Draw Strands Tool
The Draw Strands tool lets you create and shape guides by drawing directly on the distribution surface. Instead of relying only on procedural distribution, you place guides exactly where you want them and define their shape by hand - useful for art-directed hairlines, stray strands, and precise placement.
Drawing guides
The tool responds to how you interact with the surface:
- Single click plants a new guide at that point, with its shape interpolated from the neighbouring guides so it fits in with the surrounding hair.
- Click and drag on an empty part of the surface draws a new guide along your stroke, so the path you trace defines the guide's shape.
This lets you both fill in guides that match their neighbours and lay down entirely new shapes where there are none.
Inheriting from nearby guides
A guide drawn next to existing ones picks up their look instead of starting from defaults. It takes the strand group, the per-vertex and per-strand channel data, the widths and the rotation of the closest guide, with anything stored per vertex resampled onto the drawn guide's own points. Each of the four is a separate option in the tool settings and all of them are on by default, so you can turn off any part you would rather set yourself.
Working with the stack
Drawn guides become part of the groom through the Edit Guides Operator, so they are recorded procedurally and can be refined later with brushes or operators. After drawing, generate dense hair from the guides with Hair from Guides Operator as usual.
Related
- Edit Guides Operator - refine drawn guides with brushes and selection.
- Brush Tools - the Create brush also plants guides as you brush.
- Working with the Grooming Tools - the full set of interactive tools.