Basic Ornatrix Concepts
This page introduces the ideas behind Ornatrix so the rest of the documentation makes sense. If you are new to the App, read this first; if you have used another version of Ornatrix, the same concepts apply here, with the App's own interface around them.
Hair is built procedurally
You do not place hairs one by one. Instead you describe how hair should be created and styled as a series of steps, and Ornatrix generates the result. Each step is an operator, and the ordered list of operators is the operator stack. Because the stack is procedural and non-destructive, you can revisit any step at any time and the whole groom updates. See The Operator Stack and Objects and the Operator Stack.
Guides shape, hair fills
Most grooms are built in two layers. A relatively small number of guides define the overall shape and flow, much like a control cage, and you do your styling on them. Dense hair is then interpolated between the guides to produce the final, full-density result. Working on guides keeps grooming fast and manageable even when the final hair count is enormous. See Hair and Guides.
A typical workflow
A common groom follows this shape:
- Import a base mesh for the hair to grow on. See Importing and Exporting Geometry.
- Grow guides on the surface with Guides from Mesh Operator.
- Style the guides parametrically and by hand with the Edit Guides Operator and the grooming tools.
- Generate dense hair from the guides with Hair from Guides Operator.
- Add styling operators such as Frizz Operator, Clump Operator, and Curl Operator.
- Preview and export the result. See Rendering with ProRender and Importing and Exporting Geometry.
You can start from scratch this way, or begin from a ready-made template. See Grooms Browser.
Targeting parts of a groom
As grooms grow more complex, you will want operators to affect only some of the hair. Ornatrix provides two complementary mechanisms for this: strand groups, which tag strands so an operator applies only to chosen groups, and strand channels, which store per-strand or per-vertex values that drive operator parameters. See Working with Strand Groups and Working with Strand Channels.
Where to go next
- For a guided, hands-on first session, see Your First Groom: Grooming Basics.
- For definitions of the terms used throughout, see Definitions.