I’m building a character model for a set of short animations. Eventually, there will be a version of him that is bald, but wears a detachable wig as a separate object, but to start, I’m just making the guy with hair. Start simple, right? Anyway, I’m using the new hair particles, but I’m having trouble even telling if the right material is assigned to it. I tried to be pretty careful to name things well as I went along, but when you assign materials to particles, you select them by index. Now, the only place I see that gives a number associated with materials, the number seems to be dependent on the object it’s assigned to. Clearly, I’m just not understanding something. My hope was to assign materials, then make them look right when everything was in place. So far, I think the hair is using the shoe material, or something. Ideas, anyone?
edit: I’d like to share the blend file for easier communication, but it’s too big. I’ve done most of the rigging and he’s wearing a bathrobe, so there’s some cloth involved.
Not sure if this will help (I’m fairly new to Blender) but
1 In the Links and Material panel (editing context) create a new material index for the object that has the particles
2 In the Materials and Pipeline panel (Shading context) create a new material for that material index
3 In the Particles panel (Object context) assign the material index to the particle system.
4 If necessary create a vertex group on you hair emitter object to constrain the hair, and assign that to the hair system too over in the Extras panel of the Object context.
I guess my real problem is that I’ve got a hair material, which I created a while ago, but I’m having trouble figuring out which one it is. When I browse through the materials on the character object, it doesn’t pop up, because it’s not assigned to any vertices, I suppose. But it’s not assigned to the bathrobe or glasses objects either, so I can’t even tell where it is, which makes it pretty tough to figure out what it’s index number is.
…if I’m even understanding how indexes work in the first place…
to avoid that problem, i always assign every new material to a new object ( a plane or a cube ) and keep them on a different layer. that way, if i get confused about which material is which, i just take a render of those objects. also, it can be helpful to name your materials as you make them.
Well, I did name them as I went along. That’s actually sort of the problem. When you go to select a material for the hair, you can’t select Hair_Mat from the dropdown. You get a choice of 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. I can work on the hair material all I want, but I can’t figure out which number it is. There are nine materials in this file, spread across three objects. I have nine choices for the hair, and I have no idea which number goes with the name I want to use.
I think if you create a material but it’s not assigned to anything when you close the file, then it’s deleted and won’t be there next time you open that file.
Yeah, and I’ve used that to get rid of an extra material once already. The hair material is still there, so it’s attached to something. But when you’re trying to tell the hair which material to use, you don’t have the choice of the names you assigned to those textures; you only have numbers. How do I figure out which number this material is, so I can use it on the hair?
In the Links and Material panel (edit context) you scroll sideways right and left on the little Material index tab which says something like 4Mat3 The number on the left is the total number of material indices. The number on the right is the currently selected one. Above this tab, and just below the Ob:cube or whatever label, is the name of the material that is assigned to that index. Scroll through the indices until it has the hair material listed above it, and note the index number for the particles panel. It might help to have two buttons windows open, one for the editing context and one for the shading context, because as you scroll through the indices in the Links and Materials panel the material that is assigned to it shows in the Material panel, so this might help you identify it. I nearly always have two buttons windows when dealing wiht materials for this reason.
OK, that works. What was confusing me is that you can have one material selected by name from the dropdown menu there, while in the 4Mat4 box, a completely different material is indicated. You have to scroll across the XMatX spot in order to actually tell where you are looking. Thanks averil. Now, I just need to make the hair material actually look good. At the moment, it’s splotchy and you can’t even see the individual strands. But since it’s gotten worse by my work on this material, I can tell it’s just a crappy material, not some occult issue.
Heh, it’s amazing what you can do with a picture of a piece of wood. I’m going for a darker shade, close to black, but I’ll have to play with this one some. Thanks.
