Animating Hair with Maya XGen | Dynamic simulation & keyframe animation of hair grooms

[@user-tv8rn8vf3o]

Amazing video, this is so helpful tutorial. It has everything.

[@derekfloodVFX]

thanks!

[@Babakkhoramdin]

nice tutorial, please add more hair dynamic tutorials, especially interact hair with a hat!

[@1dalmation1]

Keep up the videos! Your wealth of experience is under appreciated!

[@derekfloodVFX]

Thanks! Appreciate the encouragement!

[@shoohratyuldashev]

perfect, thank you very much!!!

[@mupart]

Thanks you so much!!

[@SachinTiwari-so1fu]

Nice tutorial, Can you please make more detailed tutorials on Xgen Hair Simulation .. Searched Whole youtube but haven’t found any detailed tutorial,

[@derekfloodVFX]

That kind of content is usually paid, which I’d why you are not finding it on KZbin. If there is enough interest I might create a patreon site for that sort of thing.

[@SachinTiwari-so1fu]

@@derekfloodVFX Yes that would be great, Please do it

[@huixus1717]

Thank you for the video! I met some difficulties when approaching this. After I import the animated guides into groom scene, and set up everything, the hair doesn't follow perfectly like demo. It follows a few frames and then went chaos.

[@derekfloodVFX]

Sorry I'm unable to intentify the issue from that description. What I can say about troubleshooting is that you need to identify what is causing the issue. Once you intentify the cause, usually the solution is apparent. Everything on software is cause and effect. That process of troubleshooting is a big part of a TD's job.

[@huixus1717]

@@derekfloodVFX Thank you for the quick reply! I understand, that's where the pain and joy come from. 😭

[@derekfloodVFX]

@@huixus1717 well said!

[@DonBurroni]

top video

[@RezaShams3D_official]

Hello Drek I am working in an animation studio in Türkiye. I am responsible for the simulation of hair and clothes for the characters. I have recently encountered a strange problem in some project shots and I want to consult with you in this regard. I have a cartoon rabbit character in the scene that the animators have finished animating. I have taken an alembic cache from the rabbit animated model. I have a copy of the rabbit body without rig , on which I had already made the hair with Xgen and then transferred it to Xgen interactive. Now, I assinde wrap deformer from alembic cache to the original model. So far everything works well and with the movement of the alembic model, the orginalmesh also move well. But In some frames, the hair is separated from the model and it seems that the hair has exploded and the roots of the hair are separated from the body. Can you suggest a solution for this?

[@derekfloodVFX]

The wrap deformer in the video is only intended for hand key-framing. I would not use it for a simulation.

[@RezaShams3D_official]

How can I solve this problem? I have put the video link below drive.google.com/file/d/14M9Mzbr5N8Fa_c_mddcKnyayHYIKAP7O/view?usp=drive_link @@derekfloodVFX

[@hanialadham4336]

Hello, thanks for the tutorial. I made my hair on my character using guides (I didn't use interactive groom). would this method in this video work for my setup?

[@derekfloodVFX]

You can convert it to interactive xGen first

[@hanialadham4336]

@@derekfloodVFX I will try that, thank you!

[@doopydoody4809]

Amazing tutorial thenk you very much! Is it possible to export the xgen simulation animation into say unreal? Not for a real time game, but for an amimated video.

[@derekfloodVFX]

Yes, I believe it is, but I have not yet tried. A good place to start is with the Meerkat example from the UE Marketplace.

[@wenchanna]

Amazing! I have a question, in case we have multiple descriptions, like 10 or 20, do we need to cache the animated curves of each description and do the whole process?

[@derekfloodVFX]

Yes, I believe so. Unless you have a way to combine descriptions. I'm not aware of one.

[@wenchanna]

​@@derekfloodVFXIt sounds painful :(

[@derekfloodVFX]

@@wenchannaindeed. For that reason, I generally try to minimize the number of descriptions in my workflow. Otherwise thinks become hard to manage, like this.

[@wenchanna]

@@derekfloodVFX Unfortunately, with the kind of character I usually work with, I think i need to looking for another groom tool for animation. :( What do you think about Ornatrix, geti or houdini?

[@derekfloodVFX]

​@@wenchannaI'd say try before you buy.

[@MrTouki17]

I'm not sure to understand why you export your guides as ABC then FBX !? is it to clean somehow the curves ?

[@derekfloodVFX]

Yes, exactly.

[@CarlosSantos-qn8oc]

Good morning. Is it better to do a complete animation of a character before doing this hair process? Thanks

[@derekfloodVFX]

Since it’s essentially a part of the rig set up, I would generally say it would be better to do it before. If you are doing the key frame method as opposed to the dynamic method, then you certainly would need to do it before.

[@arnoutzeghari3563]

what were the main settings you used on the nucleus and the hairsystem for the dynamic hair simulation to get the hair to keep the main shape but not be stiff? Thank you for the video!

[@derekfloodVFX]

You just need to set the "rest position" of the curves.

