Working with Surface Lock

Working with Surface Lock

Copying Hair: Transplants, Wigs, and Toupees

 

Autodesk 3ds Max Tutorials > Hair and Cloth Tutorials > Hair > Working with Surface Lock > 

Surface Lock

Set up the lesson:

1. Open morph_braid_start.max.

   This scene contains three cylinders combined into a single object named Braid surface. The scene uses a Morpher and a PathDeform modifier to animate the three strands being braided together. In the start scene, these modifiers are initially turned off. The cylinder geometry is not renderable: its only purpose is to deform the hair.

2. Select Braid surface and note the hair settings.

   When locking hair to a surface, you are actually locking the guides to the surface, so it’s a good idea to use low values for the parameters that spread hair away from the guides; for example, Random Scale and Frizz. For realistic hair, set these values a little higher than 0. It is also a good idea to use a higher-than-usual Hair Segments value, in order to improve deformation.

Set the sub-objects that grow hair:

You'll grow hair from the tops of the cylinders and then drape it down around the surface.

• At the Polygon sub-object level of the Hair And Fur modifier, select the top polygons of each cylinder as shown, and then click Update Selection.

  

  Top segments of the hair braid selected

Align the hair to the braid model:

• On the Tools rollout, click Recomb From Splines and then pick the Spline Guides object.

  

  The hair aligns to the direction and length of these splines.

  You could easily create these splines from edges of the geometry, drawing them by hand. Or you could just create the same hairstyle using the styling tools and skip the splines altogether.

  The next step is to lock the hair to the surface of the cylinders, which you do in the Styling rollout.

Lock the hair guides:

1. Change from the Polygon to the Guides sub-object level.

   This also activates the controls on the Styling rollout.

2. Open the Styling rollout.

   By default, all the guide vertices are selected, so you don't need to select any.

3. Click the Lock button to turn it on. Now the hair guide vertices are locked to the Braid surface object.
   NoteIn other situations, it might be desirable to lock only specific parts of the hair to a surface; for example, to wrap hair around curlers, or tuck hairlocks behind the ears.
4. Click Finish Styling to turn this button off. This also exits the Guides sub-object level.

Set up rendering and render the result:

1. In the modifier stack, turn on the Morpher and Path Deform modifiers.
   NoteFor animation, the braid mesh can be skinned to a bone chain, instead of posed with Path Deform.
2. Go to frame 20.
3. Render the Camera01 viewport.

   

   The completed braid

   If you have time, you can also look at the scene morph_braid_finished.max. This scene contains two additional Hair And Fur modifiers, which model layered growth effects.

   

   Rendering of braid with layered hair