Your First Groom: Grooming Basics
This walkthrough takes you from an empty application to a simple, complete groom. It assumes you have installed Ornatrix App (see Installing and Uninstalling) and read the Basic Ornatrix Concepts. Along the way it links to the detailed page for each step.
1. Import a surface
Hair grows from a mesh, so begin by importing one. Use the import command to bring in an Alembic, USD, or OBJ mesh - a head, a sphere, or any surface you like. See Importing and Exporting Geometry. The mesh appears in the viewport; orbit, pan, and zoom to frame it. See Viewport Navigation and Display.
2. Grow guides
With the mesh selected, add a Guides from Mesh Operator. Guides appear on the surface. Adjust the distribution and the guide count and length until you have a sparse, even spread of guides - a handful is plenty. Keeping guides sparse makes them easy to shape and gives smoother hair later.
3. Shape the guides
Add an Edit Guides Operator above the guides and use the Brush Tools to comb them into the shape you want. Sweep the comb brush to set the flow, lengthen or cut where needed, and smooth out rough areas. This is the creative heart of grooming - take your time here.
4. Generate dense hair
Add a Hair from Guides Operator above the edit. Sparse guides become dense hair, interpolated between them. Set the hair count for the look you want; you can keep a lighter count while working and raise it later. See Hair and Guide Viewport Display to preview a fraction of the hair for speed.
5. Add some style
Stack a few styling operators on top to bring the groom to life:
- Frizz Operator for natural irregularity.
- Curl Operator for waves or curls.
- Clump Operator to gather hair into tufts.
Each operator is non-destructive, so adjust their settings freely and reorder them to see how the result changes. See The Operator Stack.
6. Preview and save
Switch the viewport to the ProRender preview to see your groom lit and shaded. When you are happy, save your work with File > Save as a groom file. See Saving and Loading Grooms.
Where to go next
- Grooming Workflows - common end-to-end approaches.
- The operator pages under Styling and Creation for deeper control.