Need help with workflow and how other people would approach this specific scenario.
I’m trying to model stylized/realistic eyebrows for my character. The usual, fastest and safest method is pick a PNG transparent background and call it a day, but I wanted to see if I could try my hand at Particles/Geonode approach.
This is the specific look I’m going for:
Very lush, thick and pretty eyebrows.
My first attempt was trying Particle Hair System. While the grooming was fairly easy and simple, when converting it the hair strands are too thin and I can’t find a good way to make them thick enough and I’m not sure if its possible. Interpolating seems to generate too many hairs and sometimes outside the Weight Paint Parameters. I have tried multiple Paint profiles for different parts of the brows but they don’t mesh well together in the final look. The Clump function doesn’t work as well as the GeoNode one unfortunately. My biggest challenge with this approach was how to make individual, thick and long lashes instead of one big “fluffly field” with individual strands.
My second attempt was with Geo Nodes, specifically the “Fur” one that adds a stack of Modifiers. I removed/added the ones I needed, but the grooming is cumbersome, at least for the specific task of making brows. It offers great control on lash thickness but placement and shapes are too hard to work with, at least with my bare knowledge of the tool. I tried using guides and tutorials but most of them are used for animal fur or beards. The combing doesn’t seem to react well against the emitter or each individual hair strands, so I just dropped the attempt. Its a shame because the Interpolate and Clump functions seem pretty useful but I can’t find a work around the combing itself.
Currently I’m going with the PNG method, which is fine, but I wanted something… better. The character face itself is something I strive immensely to make as pretty as possible and I can’t let go of this try as I might.
This is what I’m currently going for and I was hoping to meet someone who has the same peeve that I’m striving with and could offer some advice or helping hand. Its serviceable and most people wouldn’t bat an eye to it, but its bothering me.
The png method could be better if you had a bump or normal map to go with it, to give a bit of roundness to each hair.
I can do better with the old particle system. There are a few things to know and some useful settings that aren’t easy to find.
Instead of using weights to decide where the brow is or isn’t, it’s easier to do the whole thing in particle edit mode. Create a hair particle system, set the length of the hair to something that seems reasonnable, then immediately go into particle edit mode. There, you can delete all the hair with the “cut” tool, then add the hair back in the correct shape by drawing the eyebrow with the “add” tool. Then, it’s just a matter of combing it into shape with the various tools.
I make the eyebrow with the final density directly, no children used, as they aren’t suited for this kind of fine detail work.
There are some useful settings hidden in some unintuitive sections in the particle settings.
The “hair shape” section has the thickness setting for the base and tip of each hair.
The “timing” section has settings that will allow you to change and randomize the length of the hair even after it has been combed. The name “timing” makes sense for this if you consider that the hair system works like a bunch of projectile trajectories/trails that are displayed as visible curves.
I’ve tried that method and it generates good results, but upon trying to convert it to mesh, it reverts back to single strips/vertices instead of having actual thickness to each hair strand.
Is there a way around that?
I’ve been experimenting with bezier curves and bevels, which is tediously slow but its the best result to far to achieve the exact look that I’m aiming for.
There is a way to convert it to mesh that will look good. You need to use the “particle instance” modifier. It will allow you to model a single hair as a mesh and have that hair mapped to each particle, following the curve of their path.
This video shows a flat ribbon, but you can apply that modifier to any shape, so you can model a tapered cylinder for your hair. Then, you can convert the result of that to a mesh.
