I've been trying to figure out how Parting Lines for Guides / Hair are supposed to work. But so far no luck, and the help files are just as cryptic as always.

When I draw a parting line on a Guide Groom or Hair, nothing happens and I can't find any input in te Hair or Groom where to adjust the setting or pipe in the Parting Line.

Does anyone know this is supposed to work ?

Thanks.

try using fabio, great tools for working the hair, most of the current tools comes form that tool set.

Thanks, I'll give it a shot.

Smells like not many peeps are grooming in Houdini.

I really hope the docs will be improved some sunny day, because most of the time they are completely useless.

Try to follow these steps:

Select the groom or hair you want to apply the parting line to.
Locate the Parting Line option in the grooming or hair tool settings.
Draw the parting line on the groom or hair by clicking and dragging on the surface of the mesh or curves.
Adjust the Parting Line settings as desired to fine-tune the look of the hair.

Hey thanks.

That’s what I’ve been trying dozens of times, but it has no effect whatsoever on the hair or the groom guides.

I suspect it’s broken in 19.5.534, or just not working in April ;-)

Did you try it yourself ?

Try to add a "rest" attribute on the parting lines (and possibly the guide curves) and see if that helps. You can do that easily with a rest SOP.

Meh, even adding a "rest" attribute doesn't seem to make any difference.

I'm not 100% sure, but I think the guides have to be "sculpted" in such a way that there's an actual parting line, like on a head with two pigtails for example. The guidepartition's curves then tell the generated hairs how to interpolate in the area where the guides diverge and would be otherwise confused as to what guide to folllow. Try this on a sphere with two pigtails to see whether you'll see a difference.

edit:
here, see this example

Aah, I see it now.

I was expecting a much more obvious effect on the guides or hair.

But like you say, it's a very subtle effect to be used on top of grooming the hair in a direction.

Muchos gracias, 10 bonus points for you ;-)

Thanks.

till today i am not happy with how the partline works, so just just break the hair in sections