Convert XGen hair and fur to Maya geometry

You can convert hair and fur created by interactive grooming tools or default splines to Maya polygon strips, also known as cards. This includes:

Interactive grooming splines. See Create hair and fur using interactive grooming splines.
Interactive grooming guides and wires generate from interactive grooming modifiers. See Work with Guide and Linear Wire modifiers.
Default spline primitives. See Create hair or fur using spline primitives.

Converting hair or fur to polygons does not alter the original groom. This means you can easily create multiple variations of your hair and fur by modifying the description and then generating additional polygon versions. Shaping hair and fur in XGen, and then converting the groom to low-res polygon strips is an ideal way to create hair for game characters and other game assets.

About converting hair and fur

When converting hair and fur to Maya geometry, consider the following:

By default, Maya generates a polygon mesh strip from each hair. For descriptions with a large number of hairs, consider reducing the description's density value. For default splines, you can also convert a percentage of the hair density by using the XGen Editor Output Settings (see below). Otherwise, Maya's interactive performance maybe affected. See XGen Generator Attributes.
Spans in the polygon meshes are created from the spline CVs. To generate higher resolution meshes, add more CVs to the splines by increasing the CV Count value (see XGen description_base node attributes) for interactive grooming splines, or the Modifier CV Count value (see Primitive Attributes) for default splines.
When Maya converts the spline primitives, it creates a node group named <description name>_convert polygonSurface child nodes for each output mesh object.

Convert interactive grooming hair and fur to geometry

If you are converting an interactive groom to geometry for a games character, seePrepare a groom for conversion to geometry.

In the XGen Interactive Editor, do one of the following:
- To convert the interactive groom splines, select the grooms' description node.
- To convert the guides or wires, expand the Guide or Linear Wire modifier, and select the inGuide node.
In the Modeling menu set, select Generate > Convert Interactive Groom to Polygon.
In the Convert Interactive Groom to Polygons Options window, specify the desired mesh generation settings.
Click Convert to generate the polygon objects.

Convert default spline hair, fur, and instanced geometry to geometry

Convert hair and fur using the Convert XGen Primitives to Polygon Options

Select the hair, fur, or instanced default spline description.
Do one of the following:
- In the Modeling menu set, select Generate > Convert XGen Primitives to Polygons.
- Select Modify > Convert > Convert XGen Primitives to Polygons > .
In the Convert Primitives to Polygons Options window, specify the desired mesh generation settings.
Click Convert to generate the polygon objects.

Convert hair and fur using the XGen Editor Output Settings

Select the hair, fur, or instanced default spline description.
In the XGen Editor, click the Preview/Output tab.
In the Output Settings section, set Operation to Create Geometry.
Adjust Percent to convert a percentage of your groom's overall hair density.
Specify the desired mesh generation settings. These settings are the same as the Convert Primitives to Polygon Options.
Click Create Geo to generate the polygon objects.

Shade the converted polygon hair strips

Assign a Shaderfx Game Hair shader to view realistic game hair shading directly in the viewport. See Shaderfx Game Hair shader.

You can also add hair texture files to your shading network to make the polygon strips look like individual hairs. Access the hair texture files by browsing to the following location of your Maya 2017 (or later) install directory:

C:\Program Files\Autodesk\Maya<version>\presets\Assets\Textures.