I have been experimenting with the new hair and fur feature in the latest BlenderCVS.
Kong Fur
Tabby Fur
Patterned Fur
I must say I am very impressed.
Each of these examples uses a subdivided cube with static particles. Texture slot 8 has a cloud texture to add a fur like curly randomness. The material uses a blend colour texture mapped to Strand with one end of the blend as transparent. It’s important to make the alpha of the blend at the right end of the fur or it will look like straw.
It’s possible to animate the fur using a wind force controlled by another new feature in the Blender CVS, IPO drivers. Haven’t yet had time to create a neat animation but that will come.
Time to stop playing and get on with the tutorials I promised for this month.
Hey, what about adding a link to the .blend in the “Static Particle fur library” sticky in the FP forum? This could be a great resource to blenderheads.
I’ve been tooling around with the same new features, and am equally impressed.
The only drawback i see so far is… The only possible way to change the thickness of the strands of hair is to use dupliverted objects, as far as I understand… Can someone confirm this? Also… If that’s confirmable – is there a way to use dupliverted objects in such a way that they create a smooth strand?
P.S. Your furry cubes look really great! I’m especially fond of the kong fur.
I’ve found that you can vary the thickness of the strand of hair or fur using the alpha section of the colorband. Rather than try to explain it a picture should tell all.
You can set as many colours and/or alpha points in the colorband as you like. Hope this information will be of value to you all.
Hi Cog!
Im a big fan I make it a mission to visit your site daily, but it would be very cool if you could upload some of your blends. In mine the fur just looks spikey! Its irritating me.
I’ve used new particles for mane in my lion model:
I’ve also tried to use guides but as I see falloff don’t work as I was expecting.
Also if you need dense hair you have a lot of RAM to render.
To do this I had to create an IPO driver working on texture slot 8 that has a cloud texture in to give curl to the hair. IPO drivers are only available on the latest BlenderCVS. However, they with the new Strand mapto and particle additions should all be in the upcoming Blender 2.40 release.
To those of you that have asked for some fur/hair blendfiles I will post some over the weekend. I need to clean them up because I did a lot of experimentation which would make it difficult to understand.
However, to wet your appetite I have uploaded the hair blend file :-
I thought 2.4 Alpha also had IPO drivers? I mean, that’s what I’m using and I tried those drivers out a while ago. Just wondering, I might be wrong after all.
I thought 2.4 Alpha also had IPO drivers? I mean, that’s what I’m using and I tried those drivers out a while ago. Just wondering, I might be wrong after all.[/quote]
Hi MrMuscly,
Yep it’s there in 2.40 ALPHA but not the particle additions or the strand mapto.
The latest CVS is blender20051027 and this has a further patch which now allows direct IPO animating of the static particles. So forces such as wind etc can be used. You can also IPO the OfZ of the texture slot 8 (used for producing curls in the hair or fur strands, usually a cloud texture) which I think gives a better breeze like effect. I’m rendering as I write.
So the latest CVS you can now animate the hair!?! ALso can you instance simple geometry using the hair as controls to say create a underwater plants than move with a surge and swell?
