gradient texture in blender - now what?

twelvegraves

hello i made these dreads and more specifically the gradient on them with the gradient texture node:

they look really good! however i used an object as reference for the positioning of the gradient for some of the outlier dreads and now whenever the dreads object moves the gradient moves. i dont really want to unwrap and texture it traditionally because i unfortunately just joined like 28 million fucking objects together and that would be a huge pain. and positioning the gradient by hand was nigh impossible. please let me know if you have a solution or if i just have to bite the bullet. thanks!

heres my current node set up (split over a couple different materials)

poopipe

you can probably bake the result into vertex color.   no idea how, I don't do blender 

okidoki

I don't know why you have 28 million objects.. can't see enough details.. usually in blender this kind of hair is done with curves.. so you may wanna have a look here:
https://youtu.be/tVgGx5wKfzQ?t=885

(I hope the video positioning works.. about 14:25.. seems to be not ?)

Eric Chadwick

okidoki said:

(I hope the video positioning works.. about 14:25.. seems to be not ?)

To embed YouTube at a specific time stamp, see Introduction sticky in General Discussion, under Forum Tricks. However I’m seeing it’s only working on a computer not on mobile. Dang.
Anyhow, carry on!

twelvegraves

okidoki said:

I don't know why you have 28 million objects.. can't see enough details.. usually in blender this kind of hair is done with curves.. so you may wanna have a look here:
https://youtu.be/tVgGx5wKfzQ?t=885

(I hope the video positioning works.. about 14:25.. seems to be not ?)

hi! thanks for the reply. i did see that video and it was helpful. however, the reason i didnt use that or particles in general is that that is used more for more realistic hair textures and i wanted a smoother more stylized look. thats why i went with curves and then turned it to mesh when i was done

Michael Knubben

Aside from moving the object together with the dreads (parenting it), I'd consider using UV's for this. If you unwrap them as straight as possible (if they come from curves, this'll already be the case, if I'm not mistaken), you'll be able to use UV as input and it won't move with the mesh, and furthermore: if the dreads are individual animated like your few bent examples, this'll also remain consistent.

The third option is to bake the gradient into a texture, ofcourse.