I remember a while back that I watched this video of this user making hair planes bend in 3DS Max.
So I know that you can throw in objects into Blender’s particle system. Buildings, trees, grass, etc. So is there a way you can style whatever object you add in there? An example: like have a plane with some subdivisions in there, throw a particle system on another object and have the planes’ bend just like you was combing it? I know you can go back to the reference object plane and just manually bend the faces/verts and that would apply to the rest, and maybe then go into sculpt mode as a work around for combing but by then it’d probably make it look a bit odd on the texture work and the verts/faces being too janky.
When I did this before Cycles could render particle hair, it was not all that satisfactory as you could not “comb” the meshes in particle mode, they don’t follow the parent strands properly. Instead they stick out at whatever the strand’s initial vector from the emitter mesh happens to be. Only their length seems to be adjustable by styling the parent strands. Styling (such as it was) required Converting the particle system in the Modifier stack and then using regular Mesh Tools to edit the mess. I would not recommend it.
However, remember that you can also convert true particle hair strands to meshes in the Modifier stack. So if you use a thick root and settings for a radical taper at the tips (per your image above), you should be able to style as usual, then make meshes from the result. I’ve done this with thin strand hair and it creates very dense sets of vertices/faces/edges, so you may need to play around with the settings to get the kind of poly hair strands you’re looking for.
However, remember that you can also convert true particle hair strands to meshes in the Modifier stack. So if you use a thick root and settings for a radical taper at the tips
Okay, I’m not sure if you either meant tapering with the root settings of hair in particle edit mode or even doing that after converting it into a mesh and doing that with the skin modifier adding in roots (which is pretty neat). Like I went into cycles strand rendering, changed the root and tips thickness and doesn’t show it as being thick, not even in the viewport just in the render before converting the hair into a mesh. I just would like to know more on your method and what you meant by it.
My apologies, I remembered incorrectly about Converting the Particle System. I thought the full strand shape was converted to a poly mesh, but turns out it’s only the parent strands. I was generating meshes after converting, but only by further mesh work on the converted strands. My usual method was to select the strands and extrude them in one dimension, then use the mesh tools & Sculpt to get the shape I wanted. A Solidify modifier gave them thickness if needed. This isn’t much less work than using poly meshes as particle Objects, but does provide a way to comb the stands for initial shaping. The converted strands will incorporate any Children/Kink parameters as well, for more complex shaping options.
Not sure how useful this may be, but when using a mesh Particle Object, the mesh “hair strands” generated by the particle system are Converted to individual meshes, which was another way I generated my mesh hair systems before Cycles could render particle hair.
Neither of these approaches is very efficient, but it’s all I could work out at the time.