Save and load interactive grooming hair and fur presets

You can save your interactive grooms to preset XGIP files, which can be applied to any polygon mesh object. Start new hair and fur grooms with the saved presets or use them to manage shot-based hair styles. Presets are topology independent, so you can apply them to low and high resolution versions of your character meshes or to different mesh shapes.

Note: You cannot use interactive grooming presets (XGIP files) with XGen geometry instancer descriptions. Likewise, you cannot use XGen geometry instancer presets (XGP) files with interactive grooming descriptions.

For information about XGen geometry instancer presets, see Save hair, fur, or instanced geometry as XGen presets and Create hair, fur, or instanced geometry using XGen presets.

About interactive grooming presets

An interactive grooming preset contains all of the description and modifier node networks, masks, and maps from the source groom's description. When you apply the preset to a polygon mesh, a new description and modifier node network is created for the target mesh object. If desired, you can then modify the groom like any other interactive grooming description.

Save interactive grooms as presets

  1. In the Interactive Grooming Editor, select the description you want to save as a preset.
  2. Select Description > Preset > Export.
  3. In the Export Interactive Groom Preset window, click the browse icon to save the preset to a specified location.

    By default, preset files get saved to the xgen directory of your currently set Maya project.

  4. In the File Save window, type a name for the preset beside File Name, and then click Save.
  5. (Optional) Add a thumbnail image to identify the preset in the XGen Library by doing one of the following:
    • Click Viewport Snapshot to create an image from current scene view.
    • Click Browse to locate an image file.
  6. Click Export.

    7. You can add your interactive grooming presets to the XGen Library.

Load interactive grooming presets

  1. Select the mesh or faces of the mesh object you want to use with the preset.
  2. Do one of the following:
    • To apply a preset saved to a location on disk, in the Interactive Groom Editor, select Description > Preset > Import, and then browse to the interactive groom preset (XGIP) file.

    • To apply a preset from the XGen Library, in the Modeling menu set, select Generate > XGen Library. and then select a preset directory and the preset's thumbnail image.

  3. In the Import Interactive Grooming Preset options window, browse to the location of the XGIP preset file you want to import.
  4. Specify how the splines get positioned and orientated on the target mesh by selecting Transfer Method and Orientation options.
  5. Click Import.
Parent topic: XGen Interactive Grooming