Part 3: Hair Stroke Setup

The real work on the hair will start, so I hope while reading that you open Maya and testing… Here I will make a little sample; from it you can understand how you can setup your stroke very fast, and step by step of thinking.

• I have made a circular curve, and I make it a little up in the scene just because the hair will fall down. Now go to your Visor window then hair, as you see you have a lot of hair types, in this sample I have choose “hairBlond1.mel”, after chosen apply the brush into the circular curve, then select the created stroke and open it attribute.
  (Make a render and see the results.)
  
  
• In any hair you create the first value you should change is Global Scale (it’s under hairBlond tab), the Global Scale control the scale size of your hair, for example if your hair is long and big in the scene, you should change global scale value to something big, etc... In this sample I have changed the global scale value to 10.
  (Make a render and see the results.)
  
  
• As you see, you have a little hair, for example if you put anything after the hair you will see it! So now we should change a value called Tubes Per Step (you can find it under hairBlond/Tubes/Creation), if you change this value you will get more hair in this circular curve (in this step), in this sample I have change the hair value to 20.
  (Make a render and see the results.)
  
  
• We still in the same problem that if we put anything after the hair we will see it! We can fix that by changing a value called Sample Density (it’s under strokeShape tab), sample density mean samples points on the stroke, so if you change it value you will get more hair, in this sample I have changed the value to 3.
  (Make a render and see the results.)
  
  
• If you continue increasing sample density and tubes per step values, Maya will be very slow, so you can go out from this problem by a value called Display Quality (it’s over sample density), I can give you here some tips, if you feel Maya going slow try to decrees display quality value, and while setup-ing stroke no need to make render every time just change the display quality value to 100%, finally if you finish all your hair just make display quality value to 0%.
  
  
• Now we are making a soft hair, so how we can make this hair more softness? There is a value called Smoothing (it’s the last in strokeShape tab), in this sample I have choose 40.

See Picture 8, just to be sure what I got.

Picture 8: Hair Stroke setup

Now it’s the time for changing the hair color, you can make all hair color effects from hairBlond tab/Shading, you have a lot of values there, so it’s your time to start testing.
Now my favorite menus in hair stroke attribute its Illumination menu, from this menu you can make a cool hair light effects.
Then the Shadow Effects, from here you can setup your hair shadow.
Then the Glow menu, it’s really very nice, you should try it.
Finally here the Tubes menu, I think if I make new tutorial I will start from here

Picture 9 shows rendered complete hair from hair heart, path and hair stroke, and the look after little setup.

Picture 9: Rendered completed hair

This is all what you need to start creating paintFX hair, and this is just the start, you have many things need to learn...
If you have any suggestions/corrections/questions in paintFX hair you can post it in CGTalk.com forum in this thread here, where I have started this tutorial or you can email me at eyad15@yahoo.com with email title "Maya PaintFX Hair Tutorial: Getting Started" or something like that…

Finally thanks for reading and good luck...

- Eyad (eYadNesS)