2010

Table Of Contents
hair when swimming underwater
various hairstyles, including ponytails, braids, and updos
other dynamic curve effects such as ropes, chains, cables, wires, etc.
A hair system is a collection of hair follicles.
A hair follicle in human hair typically hosts one hair, whereas in Maya each
hair follicle hosts a hair curve. The hair follicle controls the attributes and curves
associated with a particular hair clump, and how the hairs attach to a NURBS
or polygonal surface. The input to each follicle is a Start Position NURBS curve,
a surface and a UV position to attach to.
When creating hair, the hair system output can be in the form of NURBS curves,
Maya
®
Paint Effects
TM
strokes, or both. If the specified output when creating
hair is NURBS Curves, each follicle will contain one NURBS curve that
represents the position of the hair in that follicle. If the specified output is
Paint Effects, each follicle has a hair clump, made up of Paint Effects strokes.
There are various attributes on a hair system for modifying the look and
behavior of the hair as a whole. There are also follicle level attributes that will
override the hair system attributes; the visible result will be affected by both
the follicle and hair system attributes.
You can have more than one hair system on the same surface.
With the Paint Hair Tool you can create new hair systems, add and remove
follicles, as well as paint hair attributes, including Clump Width Scale, Stiffness,
and Braid.
Paint Effects hair can be rendered using the Maya Software renderer. You can
also convert Paint Effects hair to polygons and render in another renderer,
such as mental ray
®
for Maya
®
. Or you can output just the dynamic NURBS
curves to an external renderer, such as Renderman.
Consider outputting to Paint Effects if you want to:
render with the Maya Software renderer
convert the Paint Effects hair to polygons and render in any renderer
Consider outputting to NURBS curves if you want to:
use the curves as path or control curves for any standard Paint Effects
brush, such as feathers or vines. These brushes behave differently than the
default built in Paint Effects as the curves are not the hairs, but controls
754 | Chapter 15 Hair