Prepare a groom for conversion to geometry

Before converting hair and fur to polygon strips, it is important that all of the splines and guides align to the surface of the character mesh. This ensures that the resultant polygon strips properly cover the character mesh at all the possible camera angles. This workflow is especially important when creating hair and fur for games characters.

Prepare interactive grooms for conversion to polygon strips

This workflow assumes that you have completed an interactive groom for a games character. You can follow these steps when converting hairs, guides, or wires to polygon strips. Any differences in the settings used are noted.

1. Increase the width of the hairs, guides, or wires so they closely match the typical width used by polygon strips or cards in character grooms.
   Tip: You can fill in any unwanted gaps in the groom by increasing the width of individual hairs using the Width brush. If you are using wires, you need to create a Sculpt modifier for the Wire modifier.
2. Rotate the facing angle of the hairs so they align to the surface of the mesh, using the Twist brush. This ensures when they are converted to polygon strips, they properly cover the character mesh surface at all angles

   To rotate the hairs, do the following:

   • Turn off the Face Camera attribute in the Primitive Attributes section of the description node.

     If you are working with guides, Face Camera is located in the Guide modifier's inGuide node. For wires, this attribute is located in the Linear Wire modifier's transform_fromCurve node.

   • Select the Twist brush, and in the Tool Settings, turn on Align to Surface.
   • Using the Twist brush paint the hairs.

   As you paint the hairs, they rotate and align to the surface of the mesh.

You can continue refining your groom using the interactive grooming tools before converting it to Maya geometry.

Related topics

• Convert XGen hair and fur to Maya geometry