HAIR PRESETS

[ A preset gizmo is aligned with distribution object ]

Ornatrix hair presets are designed to provide quick and intuitive way of setting up pre-made hair for an arbitrary mesh. Every preset is a combination of base guides which define the shape of the hair, a hair state converter which places hair on the base guides, and an arbitrary number of hair-state modifiers which tweak the created hair into its final appearance. The parameters of these hair-based modifiers can be then edited by user to change the preset's default shape into a custom one. Presets can also be created using a preset maker.

This object requires a valid hair object that consists of base guides, and optionally some hair-based modifiers. It basically strips all the guide editing and bakes the last edited guides into a .oxh file. Then it searches for any hair-specific properties and writes them down into a .oxp file. These properties include any modifiers and their parameters that can be later on restored. An optional image can also be attached to quickly display the results of the preset to users who might be searching a large preset library for the hair style they're looking for.

To use a hair preset create a gizmo cage, assign your desired surface mesh as distribution object, and press 'bake preset'. Hair presets can be picky about the objects that you use to put them on, especially if your mesh doesn't fully cover all the hairs. In that case you can go in and manually edit .oxp files, which are all written in maxScript. Furthermore you can import/reproject the guides yourself with desired settings.