Edit hair strand rotation

Hello every one!

I am using particle instancing on a plane so I could add it on a sphere with a hair particle system.

The whole thing is working, but I cant find a way to have the planes rotated the way I want them to.

The idea here is to make hair cards for game engine, so I need to be able to control rotation of the planes or the hair strands, otherwise I will have to convert the whole thing to mesh and start pulling and pushing tons of points, and I am lazy! :slight_smile:

Here is a sample file.

Thanks in advance for any help!

My comp is tied up rendering with 2 instances of Blender at the moment, so I can’t look at your file (sorry), but if I understand correctly, you’re using mesh objects in a hair particle system. In that case, rotating the individual generated planes is not possible – each has its orientation determined by the hair system parameters, and will stick out from the emitter mesh according to its parent strand’s initial vector. Combing the parent strands does not affect the shape of the generated mesh objects, except for length. For this reason it’s probably best to use parent strands with only one segment to orient the mesh objects. Parent strands cannot be rotated, but editing their vector (how they stick out from the emitter) can reorient the mesh objects to a limited degree. If the object being used as the mesh particle is reoriented in Edit mode, these changes will be reflected in the generated mesh objects as well, but this is a global effect and cannot be done to individual mesh particles.

Bottom line – to get the most control over the generated (instanced) mesh particles, they must be converted to “tons of points.”

Thanks for the reply, much appreciated!

Yeah, I am using the particle instance add-on on those planes and it is driven by a hair system, very nifty for the most part, very useful as I can change the length of a bunch of strands and the associated cards stretch along with them, plus a few more goodies like easy placement of the cards, very fast workflow!

I also thought there wasn’t a way to adjust rotation on individual plane this way, but I will look into it and see if I can find a workaround, maybe someone will come with an idea in the mean time? :slight_smile:

Thanks again for the reply! :o

Given that each plane is an instance of the object being used as a particle, I don’t see this as feasible, as the instances do not have their own 3D reference frame, it is determined solely by the instanced object and the parent strands, which cannot be rotated on an axis parallel to their length. Once converted they gain their independence so to speak, but then you have your tons of points problem.

When Cycles had no particle hair capability I spent a lot of time trying to develop mesh-hair systems along these lines but was always stymied by the same problems you describe. I was able to produce some semi-satisfactory results by converting and editing the ton-and-a-half of vertices produced ;), but it was never a solution I felt was more than a workaround 'til Cycles grew up and got hairy :smiley:

Yeah, I went baserk when Broadstu came up with the Cycles hair patch, been using it ton since, but next project will be rendered on a game engine, cant use those, wish I could! :slight_smile:

In any case, I will do it the old and lengthy fashion way if I have to, but it would be nice to have a fast workflow for modeling those!

Again, thanks for the nice chat! :slight_smile:

I forgot to say this weeks ago, I asked about styling hair with objects and I never knew about the particle instance modifier that makes it possible, though I have to back out to object mode to see changes which isn’t a biggie to me. I can see where rotation becomes a hassle, I hope the Blender Foundation does more updating to the hair system in future builds. Anyways, thanks, I can style hair planes in almost real time!