Hair Simulation:
This was the last section of the lesson. Medhi taught us how to make a hair simulation and I decided I wanted to make a crab rig that I took from the asset library and make it look super weird as crabs have no hair but just a hard, shiny shell. I thought the contrast would look amusing and just shows how awesome this programme is – creating impossible to qa realistic standard.
- DOP network
- geo (T pose)
- guide groom node – easier to work with guides
Here I have got the model of the crab. In order to make sure that I can cover it with hair I need to make sure that there is connectivity throughout the model so that I can add hair that covers all over.
- hair gen node – interpolates normals
- Hair – length, segments, skin override
- use more guide groom nodes for different lengths of hair on character e.g. face & legs
Here I have successfully added the hair using the hair gen node and length and thickness can be altered depending on the outcome I want.
- Skin override
- add_lengthscale
- paint_lengthscale
- SOP network
- guide process node x2
- noise attribute node
- guide initialise node – UV blend , follow the wind
- Draw direction of hair – guide groom
- press centre on the viewport to paint
- cache is saved inside – makes HIP file a little heavier
- wavy hairs – use another guide process
Using the guide nodes I can set up the parameters which will save on memory and get what it should look like before actually committing to showing all the hair.
Q: why cant i paint density on my crab but I can paint the direction of the hair
- paint scale factor node
- hair gen node – hair clump node
- head has on average 400,000 hairs on head
- guide simulation
- guide deform
Here have used the painting tool to manually say where I wouldn’t like the hair to be or the hair to be a lot shorter. As you can see, the eyes and mouths are painted in a pink colour to show where the hair should not exist.
I used the hair clump node to create hair clumps. I zoomed in to the image to you could see how there are parts of the crab surface area that has no hair so that I could achieve the Yeti fur vibe on the crab.
Zoomed out this looks so hilarious. I really like how experimental you can be when you understand the nodes and the layers in which to use them. I think I would struggle redoing all of this from memory but I can always revisit my work space and do trial and error.
I haven’t yet made a final render because I want to do more, this will be something I try and find time for next term for my portfolio. I was thinking having the crab in water with the hair moving in either the wind or water. This will make a fascinating scene which shows I understand soft bodes/hair simulation/water.