Mesh from Strands 

This operator converts strands of hair into a mesh shape. It can be used in conjunction with the Change Width Modifier, which can specify hair radius and shape, as well as the Rotate operator which specifies strand twisting.

Use this operator to render or bake the geometric representation of the hair, to create feathers, and to scatter and fit various scene objects along the hair shape.

 

Output mesh types 

There are three main types of meshes that can be generated from hair:

1. Cylindrical hair can be rendered from all angles, great for high quality hair
   
   Prismatic meshes are cylindrical N-sided structures that encapsulate each strand. Because they can be viewed from all directions they can be rendered as they are or collapsed into baked meshes. This is often the best choice for strands that demand quality over quantity. Some examples include cat whiskers and brush bristles. Rendering very thin cylindrical hair usually causes artifacts, but these can be fixed with increasing sampling per pixel in your renderer.
   Cylindrical hair has to be rendered with one of Maya's shaders (such as blinn or lambert) because the normals are generated away from the surface in a conventional way.
2. Billboarded hair are fast and cheap to render, great for dense thin hair and feathers
   
   Billboarded hair primitives are faces, one or more per segment, that form flat planes. Since hair in nature is cylindrical, camera-facing billboards fill the task of rendering hair very well. They are quick to generate and render but one downside is that they're not cylindrical and sometimes can't be used for things like whiskers, like the prismatic mesh primitive. Billboarded hair can be oriented in any direction as well as controlled by a map to produce things like grass, feathers, and tree leafs.

 

Parameters 

 

Mesh Type 

Determines the type of mesh object to be generated. You can select between Ribbons and Cylinders. When generating cylinders, you can change its sides amount.

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