Using guide hairs
This tutorial is a detailed look into what goes on at the network level. When you use the Add Fur tool on the shelf, guides are automatically created for you.
Using guide hairs provides you with more flexibility when creating fur. Guide hairs are generated when you create a line, copy it onto the points of the grid, and connect it to the guide geometry input of the fur surface node.
Although you can create fur without using guides, as described in Basic fur setup, you will not have as much flexibility in terms of styling the fur. Additionally, using guides is the preferred workflow if you plan to animate your character at any point in time.
This procedure is a continuation of Basic fur setup, as it demonstrates how to add guide hairs to your basic fur setup.
-
Create a
Line SOP in the Furgeometry object you created in Basic fur setup.NoteYou can increase the Distance parameter to make the guide hairs longer.
-
Use the
Copy SOP to copy the line onto the grid to create the guide hairs. See copying and instancing.Fur is created by interpolating between guide hairs.
-
Connect the following in the network editor:
-
To reposition the guide hairs perpendicular to the grid, they need to be oriented in the Z axis. Do this by changing the Direction parameters in the line node. Make the Y value
0and the Z value1.The guide hairs are copied onto the points on your grid, and the rest of the hairs are interpolated between the guide hairs.
You can specify the amount of strands that are interpolated by altering the Density parameter on the Fur SOP.
-
The fur procedural shader, that you created in Basic fur setup, needs an object containing the guide geometry (because the renderer only knows about objects). So we’ll extract the guide geometry out into a new object and then reference it in the fur procedural shader.
-
Select the
GUIDE_OUTnode in the network editor, and select the grid in the viewport, then click
Extract on the Modify shelf tab.This will create a new geometry object that automatically references
GUIDE_OUT. -
Click
objin the path at the top of the network editor to return to the object level, and rename your new geometry objectGUIDE_REFERENCE. -
Select the
GUIDE_REFERENCEnode. In the parameter editor, click the Render tab and turn off Renderable to prevent double rendering. Also, turn off Automatically Compute Normals on the Geometry subtab of the Render tab. -
Double-click the
Furobject, then double-click the SHOP Network, and select the fur procedural shader that you created in Basic fur setup. In the parameter editor of the fur procedural shader, set Guides to yourGUIDE_REFERENCEobject by clicking the
node chooser and selecting it from the tree.
You should already have a material applied, the procedural referenced for rendering, and lights set up in your scene from completing the Basic fur setup tutorial.
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.