Styling Hair

The Display rollout (located way at the bottom of the rollouts) includes settings for controlling how many hairs are displayed in the viewports. To see all the hairs, you need to render the scene. You can select to display Guide Hairs and actual hairs and set a color for each. The Override option causes the color specified in the color swatch to be used instead of the render color. You also can select a Percentage value of the total hairs to display in the viewport up to the number in the Max Hairs value. Enabling the As Geometry option causes the hairs to appear as geometry objects instead of lines.

Guide hairs control the position of all adjacent hairs. Guides hairs extend from each vertex in the attached object. Guide hairs are yellow by default, and viewport hairs are red, but you can change the color for each in the Display rollout.

Guide hairs provide a simple way to style, comb, and brush hair. By positioning the guide hairs, you can control what the rest of the hair looks like.

Note 

No guide hairs are available when the Hair and Fur modifier is applied to a selection of splines because the splines act as guides.

Using the Style interface

In addition to the hair properties, you can change the look of hair by using the various hair styling features. These features are found in the Styling rollout. The Style Hair button activates an interactive styling mode in the viewport where you can brush, comb, and manipulate the individual hairs. The Style Hair button is activated automatically when the Guides subobject mode is selected.

NEW FEATURE 

The Styling rollout and the ability to style hair within the viewports are new to 3ds Max 9. Hair styling commands can also be accessed using a quadmenu and keyboard shortcuts. The Distance Fade and brush size slider are also new. In the Utilities section, the Reset Rest and Toggle Hair buttons are new.

Within the Styling rollouts are several icon buttons. These buttons are described in Table 19.1. The brush size can be interactively set by holding down the Ctrl and Shift keys while dragging the mouse when in Brush mode, or you can change the brush size using the slider located under the Ignore Back Hairs option. The Distance Fade option causes the brushing effect to fade as it gets closer to the edge, resulting in a softer effect at the hair tips.

Table 19.1: Light Navigation Control Buttons
Open table as spreadsheet

Toolbar Button	Name	Description
	Select by Hair Ends (Ctrl+1)	Selects the end vertex when you drag over hairs.
	Select the Whole Guide (Ctrl+2)	Selects all vertices in the whole strand when you drag over hairs.
	Select Guide Vertices (Ctrl+3)	Selects specific vertices when you drag over hairs.
	Select Guide by Root (Ctrl+4)	Selects the entire hair by selecting only the root vertex when you drag over hairs.
	Marker Style drop-down list	Choose the style to mark the selected vertices. Options include Box, Plus, X, and Dot.
	Invert Selection (Shift+Ctrl+N)	Deselects the current selection, and selects all hairs not currently selected.
	Rotate Selection (Shift+Ctrl+R)	Rotates the current selection.
	Expand Selection (Shift+Ctrl+E)	Adds to the current selection set by increasing the selection area.
	Hide Selected (Shift+Ctrl+H)	Hides the selected vertices.
	Show Hidden (Shift+Ctrl+W)	Unhides all hidden vertices.
	Hair Brush (Ctrl+B)	Moves all selected vertices in the direction of the brush. Press Escape to exit this mode.
	Hair Cut (Ctrl+C)	Cuts the hair in length.
	Select (Ctrl+S)	Enters selection mode where you can select hairs by dragging over them.
	Distance Fade (Shift+Ctrl+F)	Causes the brush effect to fade with distance. Only available in Hair Brush mode.
	Ignore Back Hairs (Shift+Ctrl+B)	Causes only hairs facing the camera to be affected.
	Brush Size slider (Ctrl+Shift+mouse drag)	Changes the size of the brush.
	Translate (Shift+Ctrl+1, Ctrl+T)	Moves the selected guides in the direction of the brush when you drag.
	Stand (Shift+Ctrl+2, Ctrl+N)	Stands the selected guides up straight.
	Puff Roots (Shift+Ctrl+3, Ctrl+P)	Causes small deviations to appear at the root of each selected guide.
	Clump (Shift+Ctrl+4, Ctrl+M)	Pulls the selected guides together to the center of the brush.
	Rotate (Shift+Ctrl+5, Ctrl+R)	Rotates and spins the selected guides about the center of the brush.
	Scale (Shift+Ctrl+6, Ctrl+E)	Scales the selected guides when you drag with the brush.
	Attenuate (Shift+Ctrl+A)	Scales the hairs based on the size of the polygon.
	Pop Selected (Shift+Ctrl+P)	Lengthens the selected hairs along the surface normal.
	Pop Zero Sized (Shift+Ctrl+Z)	Lengthens any zero length hairs along the surface normal.
	Recomb (Shift+Ctrl+M)	Combs the hair from the top downward.
	Reset Rest (Shift+Ctrl+T)	Relaxes the hair by averaging the position of hairs.
	Toggle Collisions (Shift+Ctrl+C)	Turns collisions of hairs on and off.
	Toggle Hair (Shift+Ctrl+I)	Toggles the display of hairs on and off.
	Lock (Shift+Ctrl+L)	Locks the selected vertices so they cannot be moved by other tools.
	Unlock (Shift+Ctrl+U)	Unlocks any locked vertices.
	Undo (Ctrl+Z)	Undoes the last command.
	Split Selected Hair Groups (Shift+Ctrl+-)	Separates the selected hairs into separate groups.
	Merge Selected Hair Groups (Shift+Ctrl+=)	Combines the selected hairs into groups.

