Control where hair appears by painting a density mask
You can block hair from appearing in specific areas of the bound mesh surface by creating a density mask. Density masks are useful for creating hair lines, bald spots, or masking out the hairs in any area of groom.
Note: You can use these workflow to create a mask for the
Guide
modifier's
Region Mask attribute.
- In the
Interactive Groom Editor, select the description_base node.
- In the Attribute Editor, expand the Generator section.
- Beside
Density Mask, click this icon:
.
- In the
Create Map Options window, do the following:
- Set
Size to 2048 or
4096.
The higher the resolution of the texture file the more accurate the mask.
- Set
Start Color to
White or Black.
When set to
White, the initial map value is 1 on the entire mesh so all the hairs appear. Painting black over the white changes the map values from 1 to 0, and stops the hair from appearing in the painted regions. You can also set the
Start Color to
Black, and then paint white in the areas you want the hairs to appear.
- Set all other options to the desired settings and click
Create.
- (Optional) In the File Texture section of the 3D Paint Tool settings, turn on
Extend seam color to minimize artifacts along the seam.
- Select black or white for the
Color and paint on the mask
Tip: Before painting, hide the hair by clicking this
![](../images/GUID-35CF9B68-646F-42DB-9BA3-36A08086FC5C.png)
beside the Description in the
Interactive Groom Editor.
Control modifier attributes by painting a mask
You can paint a mask on the mesh to control modifier attribute values. When you assigned a mask to an attribute, it uses the color-based map value as a multiplier for its current value. For example, painting a gray mask on the mesh multiples the attribute in the painted areas by 0.5.
- In the
Interactive Groom Editor, select the modifier.
- In the Attribute Editor, locate the modifier's
Mask attribute.
- Beside
Mask click this icon:
.
- Follow steps 4 to 6 from the
Control where hair appears by painting a density mask procedure above. When creating a mask for a modifier attribute, select the
Start Color setting that best suits the desired effect. For example, you can set the map start value to current value of the attribute. For more information about
Start Color, see
Create Map Options.