Constraining Hair Tips?

Support Particles and Physics Simulations
1

upload.png900×377 241 KB

Hello,

I’m working on a character with hair and I’m wondering if it’s possible to constrain certain sections of the hair system. I have separate hair systems for the hair on her head and her ponytail and I need to keep the tips of the head hair exactly where the ponytail starts. It would be fine (and even preferable) for the hair to be able to move between the roots and the tips, but I need to keep the tips exactly where they are relative to the head bone. Is this possible? I tried adjusting the stiffness and the goal but the hair tips are always the first to break free.

2

Go into particle edit mode.

1: Change the selection mode to show just the tip keys.
2: Circle select the hair near the braid.
3: Change the selection to show all the keys again.
4: Press ctrl + + to increase the selection to the keys right before the tips.
5: Select the weight brush and paint them with a strength of 1.

http://i.imgur.com/iEzvavy.png
iEzvavy.png1926×1077

http://i.imgur.com/3hTSdnG.png
3hTSdnG.png1925×1079

http://i.imgur.com/PfrY5TG.png
PfrY5TG.png1924×1079

http://i.imgur.com/i11Gdp9.png
i11Gdp9.png1923×1078

Hopefully this will help.

I cranked up the key amount to 32 to test with higher key count and it didn’t show the color change but it still held the tips in place.

Beet Da Brat

3

Thanks for the reply, beetdabrat. Unfortunately, I discovered something else about my scene that makes this a little more tricky. I skinned the emitter geometry so that it doesn’t penetrate the body geometry and it’s apparently the deformation of the nape that causes the hair to stick out at weird angles. It does this even with hair dynamics turned off, so the weight painting method didn’t work. This also might be why the problem gets worse the more I increased the stiffness of the hair. Thanks anyway. I didn’t know what weight painting hair did before.

I wonder. Is there a way to, say, pin the hair points to an empty?

4

Ahh. That is gonna be more tricky to work with. Only other thing I can think of is shape keys on the scalp.

5

You could try using a path with your hair that has a curve guide forcefield applied to it. Particle hair is a little weird sometimes with it, but this may be one of those corner cases where it may be useful. Also keep in mind path weights, radius, and twist on the curve have as much effect as settings on the hair itself. The one catch is that a curve with a force generator is not too selective of what it pulls in, so you may have to go crazy with force effector groups on anything affected by physics. The cool thing is, this is the only way I know of to directly animate position of particle based hair. (Put hooks on the curve, animate it and affected hair follows.)


6

Thanks, pauljs75_. I’ll try this out.

7

What did you end up settling on? I am working on a similar character and it’s a learning curve I must say. Any help would be great. Thanks.