Create Maya Hair - The Basics
- Posted on 25 July, 2016
- 6D Hair Extensions
- By Anonymous
This video shows you the basic workflow of creating hair using XGen Interactive Grooming.
Xgen, Interactive Grooming allows you to create and style, hair or fur using intuitive brush-based tools.. This is not to be confused with the older manual Groomable splines found in the Create XGen Description window.. These are not compatible with the interactive tools. (, though, it is easy to convert default, splines to interactive grooming, hairs ) To create an interactive, groom, first select the mesh or mesh faces on which to generate it. Next go to the Modeling menu set and select Generate >, Create Interactive, Groom Splines.. This automatically opens the XGen Interactive, Groom Editor, which shows you the groom’s base description along with 2 default modifiers The Sculpt houses, and allows you to edit the layers that will blend the effects of the various sculpt tools.. You can create additional layers to separate sculpt effects. Then switch between the active one by clicking on their respective Edit buttons (, which turn red when active, ) The Scale controls the global scale of all hairs in the groom.. You can select any of these nodes and switch to the Attribute Editor to view their attributes… …but it’s, easier to use the XGen – Interactive, Groom, workspace, which displays them all at once.. You’Ll generally want to start your grooms by adjusting some global description settings.. In this case, we’ll reduce the overall Width Scale and increase the Taper to make the primitives look more hair-like. Also increase the overall Density Multiplier in the base node to thicken the hair up. And increase the overall Scale. To give yourself a good starting point., You can keep track of the number of hairs, the current active Sculpt Layer and other useful information via the XGen HUD.. Now you can use the various brushes in the XGen shelf or the Generate > Interactive, Groom Tools, menu to style, the hair., Use the Comb and Grab brushes to create the initial shape by dragging the cursor to change the direction of hairs.. You can turn on Symmetry in the Tool Settings to affect the mesh on both sides. To avoid hairs penetrating the scalp geometry enable Collide with Meshes.. You can also adjust the size and strength of the brushes here, but it’s quicker and more interactive to hold B or M in the interface and drag the mouse left and right or up and down respectively., To create a part use the Freeze Tool to mask out Hair on one side of the head, then comb the remaining hair away from it ( with Symmetry off ), Repeat on the opposite side. You can then use the Smooth Tool to blend between the different areas.. Although our initial groom looks pretty good it’s obvious that the hair arrangement is too uniform. Break up the uniformity by adding a Noise Modifier in the XGen Interactive, Groom, Editor., This applies noise to all the hairs at once.. Just remember that the order of the modifiers will affect the results so consider whether you want to add noise to the base description before grooming or after your initial groom.. If you want to apply noise to a specific area instead, you’ll want to use the Noise Tool.. We recommend doing this on a different sculpt layer. In general, it’s wise to layer effects like this on top of your basic groom, so that you can adjust their strength, values to show or hide their effects.. Other effects you may want to considering layering include Clumping to reproduce the way: hairs, intertwine and clump up. And trimming or lengthening. Note that thickening or thinning via the Density or Width Tool is not a layerable effect.. You can Shift + right-click. While any of these tools is active to quickly switch to another tool via the marking, menu. Just make sure the appropriate layer is active. Each time. Finally to change the color of your groom, simply adjust the attributes of its hairPhysicalShader node. When satisfied with the groom render. In Arnold for the best results,
Comments
MONEYVAL9: Thank you , you are one of the best instructors out there , the presentation composition are perfect .Love the Rigging series u did , wish to get an update with quicker methods for rigging
HappehLemons: Is there a way to save masked sections to groups to access without having to remask? This seems good, but in order to have better control of sections of the hair when working with longer grooms it's pretty useful.
asdmax: Awesome!!:) this truly seems more production suitable !! great improvements on xgen !:) May i ask, if there's a way to add Dynamics on the groom(or is still nhair?) and if using the layer system is possible to tweak the simulated cache afterwards?
Derek Flood: Great feature! For a curve it is possible to pick the end CV (Select > Last CV ) and move it with soft select. This was possible with Guides in the old xGen. Is there a way to do the same with either splines or inGuides for the new interactive Grooming? Would be really useful.
Soen - She Her: Thanks for the tutorial. I'm having a problem though - once I selected generate > create interactive groom splines, the description appeared in the xgen editor window, but I can't see any hairs. My scene is scaled for a 6-foot tall character. Any advice? Cheers!
BikoTheAnimator: Wow. This looks amazing. I have never done hair groom, but I may try it on my current Elsa animation I am doing.
v: that was insanely calmingly simple and easy to understand and follow
fritziundso: yaaass! <3 looking forward to give this a try! looks like a big improvement of xgen! :)
Derek Flood: Are there plans to add the ability for the clumping mod to generate clumps based on guides? That's I think my biggest wish for IGS.
