Graft Grooms
Graft grooming places a complete, procedural groom onto a chosen area of an existing surface. Instead of replacing an object's whole groom, a graft adds a self-contained patch of hair - a tuft of fur, a distinct region, an eyebrow - that lives on top of the surface and can be edited independently.
Grafting a groom
To graft, choose the Graft command and place the groom onto the target surface. The grafted groom is positioned on the surface and follows it, so it stays attached as the object moves or deforms.
While the fit is being dragged the groom's hair is not drawn, so placing a dense groom or preset stays responsive. The hair returns as soon as the fit ends. Turn off Hide Hair While Fitting in the tool's Fitting properties to watch the hair follow the graft surface as it is dragged instead. The option changes only what the viewport draws during the drag - the fitted groom, and what a render produces, are the same either way.
When a graft groom mirrors its hair, the mirrored copy of the graft surface is outlined in the viewport alongside the surface being fitted, so where the mirrored half lands is visible while placing an eyebrow or an eyelash. The outline is drawn for reference only: only the original surface can be selected and transformed. Turn off Display Mirrored Surface in the tool's Fitting properties to hide it.
Registered fits
A fit can be registered for a graft surface on meshes of a given topology, so it never has to be placed by hand again on that kind of mesh. Ornatrix App ships fits for its graft surfaces on the Human operator's head and on the MetaHuman head. To register your own, fit the graft and press Record Fit in the Graft Surface panel: the fit is recorded for the selected surface on any mesh with the focused mesh's topology, and Update Fit replaces a fit recorded earlier.
When a fit is registered for the selected surface and the focused mesh, the tool applies it by itself: selecting the tool over the mesh places the fitted graft groom at once, and picking another surface template applies that surface's fit in the same way. A fit already made on a graft groom is kept, so a graft placed by hand is never replaced. Auto-fit applies the registered fit on demand, for instance after the fit was changed by hand, and the panel says when the current fit already matches the registered one.
Editing and saving a graft
A grafted groom remains editable after it is placed:
- Use Edit Graft Groom to open the graft and adjust its operators and parameters.
- Use Save Graft Groom to write the graft out as a groom file you can reuse on other surfaces.
Because a graft is a normal procedural groom, everything you can do in the The Operator Stack applies to it.
Matching a curved target surface
A graft surface is usually coarser than the mesh it is fitted onto, so across locally curved areas its faces cut under or float above the target, and short hair generated on it visibly follows those faces instead of the surface. The Groom operator's Graft Surface Subdivision Level corrects this: at a level above 0 the fitted graft surface is subdivided that many times, every vertex of the subdivision is projected onto the target mesh, and the hair is moved onto the result. Each strand keeps its shape and its orientation relative to the surface; only where it is rooted changes. The groom itself is still generated on the unchanged graft surface, so its operators, the fit handles and the graft surface vertices you edit are unaffected, and 0 leaves the hair exactly as it was. One or two levels are enough for most grooms; each level quadruples the face count of the surface the hair is placed on.
Variations
A graft groom can carry named presets of its groom properties, saved with it in the Groom Properties view. When the grafted groom has any, a Variations row appears under the Groom grid in the tool's Graft Surface panel: Default stands for the groom as it was authored, followed by each preset by name. Picking one sets the groom's properties to the values that preset was saved with, as a single undoable step, so choosing a groom and a variation of it are two clicks in the same place. A groom without presets shows no row.
Each variation is previewed with a render of the whole groom under that preset. The previews are taken when the groom is saved: right after the groom's own thumbnail, the save renders one picture per preset through the same thumbnail capture, using the Thumbnail camera and render mode settings, and stores them in the groom file next to the thumbnail. A preset added since the groom was last saved has no picture until the groom is saved again, which its cell says when hovered.
Refreshing the graft library
The graft tool builds the list of surface templates and grooms it offers, together with their thumbnails, from the graft groom files on disk and keeps that list cached for speed. If you add, remove or re-save graft groom files outside the app while the tool is open, press Refresh in the Graft Surface panel to rebuild the cache from disk: the surface template and groom pickers, their thumbnails and the currently grafted groom are all regenerated so they reflect the latest files.
Grafts and the groom operator
A graft is encapsulated as a self-contained groom within your scene, much like a Groom Operator. This is what lets it carry its own operator network and parameters while sitting on a host surface.
When to use grafts
Reach for a graft when you want distinct hair on part of a surface without complicating the main groom - for example adding patches of differently styled fur, or dropping a reusable eyebrow or beard groom onto a character. For applying a whole groom to an entire object instead, see Adding Hair to Objects and Grooms Browser.