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Styling the fur

Rarely do individual strands of hair stand straight up. Brushing them around gives the fur a more natural, scruffy look. You can style the fur both with and without guides.

Styling the fur with guides

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. To see the normals on your grid that you created in Basic fur setup, turn on the display flag for the grid in the network editor, and turn on Display Point Normals in the scene view by clicking from the View Controls toolbar.

  2. Press the hotkey D in the scene to open and close the Display Options window.

  3. On the Misc tab of the Display Options window for the 3D viewer, increase the Scale Normal value to approximately 1.5 to get a clearer view of the normals.

  4. Insert a Comb SOP before the SKIN_OUT node.

    You can do this by selecting the input wire, pressing Tab, and typing comb.

  5. Comb the fur by clicking LMB in the scene and dragging your mouse over the normals.

    Tip

    You can change the Radius of your brush in the Operation Controls toolbar for a wider comb.

    You may also want to change the Opacity of your comb to a value of approximately 0.02. This will allows you to make more detailed changes.

    For more information, see the brush tools help.

When you turn the display flag back on the Fur SOP, you will see the fur has been styled.

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.

Styling the Fur without Guides

This tutorial is a continuation of Basic fur setup.

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 Using guide hairs and Changing the color of the fur using the color attribute tutorials. This example simply uses colored fur for better visualization in the viewport.

  1. Insert a Facet SOP between the AttribCreate that controls the thickness and the NULL_SKIN node.

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

  2. Turn on the Pre-Computer Normals checkbox in the parameter editor of the Facet SOP.

  3. To see the normals on your grid, turn on the display flag for the grid in the network editor, and turn on Display Point Normals in the scene view by clicking from the View Controls toolbar.

  4. Press the hotkey D in the 3D viewer to open and close the Display Options window.

  5. On the Misc tab of the Display Options window for the 3D viewer, increase the Scale Normal value to approximately 1.5 to get a clearer view of the normals.

  6. Insert a Comb SOP after the Facet SOP node.

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

  7. Comb the fur by clicking LMB and dragging your mouse over the normals in the scene.

    Tip

    You can change the Radius of your brush in the Operation Controls toolbar for a wider comb.

    You may also want to change the Opacity of your comb to a value of approximately 0.02. This will allows you to make more detailed changes.

    For more information, see the brush tools help.

When you turn the display flag back on the Fur SOP, you will see the fur has been styled.

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.