Mayur Badgujar: Thank you sir. I love your every tutorial. Only Because of you, we learn something new. thanks a lot of
Austin Reddington: This is such a great feature! Unfortunately when I click Create Interactive Groom Splines, Maya freezes without an error message. My computer is more capable of handling it, and my drivers are all current. Any Suggestions?
Russel Realeza: Hi! Is this also applicable in Maya 2016? Awesome video very informative
MMS 05: Thank you dude.You are like a boss in Maya.
Ravi Chandra: Sir, i need a tutorial in which you don't use xgen for hair and fur just the base for hair and paint the hair in photoshop by using alpha channel!! I want to know how the base will look like! On which i start painting hair in photoshop!! THANK YOU SIR!
GAME WALA: Hi thanks for this great video but i have one problem when create more than 1 description on the same object or any other object. I cannot comb the second description and i also tried selecting second description and then tried to comb it still does not work. can you please tell what should i do?
nordalk: Xgen is very nice and the interactive groom works excellent, However i don't use it in production Cause Every time I reopen the scene the viewport don't show any preview, if i press render the hair is there, but in the viewport he is bald. Is it some setting i've missed? IT's very frustrating and not useable that way since i can't edit the hair blindly :/, Read that many people use xgen but no clue how they get it to work good with their pipelines
615mushu: Hi, Thanks for this video but I have a problem, every time I try to activate collide with meshes Maya just stop working all together. Can you please suggest something that might be the cause of that ?
tstanimations13: Does anyone used the transfer to other mesh function? It crashes all the time I trie to use it....Is there any possibility to get my fur from a base character (alembic without rig/animation) to my animated character (alembic cache with animation) -> the mesh stays the same
yeahyeahyeahokayyyyy: Maya isn't sli compatible, is it? Would be nice if there was a way to utilize both my graphics cards. Have two geforce gtx 1080's, but even just using one tends to over heat after a little while. Could be a compatibility issue, because I'm sure it's more than capable of handling the job. Appreciate the support.
hercaca: In the old XGen its easy to choose another renderer and to apply a new shader to it. However this Interactive Grooming doesn't seam to have it. I apply a new shader directly onto the Description but it won't render. Any ideas?
Victoria Rojas: Is it possible to render the Interactive Grooming hair in Renderman? I have been trying to render but it doesn't show up.
Lord Gains: Hi i did this and the hair came out great! However when i move the mesh the hair doesnt move. Basically it looks like the hair and my mesh are two different objects i just need to figure out a way to combine them or something to attach the hair back on the head :(
İbrahim H. Güner: How can I add a new modifier to affect only specific regions of hair? for example when clump modifier is added it affects every part of the hair. yes the top is nice but the sides do not look nice. How can I add a new modifier so that only the top side can affect it?
Icemanmodeler: When i plug in a layered texture node that uses a noise and a 3d paint texture into the mask of a noise it doesn't seem to work. Is the layered texture not supported with Xgen Interactive Grooming?
Z NBK: i think Xgen Interactive Grooming doesn't support two things.. first the Stray effect second how to give specific areas a differnt color.. like for example a Tiger Hair Color.. when i assign texture into the physics hair shader it just affect the length of the hair not the area..
Apollo: Oh this old tutorial still actual. Thanks Man
Maya animation: What computer would work best for a lot of groom spines, but costs less than 1000 dollars?
Panatya C.: Thank you very much. I'm using maya 2017. Can you help me please?, How to export xgen hair to unity?.
Stephen Davidson: How do I import curves into the Interactive Groom Editor ? I have made many preset hair styles using polygon geometry so that I can quickly fit to character then extract curves from the geo edges.
Atilla Ceylan: Hi is there a way to use hair created with Interactive Grooming in Maya 2016 (Ep2)? Some sort of export from 17 to 16?
stfesteiras stfesteiras: how long did it take you to make a rendered image and at what resolution? 
Ampa Tiyakorn: I tried to generate xgen gloom able in an eyebrow of my character, but it only create multiply xxxx all over the surface. Do you have idea to fix the problem?
Vanessa de Luca: Hello. I'm using Maya 2017 and the hair in Arnold render is black. I've tried to use the aiHair but it doesn't has shown on viewport 2.0. What can I do if Arnold is my main render?
Adam Sweeney: I've got Maya 2017 just for these grooming tools and I can't render in it because Arnold has problems with my CPU. Also GoZ plug-in for Zbrush is very troublesome in this version of Maya. What can I do?? Is there a fix, possibly any way I could get the grooming brushes in Maya 2016? If not is there any way I could import Zbrush Fibermesh curves into Xgen and have them work as Xgen curves?? The reason being is that I need to convert the Xgen hair guides into planes (For use in a game engine). It's extremely important to be able to do this. Can you please help? Thanks
darckjack222: I have a problem, when I add density multiplier all hairs disappear
JC Sculpture Studio: has the broken Undo function been fixed in the new version for the grooming tools? ( not this new interactive mode, but the old system )
Kenny Louis Wilkins: Thanks for the overview mister.I've watch the character modeling tutorials. And I have no idea to model a hair.
