Styling Hair

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Options for Styling Hair


1. Direct Editing of points


Since FurryBall 2, it is possible to style FurryBall hair by changing the positions of hair guide control vertices.


  1. Select your FurryBall hair shape
  2. Hit F8, which will tell Maya you want to edit individual vertices
  3. Move/rotate/scale the control vertices as necessary.
  4. Hit F8 again when done.


The hair will keep its shape. Dynamics from Maya hair systems will still apply.



2. Using Maya dynamic hair and then baking

Sometimes, you need to bake a haircut or similar styling. Baking in this context means translating the current state of simulation of Maya hair into FurryBall hair. Maya hair will be then disconnected from the FurryBall hair.


  1. Style your hair by letting Maya simulate the connected Maya hair systems
  2. From FurryBall menu, click FurryBall -> Hair -> Bake and Disconnect Dynamic Hair. Maya hair system will now be disconnected and FurryBall hair is static but holds shape.
  3. You can delete maya hair system now



A new Maya hair system, possibly with fewer hairs (follicles), can then be connected to the baked (styled) FurryBall hair and control its coarse dynamics. Refer to the previous tutorial, since this is exactly the same.


FurryBall also has experimental support for base curves, which are used to properly scale hair. You can experiment with this yet undocumented functionality via FurryBall -> Hair -> Create Default Hair Base Curves and FurryBall -> Hair -> Create Hair Base Curves from Dynamic.


3. Using Maya hair start Curves


  1. Create static maya hair system
  2. Connect FurryBall hair to it
  3. Hide nurbs output curves of hair system
  4. Reveal hair system's start curves by selecting all the follicles and hitting Hair - convert selection- to start curves)
  5. Edit start curves by deforming, moving CVs etc..
  6. At the end you can bake FurryBall fur shape with FurryBall - hair - bake and disconnect



4. Using Nurbs curves already created


  1. Create some base mesh that FB hairs could grow from
  2. Freeze transformations of  Nubrs curves (edit - freeze transform)
  3. Select curves and the base mesh
  4. Hit Hair - Make selected curves dynamics (option box)
  5. Make sure that Attach curves to selected surfaces and exact shape match is Enabled
  6. Hit Make curves dynamic
  7. Select base mesh and create FurryBall hair and set number of CVs in hair setting to higher value.









5. Using Script



DOWNLOAD


Installation

  1. Download and open FurScriptsUI.rar
  2. Copy FurScriptsUI.mel to your script folder (i.e. C:\Users\ChuckNorris\Documents\maya\scripts)
  3. Run/Restart maya and execute 

                               

    source FurScriptsUI;

    FurScriptsUI();


  down in MEL command line or script editor. Script window will appear. (move this command to shelf for further use..)


Usage

  1. Create FurryBall Fur, name it (to prevent bugs), edit number of Cvs (in fur settings node) according to your intentions.
  2. Press Fur on Mesh or Fur on faces - depending if your fur is on whole mesh or some faces only. Meshes will be generated
  3. Deform/Move/Rotate/Scale those meshes as you wish, But don't rename or edit topology! Don't change number of Cvs now!
  4. Select fur and press Shape fur, shape from meshes will be transfered to fur.
  5. You can edit meshes, transfer shape and test in FurryBall as long as you want.
  6. If you want to continue witch larger/smaller CVs/mesh levels, delete meshes, change number of CVs and generate meshes again.
  7. When done delete meshes


The hair will keep its shape. Dynamics from Maya hair systems will still apply.






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