[@arnoutzeghari3563]

Thanks! I have another question, i have a groom on an animated character with dynamic simulation but i want to transfer the groom on the same character but on another file in another starting position, how should i do this best because I dont really understand it in the video. Im not using the interactive groom, should I?@@derekfloodVFX

[@derekfloodVFX]

@@arnoutzeghari3563 Interactive groom (IGS) is completely different from the original xgen system. This video is for IGS. You can transfer an IGS groom using the "description>transfer" menu. I don't understand conceptually what you mean by "another starting position." What are you trying to achieve? Typically there would just be the hair groom, and it would be affected by dynamic forces in a shot.

[@arnoutzeghari3563]

@@derekfloodVFX Could i email you on this? So i can send some screenshots to make it more clear on what i am trying to achieve since i think you know a lot on this topic. Thanks for the help so far.

[@pontosinterligados]

This is amazing video and tutorial but, what’s the perversion for a team at Autodesk to come with a tool, making the user to bake export import turn components on off, parent unparent…I can’t be proud of what they are delivering as application.

[@derekfloodVFX]

I hear you. But what is cool about Maya is that it allows you to engineer tools and workflows to do things that were not otherwise possible.

[@cpsstudios]

does this work with characters that have facial hair and you want the hair to move along with animated expressions?

[@derekfloodVFX]

Typically facial hair is short and so would not need to be animated beyond simply moving with the face geometry. Xgen follows the deformation of the geometry automatically

[@queengabby9707]

When it comes time to batch render the animation will the hair cause any issue? Is there any extra steps to ensure it renders properly using arnold renderer?

[@derekfloodVFX]

The potential issues with rendering are not with caches but with modifiers that use random generated data such as clump or noise. It’s good to bake these.

[@queengabby9707]

when would I bake the modifiers if I am using the dynamic simulation approach?@@derekfloodVFX

[@derekfloodVFX]

@@queengabby9707 Well, you need to keep the modifiers used for the dynanmic sim, and bake the others that use random values, such as noise that are used for the groom. So with that in mind you could break up the process conceptually into grooming, bake that, and then do the animation/rig setup.

[@acryxia]

Hey Derek, what if I already have an alembic groom that was made in Xgen? Is there a way to go about importing that alembic groom onto an animation in maya, simulating it, and then re-exporting it as a cache?

[@derekfloodVFX]

I'd think you'd want to use the Alembic curves as guides for Xgen groom and then go from there. Assuming of course you don't have the xGen the Alembic was created from.

[@acryxia]

Okay thank you, but how would I go about re-importing the alembic as gudies?

[@derekfloodVFX]

@@acryxia The guide modifier in Xgen has a section where you can import curves. You would import the Alembic curves into Maya, and then use them as guides there.

[@AlexisRivera3D]

Can you export XGen hair to Blender?

[@derekfloodVFX]

Blender does not know what xGen is, so you would need to export something that is software agnostic, like the hair curves. You could do this in Alembic and get the curves with animation.

[@AlexisRivera3D]

@@derekfloodVFXYeah I was doing some research about but thanks anyway

[@nataliamatsiuta1848]

Thank you for your video! I have a question, so when I import abc cache to curveToSpline, it has enormous size for the curves, do you know why? Thank you😊

[@derekfloodVFX]

what happens when you import in those curves with cache>Alembic cache>import Alembic?

[@nataliamatsiuta1848]

@@derekfloodVFX in this case they appear like curves, normal size..

[@derekfloodVFX]

@@nataliamatsiuta1848 sounds like there is some scaling on the xGen that the curves are being added to, which those curves are inheriting. Could possibly be the geo the xGen is generated from. I'd suggest doing a simplified test to troubleshoot the workflow.

[@nataliamatsiuta1848]

@@derekfloodVFX Thank you for your advice, I will surely check it 🙂

[@arifnbd]

How can we do it from Xgen?

[@derekfloodVFX]

Sorry I don’t understand your question

[@PardeepKumar-xc7il]

How to scale character with xgen hair..

[@derekfloodVFX]

Basically you can’t.

[@bmd_videos]

Any hair or just maya model hair

[@derekfloodVFX]

The answer is in the title "Animating Hair with Maya XGen"

[@bmd_videos]

I mean for example i import character from iclone, am new to animation with maya

[@derekfloodVFX]

@@bmd_videos hair systems are done by generating rendered curves for each hair. That's what XGen does. Geometry is only used as a proxy object. If you want to bring in curves generated in another software you would need to save them in a software-agnostic format like Alembic. If you are new to Maya I'd suggest avoiding that as it is quite advanced.

[@seencapone]

Me: I don't suppose there's a simpler & more direct, intuitive, user-friendly way to do all this? Autodesk: BWAHAHAHA hello, have we met? ... Honestly, this is insane, there's no way in hell to keep all this straight or intuitive in a production workflow. I got lost about the 3rd or 4th cache/export/alembic/import/reference what the heckin' heck is going on?

[@derekfloodVFX]

I hear ya! Part of my motivation for making the video is that it was such a complex and involved process! Hang in there!

[@eliellgvs1]

I agree. It seems to not work in a real production to be fast and efficient.