Create an nHair Slide on Surface constraint

You can create a Slide on Surface constraint to attach hair curve CVs to a target surface, such as an nCloth or a passive collision object surface, and allow the constrained curve components to move or slip along the surface to which it is constrained. You can use a Slide on Surface constraint instead of collisions, and in most cases it works faster than collisions. For example, you can Slide on Surface constrain constrain hair curves to a Nucleus object so that the objects attract each other without colliding.

Note:

• If you use a Slide on Surface constraint in the place of collisions for an nHair object, then turn off Collide in the hairSystemShape node's Attribute Editor tab. Otherwise, both collisions and the constraint will be calculated.
• If you use a Slide on Surface constraint in the place of collisions for nHair, then you can not effectively use Collision Layers to control which members of your Maya Nucleus system can collide with the constrained hair curves.

To create an nHair Slide on Surface constraint

1. In the scene view, select the hair curve CVs you want to constrain. See Select curve components for nConstraints.
2. -select the target surface to which you want to constrain the hair curve components.

   The target surface can be an nCloth or passive object, or a non-Nucleus polygon mesh.

   Note:

   If you selected a target surface that is a nCloth or passive collision object, the surface will be made a passive object when the constraint is created.

3. In the FX menu set, select nConstraint > Slide on Surface .

   The nHair curves components you selected are now constrained to the selected target surface, and they are now connected to the nHair system's Maya Nucleus solver through a dynamicConstraint node.

   The preset properties on the dynamicConstraint node determine the constraint’s type (in this case, a Slide on Surface constraint) and how it behaves. For example, you can create a Slide on Surface constraint with the following attribute settings:

   • Spring as the Constraint Method
   • Object to Object as the Constraint Relation
   • All to First as the Component Relation
   • Within Max Distance as the Connection Method
   • Per Frame as the Connection Update

   See dynamicConstraintShape.

Related topics

• Select curve components for nConstraints
• Create an nHair Transform constraint
• Create nHair Component to Component constraint
• Create an nHair Point to Surface constraint
• Create an nHair Force Field constraint
• Edit nHair constraints
• Constraining Nucleus objects