciated ... i've been at this for almost a week now and i'm at a loss.....so thx in advance

[Fallenswordsman]

Happy Christmas!

Sasquatch is a plugin created by Worley which can be found at www.worley.com. Its commercial so it means that you can't just download it and off it will go, but Saslite is already built into Lightwave which is the cutdown version. The cut down version does fewer hairs than the full version, so for example, if you wanted to animate a really hairy man walking down the beach then with saslite you'd probably only manage to get his hairy chest done whereas with Sasquatch you'll manage to cover his back in hair too.

Sas has two modes to it, fur mode and hair mode. From memory, for hair mode, you need to create polychains - chains of two point polygons for the hair creation to follow. You also need to make sure Sasquatch knows which end is the root end (there should be one polygon at the start with the surface of "root") to know where to grow hair from. You also need to let Sasquatch know what surface you're growing hair from and, a word of warning, it is case sensitive.

I believe you apply sasquatch as a pixel filter in order to get it doing anything - I think I found something in Effects > Processing > Add Pixel Filter. You'll need to add sasquatch there. Then you'll also need to add it as a displacement to the object. Select the object, go to properties > Deform Tab > Add displacement. Once you've done that you can double click on the displacement and add the hair/fur settings. But I do believe you need to have both the pixel filter and the displacement in there for the darned thing to work.

[Justin Hicks]

well i will try that...but! ..and this is a big but...i mean HUGE booty on this ... i dont have saslite eather! and i dont know why???? i cant figure it out...EVERY time i click on it it say's! "this is an in-correct version" and all it has is a ok button..now i'm acessing this from window's/image processing then i click on the drop-down and click saslite..and i'm in layout when i do this...and i would think that i need to be in modeler to do this..but i'm not sure ... and if so .. i cant find it at all in modeler...so i dont know ... but i'm going to go try what you said right now...and hopfully it helps...thx again

[Fallenswordsman]

Which version of Lightwave are you using? Saslite is a fairly recent introduction (I think version 8 onward)

Oh yeh, Saslite is applied in Layout - you can adjust colour maps for the fur shader in Modeller and create the polychains but that's about it, the rest is down to Layout.

[Justin Hicks]

the new'st to my knowledge i just got it 9.0

[Fallenswordsman]

Okay here's what I've done - most of the work is done in Layout rather than modeller. I've loaded a sphere object into layout with the default texture. I've then gone:
Windows > Backdrop Options > Processing Tab
I've added the Saslite pixel filter from here

[Fallenswordsman]

I've then gone to the object button with my sphere selected and clicked on Properties. In the deform tab, I've added the saslite displacement.

[Fallenswordsman]

The editable settings are available by double clicking on the saslite displacement as seen below. This will allow you to add fur or hair as required. Since this is a basic walkthru, I'm adding fur to everything (first tickbox)

[Fallenswordsman]

I then hit the render button (f9) and voila, one hairy sphere!

[Fallenswordsman]

The saslite plugin should be contained in the Newtek > Lightwave 3D 9 >Plugins > Effect folder if you're using a Windows box - don't know what it would be for a Macintosh but I'd assume it'd be the same.

[Justin Hicks]

ok..lol thx for all the post's ... uhm i think it's my download...cuzz i loaded a cube...with the default surface on it in lightwave layout...lol i thru in the cube just to make things interesting...i have some dignaty! haha..not but anyhow..then i went to window's/backdrop options then processing menu then i click on the drop down and it has 2 options one is halftone and one is saslite i click on saslite and it say's "cant load external plugin C:/blahblahbalh/saslight.p so i think it's something to do with my download maybe??? i hope but i'm gonna try like deleating everything and re-installing it.. i hope that work's ok, but until i have a better fix that's all i can do...but really thx for the help atleast i know how to do it when my comp start's working haha

[Justin Hicks]

YAY!!!!! holy hell sweet what a damn stupid error on my part...haha uhm i upgraded from 8.0...and i had the saslite plugin still loading from that folder EVEN tho it did'nt have that folder anymore! Saweeeeeet awsome man you rock!

[Justin Hicks]

oh dang ... uhm sorry to keep bugg'n ya but now i'm trying to save an image of my blue hair square and it say's error "plug-in image saver failed"abort render? then it's got yes or no... so i dont know .. but yeah it's kewl anyway..maybe it'll work for a video save...dont know but thx all the same

[Fallenswordsman]

Sounds to me that your plugins folders are messed up. You might want to try and reimport the plugins via the Utilities tab > Plugins or just reinstall. But my guess would be to just re-add the plugins you have the problems with - Lightwave may think they're somewhere else.

[rwhunt99]

I think your latest problem is when you save a render, you first have to save in a format and location, then when you render it will save to that location. Generally you do than in the render tab. I would have to check in v9.0 it has a render globals tab that might do the same.
If you don't you will get that error message (not that I ever do -- lol )


alot of times when I am experimenting; I will render a quick preview and then save the image from the render window itself.

and you will always get the "abort render yes or know" question when you render.