The Clump modifier requieres the strands to be grounded to a distribution mesh. Which is not the case by default with Hairs from Mesh Strips. Check out this tutorial:
There is not head or scalp in your scene to ground the strands to it, so I cannot test there. Use the head or a extract of the head as a scalp and connect it to the Ground Strands modifier as shown in the video.
The Clump modifier was not designed to be used with Hairs from Mesh Strips, so you have to convert this type of hair to interlated hair to be able to use the Clump modifier. Another option is to model the clumps manually, either on the polygon strips or combing them using Edit Guides.
Another thing to consider is, after grounding the strands, from there you will be working with interpolated hairs. You will need Hairs from Guides modifier, which brings the need to use a distribution map and parting.
There are other options to distribution maps and parting. All of this is shown in the videos.
There's no scalp in the file I posted, but after your suggestion about grounding I made a sphere to ground the strands to. So then it won't work with mesh strips is what you're saying.
By the way, this is just a test scene and not the final wig for the character scene
If I convert to interpolated hair then I'm going to assume I won't be able to use cloth sim to drive the strips/ hair after that. The whole purpose of using mesh strips was to be able to sim with cloth
What I'm asking is if it's possible to do what's in that video of the flowing cloth hair, and also have clumping?
Yep. I think you may have to disable rotations in Ground Strands. But if you follow the videos it should work fine.
I have only made simple tests like the one I show in the gif above, but if it works with a single polygon strip it should work with a more complex setup.
I still get the same clumping problem when using hair from guides with the mesh strips. The ends of the clumps reach for the opposite side.
I think the best option will be to just model a pointy tip on the mesh strip to look like a clump. Also, I can't use interpolation because that issue of hairs going through the shoulders will happen because the interpolation isn't smart enough to split near the bottom.
A great feature would be to add interpolation that works on the roots, but disappears down the length of the hair, so it can split around objects at the bottom.
When I build the real hairstyle, would it be better to make the strip roots have more space between them? I'm using Blender Hair Tool to make the mesh strips.
Using this method won't work. Too many weird things happening in the scene and any adjustment causes everything in Ornatrix to go screwwy and all over the screen. And everything on screen slows down and takes forver to update.
I'm starting to wonder if I wasted $600 on this plugin. Why has this been so difficult to use? Should I go back to R23?
I don't know if you saw the other thread, but in this scene the character can't be visible when the hair is visible. Whether its viewport or final render. Turning on visibility for one, toggles the other off and vice versa.