When you're finished styling, click the Finish Styling button in the Styling rollout to exit styling mode.

Tutorial: Creating a set of fuzzy dice

Fuzzy dice. What could be cooler?

To style the fur applied to a set of fuzzy dice, follow these steps:

1. Open the  Fuzzy dice.max file from the Chap 19 directory on the DVD.

2. Select one of the dice, and choose the Modifiers Hair and Fur Hair and Fur (WSM) menu command to apply hair to the selected dice.

3. Open the General Parameters rollout, and set the Hair Count to 20000 and the Scale value to 50. Then open the Material Parameters rollout, and change the Tip Color to white and the Root Color to Red. Then open the Frizz Parameters rollout, and set the Frizz Root and Frizz Tip values to 0. The makes the hair strands straight and red.

4. Open the Styling rollout, and click the Style Hair button. In the Utilities section, click the Pop Selected button to make all the hair stand out. Then select the Hair Brush icon, and drag downward in the viewport near the guides at each of the top corners.

5. Drag the Hair and Fur (WSM) modifier from the Modifier Stack, and drop it on the unselected die. Figure 19.6 shows the resulting pair of dice.

   
   Figure 19.6: Hair can be styled by changing the position and orientation of the guide hairs

Using hair presets

If you have a specific set of parameters that create a unique hair look that you're happy with, you can save it using the Save Presets button in the Tools rollout. Hair preset files are rendered on the spot and added to the Hair and Fur Presets dialog box, shown in Figure 19.7. To add a preset configuration to the current object, simply double-click it.

Figure 19.7: The Hair and Fur Presets dialog box shows rendered thumbnails of the available presets

In addition to presets, hairdos-created by styling the hair-also can be copied and pasted onto other hair selections.

Tip 

If you ever get into trouble styling hair, you can click on the Regrow Hair button in the Tools rollout to reset all the styling to its original state.

Using hair instances

Although the default hair looks great, if you ever wanted to replace the hair splines with an instanced geometry, you can do so by using the Pick Instance Node in the Tools rollout. The X button to the right of the Instance Node Pick button is used to remove the instance. Figure 19.8 shows a funny head created using a matchstick for a hair instance.

Figure 19.8: Mr. Matchstick head has all his hair replaced with matchsticks, an instance.

Tip 

Be sure to adjust the Hair Count value before selecting an instanced object. Complex instanced objects should be used only with manageable numbers.