Why does the apparent hair length differ in object mode vs. particle mode?

I’ve been trying to style hair, but the hair length appears significantly longer in particle mode than it does in object mode and the final render. How the hell am I supposed to style hair if the length isn’t accurate? What can I do to fix this?

I am using Blender 2.58

No way to tell what may be the problem without seeing your particle system & its specs, your material for the hair and how it all renders compared to the UI view. Otherwise it’s just guesswork.

Here you go… Crappy model, but I’m just messing around… The hair always appears shorter in object mode than it does it particle mode. It renders at the length that it appears in object mode. Switching modes is the only thing I did between these screen shots. I doubt material is affecting this, but I can post those settings too if you don’t catch anything here.



Check “Length” in the Children section, it’s probably set to something a lot less than 1.0, which means all the children render shorter than the parent strands (which are set not to render, btw.)

If you look closely at the Particle Mode UI shot, you’ll see that the children (colored per the Material) are displayed as significantly shorter length than the parents (just black). That’s a strong clue.

Material can affect apparent length when rendered if a Blend texture is used to fade the roots or tips for more natural-looking strands (not blunt-ended)

Ok, I checked “length” in the Children section and it was actually set to 1.000. So I played around with it and observed the changing length of the child hair in the 3D window. Oddly enough, the overall length is still relatively shorter in object mode than particle mode, no matter what “length” is set to. Checked the material settings, here they are…


One detail got cut off in the image; it’s set to “Surface” rather than “Wire” “Volume” or “Halo” at the top.

Thanks for pointing out that the parent strands aren’t set to render, btw.

Can’t say from looking at the screen captures what the cause may be, I really thought “Length” was the culprit. Only options I see are tweaking all the specs until something changes for the better, or post your .blend so a closer look can be had by others.

I notice that you’re using a small number of Steps for UI display, though I don’t know if that’s relevant. Kinky :wink:

Ok I’ll fiddle around with it again when I’ve got time. If I get frustrated I’ll post the .blend file. Thanks!

Found it! In the “Render” menu under the Particle context, there is a “Start” and “End” value for the timing of the particles, and I had “End” set to less than 1.000, causing it to look different in the 3D window in particle model than it does in Object mode. Hope this thread helps someone else in the future. Thanks for your help chipmasque.