Hair Dynamics woes in 2.75

Support Particles and Physics Simulations
1

I recently scored a much more powerful new comp and was looking forward to rendering out my figures with a full head of hair, but 2.75 tossed me a Suzanne wrench.

Using both an existing wig mesh from 2.71 and one created in 2.75, after weight-painting the parent strands as usual and baking the sim, the strands (which behave exactly as expected when the same process is used in 2.71) kind of freak out. ALL the fully pinned (weight = 1.0) keys on the strands collapse inside of the emitter mesh instead of staying pinned on the wig mesh surface. The rest leap away from the emitter mesh as if a huge collision value has been assigned (none has, no collision at all in fact). The lower-weight keys do show motion typical for hair dynamics but the other distortions make the sim unusable. I have played with different values for every field in the (more complicated) 2.75 hair dynamics but cannot prevent the collapse of pinned keys at all. Any suggestions? Has any documentation of the new parameters been published? I did a search but found only stuff for much older versions or extremely basic tutorials that simply reiterate what I already do for hair animation.

2

Thank you for the feedback & suggestions, Toka, and your tutorial is one I will certainly reference for library linking.

Yes, my problem exists for both particle systems created in 2.75 and those brought forward from 2.71. They are all “groomed” particle systems that have been modified (combing, etc.) with the particle editor. The emitter mesh is part of a series of meshes I have been using since around V2.7, but which have never in the past exhibited any issues. And it is definitely a problem with Hair Dynamics, as a very extensive fur/hair system that does not use dynamics animates perfectly well. I did start one simple test where all the hair system components were created in 2.75 but it crashed Blender as soon as I tried to bake it. That was a real surprise as it was about as simple a system as can be imagined. I’ll be revisiting that as well.

In the meantime I will be bringing my problem hairpieces into 2.71 to bake the dynamics and see if I can then incorporate that and its blendcache into my work on 2.75.