What's New in Character Effects and Environment Building

Interactive hair and fur grooming with XGen

Model courtesy of Tarkan Sarim

Grooming all types of hair and fur in XGen is easier and faster using Interactive Groom Splines. This new feature set consists of intuitive brush-based tools that provide greater control and accuracy for styling and posing hair and fur.

In addition, create new Maya-based description, hair sculpting, and modifier nodes to adjust grooms. Use the Sculpt modifier layers to blend, layer, or key the effects created by the interactive grooming tools. Other interactive grooming modifiers provide additional options for shaping hairs and enable you to animate or simulate your hair grooms.

These nodes compute on your system's graphics processing unit (GPU) so your brush stokes appear in real-time, providing an interactive workflow that does not require disruptive preview generation. All of the interactive groom spline data is saved to Maya scene files without using additional Ptex or XPD sidecar files.

Watch the XGen Interactive Grooming Overview video for more details.