Has anyone successfully used fibermesh groom brushes for complex hair styles?

Kyle_butler

I mean, apart from Joseph Drust, every fibermesh example I see doesn't look quite real.
Don't get me wrong, the renders look great, but there is very little control on the hair style. In a simple google search you can see that most of the short male hair is kind of straw-ish.

I believe I'm using the correct workflow, polygrouping the scalp, working by groups of hair individually, but I can't really figure out how to control the Groom brushes. They always end up giving me a caotic result.
Is anyone there successfully worked and controlled fibermesh?
If not, what are your hairs solutions?

leslievdb

i`d suggest watching this http://www.digitaltutors.com/11/training.php?vid=15536&autoplay=1
havn`t made any decent fibermesh hair myself but it should be possible

Kyle_butler

Thanks for the quick answer, Ravenslayer but that is precisely why I mentioned apart from Joseph Drust

I believe I'm doing something wrong when using the groom brushes, but I can't really tell what, and can't find info on it...

leslievdb

haha sorry must have skipped the name :P

i`ve experimented with it already and must admit that its hard to handle . but using the polygroups method with polygroup masking on it does become a bit more controllable. i think it mostly comes down to finding the right parameters for the fibers you start out with and try not to make it too big of a chunk to groom at once

Kyle_butler

Don't worry

Yes it gets quite more controllable , but still... it isn't really the revolution that it seemed to be advertised when it was released.

The only sense I could make of the groom brushes is that they function based on the camera position (just like fiber's gravity and several other attributes).

CheeseOnToast

There's an annoying preset on all the groom brushes that make them behave like that. If you go into brush>Fibermesh and change "front collision tolerance" down to something really low, they'll behave more like you'd expect.

Kyle_butler

CheeseOnToast, that is precisely what I wanted!!! It is much better to manipulate the hair now. It is not easy, but now at least the brush makes sense!

And not only the front collision tolerance, but by changing the forward propagation you get some nice results.

I guess I'm finally getting somewhere. This one is not a complex hair style, but is good for practicing. Any suggestions to make it more realistic?