You can attach nHair output curves to guides to drive hair, fur, or instanced spline animation. When you use this method all hair influenced by XGen guides is dynamic. There is no way to exclude guides from the animation.
This technique works only for Descriptions that use guides. For information about creating a Descriptions with guides, see Create hair or fur using spline primitives.
Tip: Before starting:
- Shape the guides to create a base groom or pose. See Shape and Control XGen Primitives.
- In the XGen Editor toolbar, clearing the preview (
) and turning off Update Preview Automatically make it easier to see the curve and guide animation.
- In the XGen Editor, select the Primitives tab.
- In the Guide Animation section, turn on the Use Animation.
- Click Create Hair System.
- In the Make Curves Dynamic Options window that appears, do the following:
- Set Output to NURBS Curves.
- Ensure all other options are turned on.
- ClickMake Curves Dynamic.
- In the Outliner window, expand hairSystemOutputCurves and select all the curves.
- In the XGen Editor, under Guide Animation, click Attach Hair System section.
The selected output curves now drive the guide's animation.
- Go to the start frame and play back the simulation to see the animated guides.
Update the preview (
) play back the simulation to see the animated splines. For information about setting the initial state for the nHair system, see Set hair curve positions and Start Rest and Current Position curves.
Add more dynamic motion to the spline primitives using Nucleus forces (seenDynamics Simulation Framework) or Maya Fields (see Maya Fields). Add an XGen modifier, such as Wind (see XGen Wind modifier options), to create for non-dynamic motion.