Baked Hair
The Baked Hair operator stores a fixed state of hair inside the stack and serves as a base that further operators can build on. It is the result of either baking hair within a groom or importing hair from an Alembic file. Once hair is baked, it no longer recomputes from the operators that produced it - it simply holds the stored strands - which makes it a stable, lightweight foundation.
Where baked hair comes from
- Baking a portion of the stack converts the computed hair at that point into a Baked Hair operator, freezing it. See Baking Hair and Guides.
- Importing hair, for example from an Alembic cache, brings external hair in as baked hair. See Importing and Exporting Geometry.
Working with baked hair
Although the stored strands are fixed, you can still stack operators above Baked Hair to style or modify the result, just as with any other hair source. The operator can load and merge hair from several Alembic files into one output, and it can be grounded to a base surface so it deforms with a mesh. See Ground Strands.
Viewport preview
To keep interaction fast with heavy baked hair, you can preview a fraction of the strands in the viewport while the full set is used for rendering. See Hair and Guide Viewport Display.
Related
- Baked Guides - the equivalent for guides.
- Baking Hair and Guides - how to bake within the stack.