Keep working on the environment texture and model (or researching online assets) to fill out the empty space. The Renderfarm is crowded this weekend, I hope it will more room in this week before the submission to let me render.
The groom still has some issues that need fixing, such as the hair moving offset from the scalp base. Today, I met with Professor Hannah to seek a solution. She said that nHair might work, but it will take time to fix. So, I decided to address this issue during the summer break since I'm running out of time. However, after noticing this issue, another problem arose! The render farm somehow couldn't render out my hair. I've tried multiple times, waiting for around ten hours each time, but all attempts failed. This issue didn't happen with my XGen assignment from last quarter. It's so frustrating! The professor suggested that caching out the hair might work, but it will make the file huge and laggy.
Since the render farm is terribly congested, and I'm not 100% sure if the hair will attach correctly, I decided to render the breakdown locally. I set the render sequence to render every tenth frame. It looks laggy but it is the fastest way.
Continue working on the environment, focusing on the textures and set dressing for the garden.
These methods that might can fix this issue (Thanks to Kevin, Badin, Professor Hannah K, and Professor Timsteele):
Convert to Interactive Groom, and cache out the first frame (since it is a static hair), then parent to the neck joint; or use Locator stick to one vertex of the head and then use that as a ref position.
Use Xgen Batch Render (Document: Render XGen primitives).
Convert to Interactive Groom, create New Cache > export abc Cache > in the new scene without Xgen description > import abc Cache.
Copy the scalp and wrap the hair to that duplicate scalp, and then use a blend shape to the body.
Just convert to Interactive Groom, check the render if the hair follow instant. It works!!!!
Because XGen is a sensitive tool, I decided to finish all the environment assets in a separate scene. After finalizing the environment, I organized the Outliner and cleaned up the history. I then exported selected objects as a .ma file and imported them into the scene where I groomed the girl. I used the File Path Editor to re-path the textures after bringing them from the original file into current sourceimages folder.
I finally figured out the issue with the render farm not rendering the hair. Before submitting to the render farm, I still had a main asset in my scene that wasn't textured yet. I initially wanted to model it from scratch but decided to refine the original block model instead. Then, I started working on the shader. I didn't expect that on the last day of the Spring quarter, so many students would still be using the render farm. TT TT
