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Shaping hairs

Rarely are individual strands of hair perfectly straight lines. Shaping the fur gives it a more natural, wavy look. This tutorial is a continuation of Using guide hairs.

Note

The fur in the screen captures has color that was created in Changing the color of the fur using the color attribute.

You can do this tutorial without completing the Changing the color of the fur using the color attribute tutorial. This example simply uses colored fur for better visualization in the viewport.

  1. Increase the Points in the parameter editor of the Line SOP that you created in Basic fur setup to 5.

  2. Insert a Group SOP after the Line node.

    You can do this by selecting the output wire, pressing Tab, and typing group.

  3. On the Create tab of the Group SOP, change the Group Name to root, Entity to Points, and Pattern to 0.

  4. On the Combine tab, in the Group parameter, set tip root.

  5. Insert a Point SOP after the Group SOP.

  6. On the Point SOP, select tip from the dropdown menu of the Group parameter.

  7. Alter the Position parameter values to change the shape of the line.

    For example, set the following X, Y, and Z values in the Position parameters to add randomness.

    X

    $TX + rand($PT)

    Y

    $TY + rand($PT + 51224)

    Z

    $TZ + rand($PT + 31245)

    For more information, see the rand expression function.

When you turn on the display flag of the Copy SOP, you will see the lines are now frizzed.

When you turn on the display flag of the Fur SOP, you will see the hairs are no longer straight lines, as the fur is interpolated between the frizzled guide hairs.

For more information on shaping the hairs, see Controlling the thickness, shape, and frizz.

Remember, the Fur SOP should only be used for visualization in the viewport. In order to render, it is highly recommended that you use a fur procedural shader, which will delay the generation of fur until render time. For more information on setting this up, see Basic fur setup.