Grooms
Grooms in Ornatrix are hair presets. A groom contains a predefined list of operators and their parameters to generate specific hair style, effect, or anything else which can be procedurally done in Ornatrix. For example, the default "Hair Ball" set up in Ornatrix is a groom which adds guide generation, editing, hair generation, render settings operators and by default, the Hair Physical Shader is automatically applied in supported versions of Maya. Grooms can create new objects inside a scene or be applied to existing objects by growing hair on them.
Grooms are stored in self-containing XML files with .oxgroom extension. These files can be saved and shared.
Grooms directory
The grooms are loaded from a pre-defined directory by default. By using the Browse... button you can change the directory from which grooms are loaded. The changed directory will be used next time you attempt to load a groom. You can use the Default Directory button to go back to the default directory. The default grooms directory is:
- Windows: C:\ProgramData\Ephere\Ornatrix\Grooms
- OSX: /Users/Shared/Ephere/Ornatrix/Grooms
- Linux: /opt/Ephere/Ornatrix/Grooms
The purpose of choosing this directory was to allow both read and write access to grooms for all users on a computer. This way grooms can be loaded and saved into a central directory by any user on a workstation.
Changing default grooms directory
It may become necessary to change the location of the directory from where grooms are loaded. For example, you may want to have one central directory on your network accessible to all workstations containing the grooms.
To change the default grooms directory add an environment variable ORNATRIX_GROOMS_DIR containing the default grooms path.
Scripting
MEL access
Use these functions to save and load grooms:
OxSaveGroom [-path <string>] [-thumbnail <string>] [-optional] OxLoadGroom [-path <string>] [-scale <double>] [-detail <double>]
(the options can be shortened to their first letters)
The Save command requires a hair object to be currently selected.
The Load command depends on the groom being loaded, if "Base Object Is Optional" is enabled the groom will be planted to the currently selected object, if any. If the groom has "Base Object Is Optional" disabled, the current selection is ignored and the groom gets attached to the base object that it was saved with.
The -path option specifies the path and name of the groom file that will be used. If it contains just a file name, the current grooms directory will be used.
If -path is missing, the file selection dialog will be displayed and -thumbnail will be ignored.
-thumbnail provides a full path to a thumbnail image file.
Limitations
For the time being, Hair From Mesh Strips are not compatible with groom presets, thus the Save Groom command will not work on this type of Ornatrix hair objects.
Cross-Host Compatibility
As of Q3 2019 our grooming system is unified across Ornatrix 3dsmax, Ornatrix Maya, and Ornatrix C4D. The grooms can be saved and loaded across all of these applications and will yield same results. The directory where grooms are stored is also shared across all hosts where Ornatrix is implemented.