Grooming a Dog

Set up the lesson:

• Load the file dog_groom_start.max. This is located in the \tutorials\hair\ folder.

  This scene contains a cartoon dog model. The dog was created using the box-modeling method, and was then mesh-smoothed. This automatically creates smaller polygons where the hair should be shorter, such as on the legs.

Apply Hair and Fur and choose a preset:

1. Select the dog model, and then go to the Modify panel.

2. From the Modifier List drop-down > World-Space Modifiers category, choose Hair And Fur (WSM).

   The hairs appear as brown lines emanating from the dog model.

   

Begin grooming the fur:

1. Open the Styling rollout, and click Style Hair to turn it on.

   A large number of orange hair guides appear in the viewports. By default, all the guides are standing perpendicular to the mesh surface, and are all the same length.

   

   At the start, all the guides stick straight out.

2. In the Utilities group, click the Attenuate button.

   

   Attenuated guides

   Attenuate makes the length of hair guides proportional to the size of the polygons they grow from. Attenuate is a useful tool in this case, because most dogs have shorter hair in areas with higher detail, such as the head and legs.

Use the Translate tool to brush the fur:

1. Activate the Left viewport, and press Alt+W to maximize it.

   When you turn on Style Hair, the Hair Brush and Translate tools are on by default. You'll use these to begin grooming the dog.

2. Increase the size of the brush until it is about a third the size of the dog. This is about two-thirds to the right on the Brush size slider (just below the Ignore Back Hairs toggle).

3. In the Selection group, click the Select Hair By Ends button to turn it on.

   The tip vertices of the hair guides appear in the viewport.

   

   This selection option moves hairs by the end only. The effect is softer than Select Whole Guide, which is the default.

4. Position the brush over an area you want to groom, and drag the mouse to groom the fur in the general direction it should flow, away from the dog's face.

   Note: Don't worry if hair appears to penetrate the surface of the dog. You will fix this in a later step.

   

   The dog after a first brushing

   Because this is a big soft brush, you can get a fairly smooth transition from one direction to another. As you continue to groom, make the brush smaller for fine-tuning the fur.

5. In the Utilities group, click Recomb.

   The Recomb tool snaps all the hair that you've just brushed to the surface's tangent, but it preserves the hair's length and overall direction.

   

   Recombing “tames” the guides.

6. Repeat the two previous steps until you're happy with the general flow of the fur.

   

   The dog after further grooming and recombing

Scale the fur to adjust its length:

1. In the Styling group, click the Scale tool to turn it on. Reduce the size of the brush, and then go around the dog, manually adjusting the guide lengths. Dragging to the right increases hair length, and dragging to the left decreases it.

   The hair on the ears and legs should be a bit shorter, and you might want to grow the hair on the snout and tail out a bit.

   

   Scale the guides in places where the fur should be shorter.

2. Click Recomb again.

3. Repeat the previous two steps until you like the result.

Use the Stand tool to make the hair stand out from the body:

1. In the Selection group, click Select Whole Strand to turn this selection mode on once again. Then in the Styling group, click the Stand tool to turn it on. Position the brush over areas of the dog, and drag to the right a bit to puff the hair away from the body.

   Using Stand with the brush pushes the hair away from the skin.

   

   Use the Stand tool to make the guides stick out more.

   Natural fur usually stands out at about 60 degrees from the surface; you can also use the Translate brush at a side angle to do this. For this tutorial, you're modeling a stuffed animal, so you can stand the hair out a bit more than might be natural.

2. When you're satisfied with the grooming, click Finish Styling to turn this button off.

3. Press Alt+W again to restore the four viewports.

Adjust the material settings:

This is a toy dog, so you can use unreal coloring to enhance the effect.

1. Open the Material Parameters rollout..

   The scene already contains two spot lights, both set to cast shadows in the form of shadow maps. Because the Hair and Fur render effect uses these by default, the spot lights will automatically cast shadows from the hair.

2. Set Tip Color to a medium green: R=95, G=157, B=45.

3. Set Root Color to a slightly darker green: R=61, G=145, B=45.

4. Set Occluded Amb. to 96.4 and Hue Variation to 40.0. The fur shouldn't be too shiny, so set Specular to 8.365 and Glossiness to 71.28.

Adjust other settings to make the hair like fur:

1. Open the General Parameters rollout. Set Hair Count to 329000, Hair Passes to 3, and Tip Thick to 1.0.

   Note: These settings make the dog quite furry. It will take a long time to render, but the results are good.

2. Open the Frizz Parameters rollout. Set Frizz Tip to 20.0, and Frizz X/Y/Z Freq. (all three) to 64.0.

Render the dog:

Warning: This step takes a long time, so you might want to skip it. If you do render your version of the dog, plan on a long break.

• Activate the Perspective viewport, and then press F9 to render the scene.

  

  The dog in all its furry glory