Surface Comb Tool
The Surface Comb tool lets you place and edit the directional sinks that steer the Surface Comb Operator. Sinks are markers on the surface that pull and orient hair flow around them, so by adding and arranging sinks you direct fur across a whole surface at a macro level - sweeping it around a face, parting it along a back, or funneling it toward a point.
Working with sinks
With the Surface Comb operator in the stack, activate the Surface Comb tool to work on its sinks directly in the viewport. You can:
- Select a sink and move it on the surface.
- Add new sinks where you want to influence the flow.
- Delete sinks you no longer need.
- Adjust a sink's orientation with the transform manipulator to set the direction hair flows around it.
As you place and orient sinks, the hair flow updates in real time, so you can shape the overall direction of a groom by eye.
Sink properties
When one or more sinks are selected, the Tool Properties view exposes settings that apply to every selected sink at once, so you can tune many sinks in a single step:
- Type - whether the sink repels, attracts, or directly sets the hair flow around it.
- Mirror - mirror the sink across the X, Y, or Z axis, so a symmetric groom only needs its sinks placed on one side.
- Flow - how strongly the sink drives the flow of hair along the surface.
- Length - the radius over which the sink influences nearby hair.
- Group - a label used to organize related sinks.
- Rotation - twists the sink's direction around the surface normal, for fine directional adjustments without moving the sink.
- Slope - a per-sink slope profile that overrides the operator's slope profile for the selected sinks only, letting some sinks shape their strands differently from the rest of the groom. Choose Reset Slope to clear the override so those sinks inherit the operator's slope profile again.
Related
- Surface Comb Operator - the operator the tool edits, including the slope profile that shapes the strands.
- Hair Parting Tool - define partings that separate distinct flows.
- Working with the Grooming Tools - the full set of interactive tools.