Create hair guides using a Guide modifier

You can create guides at any stage of your grooming workflow by adding a Guide modifier to your description.

Note: You can create and edit wires for a Linear Wire modifier by following this workflow, although some setting may be different.

1. Add a Guide modifier to your description. See Work with interactive grooming modifiers.
2. In the Interactive Groom Editor, select the Guide modifier.
3. In the Attribute Editor, locate the Input Guide attribute group.
4. Click Create.

   Maya generates the guides on the surface of the mesh and displays them in orange. Initially, the shape and density of the guides is based on the surrounding hairs. If you edit the guides now, the shape of the hairs is based on the neighboring guides.

   Tip: If you want to continue sculpting the hairs using the interactive grooming tools, drag the Guide modifier to a position under the Sculpt modifier in the stack. Otherwise, you cannot see your sculpting updates.

Maya also generates a new sub-description that is derived from the original description. Like the description_base node, the inGuide_ base node controls the generation of the guides on the surface of the mesh, while the inGuideShape node controls how the guides display.

Edit the guides

You can hide the hairs while you work on the guides by clicking this icon beside the description.

Increase or decrease the number of guides generated on the surface of the mesh

1. In the Interactive Groom Editor, expand the Guide modifier to and select the inGuide_base node.
2. In the Generator section of the node's Attribute Editor, adjust the Density Multiplier attribute to decrease or increase the number of guides.
   Note: You can also control the guide placement using a mask. For example, if you use a Density Mask to block hair from appearing in certain areas on the mesh, you can connect this mask (texture file) to the Guide modifier's Density Mask attribute so that the guides are also blocked from appearing in the masked areas.
3. To add individual guides in specific areas, click Place Brush, and click the mesh add the guides.

   Ensure that Interpolate is on and Interpolate From is set to Current Description so that shape is interpolated from the surrounding hairs. Otherwise they assume the default shape based on the mesh normals (see Density and Place Tool Settings).

Edit the width of the guides

1. In the Interactive Groom Editor, expand the Guide modifier to and select the inGuide node.
2. In the Primitive Attributes section of the node's Attribute Editor, adjust the Width Scale attribute to resize the width of the guides.

   This adjustment does not affect the width of the interpolated hairs.

Related topics

• Control multiple descriptions using a Guide or Linear Wire modifier
• Animate hairs by keyframing a Guide modifier
• Simulate hair using a Linear Wire modifier