Hair from Mesh Strips

Overview

Hair From Mesh Strips object allows you to use flat or cylindrical polygon meshes to generate hair along their surface. Hairs are generated from one edge of a mesh strip towards the opposite edge. The edge from which the hairs start growing can be specified manually per each strip, however, the hairs will be generated along the longest boundary of a mesh strip by default.

The polygon strips can be deformed, moved, or edited inside the scene and the Hair From Mesh Strips object will automatically adapt to these changes. You may use multiple strip objects, have one strip object with multiple strip elements, or have a combination of these options.

Creating Hair From Strips

To create hair from strips, open the Ornatrix menu and add the Hair from Mesh Strips object. A new empty hair object will be created which is composed of only the Hair from Mesh Strips modifier.
Go to the Object tab in the Mesh from Strips modifier where you will find the Mesh Strips list. By default this list is empty.
Click and drag your mesh strips or tubes from the Objects manager to the Mesh Strips list.

This modifier will use the tubes and/or mesh strips to generate hair from one edge to the other, while a red arrow indicates the direction of the generated hair strands, representing the roots and the tips of the strands.
Once strip hair is generated you may use any other procedural modifiers such as Curl Modifier, Change Width Modifier, Frizz Modifier, and others for refining its shape.

Strip Mesh Requirements

The polygon meshes defining the hair strips must meet a few requirements to properly generate hairs:

The strip mesh cannot contain triangles, especially not along any of its boundaries
It is highly recommended that the strip mesh have four boundaries. This means that there are a total of four edge loops going along the circumference of the strip mesh.
When using tubes they must be open at both ends.

Modifying Strip Meshes

After you have added one or more strip meshes into the hair from strips object you may use standard Cinema 4D, tools, deformers and modifiers to edit them. Ornatrix will re-compute the hair to reflect those changes. The editing can include both geometrical and topological changes. If you change the mesh topology, however, please make sure that you do not break any aforementioned mesh requirement rules.

Modifying Hair Strips

You can edit the hair strips globally or individually.

The parameters in the Object tab allow you to edit the hair strips globally. Changes made in this tab will affect all the hair strips regardless of what is selected.

In the Mesh Strips tab, the Mesh Strips list allow you to select individual hair strips and modify their individual properties using the parameters down in the Selected Strips Settings section in the same tab. For example, any changes to orientation of the strips will only be performed on the currently selected strips. You can select one or multiple hair strips.

Parameters

Distribution

Distribution Type Buttons
- Per-Vertex distribution will generate one hair per each boundary vertex of the strip mesh
- Uniform distribution will generate hairs along the boundary at evenly spaced intervals
- Random distribution will generate hairs along the boundary at randomly spaced intervals
Random Seed
Specifies the seed value used when generating strips using random distribution.
Hairs Per Strip
Specifies the number of hairs to generate on each strip mesh
Viewport Count Fraction
Specifies the percent value of hairs per strip to show inside the viewport. You may want to set this to a lower value if you want to render plenty of hair but want to preview only a few of it inside the viewport.

Direction Drop Down

Hair Strips direction is represented using a red arrow, to show how it flows from root to tip. This drop down list specifies the type of rotation which will be performed when you click the Rotate All Strands button below this control. If you select a mesh strip in the Mesh Strip list, this button will only affect selected strips.

Rotate option will rotate the strip orientation
Flip will reverse the orientation of each strip
Flow up, down, left, right, back, forward options will make the strip orientations choose each of the respectively selected directions.

Hair Parameters

Points Per Strand
Specifies the number of segments to generate in each hair strand.

Texturing

Inherit Texture Coordinates from Strips
If turned on, this option will make the resulting hair have the same texture coordinates as the strip from which it was generated. This is useful for applying custom texture maps to the generated hair.

Volume

Add volume to the hair by pushing the hair away from the strips. Use the Global parameter and the curve graph to determine how the volume affect the hair.

Volume Normal Bias

Set this parameter to a negative value (-1) to have the hair volume be generated entirely inside the cylinders.