Oken: some parts of my dog are almost insensitive to the comb and other tools compared to others parts, and those areas are not even symmetrical while my mesh is. Is there a way to fix that ?
Hanani Zaini: hello, can you help me .. I model my half character and then I use duplicate special to make another half my character, then I use this Xgen to make the hair part but it turn out the half part only have hair another half don't .. what should I do??
Maya animation: after I clicked interactive groom splines, it said "Mesh polySurface3Shape has non-manifold vertices", and wouldn't create hairs. What does that mean, and how do I fix it?
Varsha Muthappa: while i use the comb tool its not as smooth as yours but very choppy. why is that?
hn x: When I want to grooming, an error. XgmSetCombBrushTool; // Warning: XGen(Tip): OpenCL is disabled. See output window for more details. //
yeahyeahyeahokayyyyy: Is there no longer a clump modifier in interactive grooming? For some reason it's not showing up in the "add modifier" tab.
Michelle Jung: I made hair quickly using this new xgen, it was cool! but when I rendered it with vray (vray hair mtl) it doesn't show up...I really wanna know how to render it with VRay!
Hamia Kanwal Choudary: Sir ! I want the basic understanding of maya tools ..please help me.. that from where I can learn the maya from start and get its basic understanding?
Taylor Allen: Hi! I can't change the color of the splines in my renderview. They stay brown. Please help!
Tony Gore: Is there a reason my interactive groom hairs wouldn't render in the Arnold render view? I am using the physical hair shader.
Kushal Chaudhari: Hi when i click "Create Interactive Groom Splines" Nothing happens in my maya. In your video i can see Hair is created. Please can you tell me some solutions?
EggyRepublic: As much as I love blender working with hair in blender is an absolute nightmare. I assume it's much easier in Maya?
MMS 05: How do we select and isolate the head part alone??
RedBattalion9000: How to make long braid tail or dreadlocks by Xgen?
Animation Blaster: Hi i have a Big issue.When i export my model a error comes.the error is "a namespace is given name "Bind" is already exist. How to solve this issues ?
Teslatheman: Can we have this plugin in max PLEASE !!!!!!!!
Виктория Андрейченко: I have a problem with xgen guides, it is very thick and hair became incorrectly, could you help me?
Sameh Tantawy: that great , but when exporting my model out of maya to unity there no hair only the body ..... is there any process after your video to make the model and the hair stick together as a single unit?
Liro B: Mmm.. everytime when i select "collapse with meshes" maya crashes. Why?
Dhita Sahara: I've try this tutorial and wondering how to render the hair in maya. Cause the result of my render looks so terrible. It doesn't shinny like ho wthe hair should be. Is anyone know how to render hair in maya ? I'm a begginer for this. Thank you in advance!
hercaca: How can I create stray hairs with the interactive grooming?
Jennifer Dzieło: a pro tip would be to use more appealing examples in the future :P
MICHAEL ALCANTARA: can you please make a video on how to make mesh on the head to install hair please thank you
Nic Sievers: wait..render in arnold for best results? I like how we have to buy something else before it will look good. :'/ Tools going in the right direction atleast. Looking foward to working with it. Hope they continue to improve it without changing it every other version.
ダグラスBullet: Why do so many people use the older Xgen?
INSTツKenzo: How can i attach the scalp with the body in the animation
Kris VP: Is it possible to do it on my old version of maya 2011
Lord Gains: I can see the scalp of my model through the sides of the head. Its so thin almost bald. But there is clearly hair there. What have I done wrong?
Neil: I cant find Create interactive Groom splines in the Generate window, Plz help !!
stfesteiras stfesteiras: what is your computer configuration? what is the processor and what is the video card? 
venu cena: please respond - how to add ai hair to these grooms?
DaDaDee 3D: Sir if i want to move my xgen hair with skeleton what i do
F C: Its only for maya 2017? Im not finding it in the 2016 ver
Maged Atef: and how to export it as a demo?
Sameh Tantawy: i followed you step by step until "create interactive groom splines" the splines does not appear on the mesh >> help please
Terry Gat: how I can I Arnold render xgen hair?
EagleBearer458: I love you man!
MMS 05: Where should we go for this file??
moeljayer: from the thumbnail i thought you were modeling a donald trump bust now THAT would be a challenge for hairsim and grooming :P
李景天: every time I see their demo with these ugly human head model, I start to think, do autodesk knows now to make character, animation, or cg at all? if not then how do they know how to make tools for us? have they ever created any full animation or game production?
BubberGumm: If Maya doesn't treat her hair better she's going lose it
stfesteiras stfesteiras: i need an animation of a hair growing is one is a woman with no hair and hair starts to grow how could i do to match you and pay you to do this would you like or know someone who would?
Ram ananth: I think that guy get a hair transplant
Meximelon: Who’s where from mizkif
MBG-TECH: That one ugly hairstyle
Arron Hunter: i love you
vk0u!: Fortnite