Hair Property Editor

Display Type

Controls whether guide hairs or render hairs are displayed in the 3D views:

• Guide Hairs displays the curves between which the render hairs are interpolated. This option provides the fastest display and interaction.

• Render Hairs displays a percentage of the render hairs. This option gives a better approximation of the final result, but may be slower especially with a large number of hairs.

• Use Display Mode displays differently depending on the display mode of each viewport. The hair object's bounding box is displayed in Bounding Box mode, the guide curves are displayed in Wireframe, Depth Cue, and Hidden Line Removal modes, and render hairs are displayed in Constant, Shaded, Textured, Textured Decal, and Realtime Shaders modes.

Note that guide curves are always displayed when the hair object is selected or active for component selection.

Render Hairs %

The number of hairs to draw when rendering. This is a percentage of Total Hairs below. Typically you would use 100 for the final render, but you can decrease this value to get a rough idea of the final result for quick render tests.

Maximum Depth

Maximum number of branches down the tree until it stops splitting into more branches. Range is 1 to 64.

Strand multiplier

Copies every hair strand by the specified number. Note that you must set a non-zero Splay value or the duplicated strands will be completely coincident.

Splay at tip

Splay at tip offsets the new hairs (based on the value set for Strand multiplier) starting from the tip, creating the effect of sprouts — or hair plugs! The higher the value, the farther from the original hair the copies are splayed.

Allow Stretching of Hair Segments

Activates Stretchy mode (see Stretching Hair Segments [ Hair ]), in which the guide hair segments can have their length changed (hair segments are normally fixed in length). When you style or animate hair in stretchy mode, the hair strands behave more like curves than an IK chain with fixed segment lengths.

Render quality

Sets the quality of the rendered hair to low, which is faster but of lower quality, or high, which is better quality but slower.

Collision type

Sets the type of collision the hair has with objects set as obstacles.

• Average Sphere creates a sphere around the obstacle object for the collision detection, giving fast calculations. This option disregards the settings in the Obstacle property editor.

• Exact uses the actual shape of the obstacle object for the collision detection, which is desirable in most cases. This gives accurate results but may have a slower calculation time. This option disregards the settings in the Obstacle property editor.

• XSI uses the settings in the Obstacle property editor as a basis for the collision detection. For example, if you have Actual Shape set as the Obstacle Type, the actual shape of the obstacle object is used in the calculations. This makes for a fairly fast calculation using whatever settings you have.

Frizz at root

Adds a noisy rotation of the hair strands starting from their bases. This value sets the total rotational offset, and is scaled by three level 3 harmonic noise fields whose frequency is set by the Frequency.

If Frizz at root is relatively high and Frizz at tip is relatively low, the effect is like using mousse to scrunch together hair at the tips while preserving the chaos at the roots.

Frequency

The frequency of the frizz noise pattern along the X, Y, and Z axes. This value is relative to the size of the hair-emitting element so that, for example, small objects are not relatively frizzier than large objects. In other words, the same value produces the same number of "bends" on small objects as on large objects.

Link XYZ axes allows you to change all XYZ values to the same value by changing one.

Frizz anim

Controls the amount that the frizz is animated (similar to Wiggle Amplitude).

Direction

Sets the direction of the frizz animation along the X, Y, and Z axes.

Kink at root

Adds noise to the hair strands starting from their bases. This value sets the total offset, and is scaled by three level 3 harmonic noise fields whose frequency is set by the Frequency.

If Kink at root is relatively high and Kink at tip is relatively low, the effect is like using mousse to scrunch together hair at the tips while preserving the chaos at the roots.

Frequency

The frequency of the Kink noise pattern along the X, Y, and Z axes. This value is relative to the strand length (before any Cut Map is taken into consideration) so that for the same value, long and short strands have the same number of kinks.

Link XYZ axes allows you to change all XYZ values to the same value by changing one.

Type

The method used to determine each render hair's thickness.

• Proportional (the default) determines the hair thickness relative to the size of the emitting area on the hair emitter's geometry. Basically, the larger the emitting area, the thicker (and longer) the render hairs.

• Absolute sets the hair thickness in an absolute size using the Root and Tip parameter values. The values are in 100ths of a Softimage unit. For example, a Root thickness value of 50 would make the roots 50/100 or 0.5 Softimage units in diameter.

Tip

The size of the render hairs at their tips.

Depending on the thickness Type you select, the Root and Tip thickness values will have different results:

• With Proportional as the Type, the Root and Tip values are relative to the emitter size. For example, hair is thinner when emitted from a smaller area, so Root and Tip values at 1 would give different results than the same values for hair emitted from a larger area.

• With Absolute as the Type, the Root and Tips values are the actual diameter of the hair (at the root and tip, respectively) in 100ths of Softimage units.

Cut Map

Allows you to connect a weight map or texture map to cut the length of the render hairs in different areas. At a value of 0, the render hairs are cut at the root. At a value of 1, render hairs follow the entire length of the guide curves. At values in-between, the render hairs follow a portion of the guide curves.

See Cutting the Render Hairs [ Hair ] for more information.

Object Assignment

Select the method by which the instanced objects are assigned to the hair:

• Random: Distributes the instances on the hair randomly, meaning that you can't control which instance object is assigned to which hairs.

• Using Weight Map: Uses the values on a weight map to assign the instances to the hair. Where the weight map's values are 0, the object listed at the bottom of the instance group (in the explorer) is used; where the values are 1, the object listed at the top of the instance group is used.

Fuzziness (%)

Using values from 0 to 100%, this option blends the values of the weight map so that the division between the instanced objects is less distinct.

Type

Select the method by which the instances are oriented:

• None: Instance orientation is not changed.

• Tangent Map: Instances are oriented according to a tangent map, which give each instance a local XYZ coordinate system based on the RGB values of the emitter's VertexColor property (tangent maps are stored in this property). Tangent maps orient the instance so that its X axis follows the U direction of the hair emitter.

• Follow Object: Instances are oriented according to the location of one or more target objects. You can use multiple objects for which the instances will pick a direction which is a weighted average by distance to each target object; that is, the target object closest to the hair has more of a "pull" than a target object that is farther away. For a single object, the instances always point toward that target.

Target Group

If you selected Follow Object as the Type, you must select the group of one or more target objects whose location the instances will follow.