HOUDINI TO MAYA HAIR
My Houdini Hair Process
In creating the hair for this short, I had to overcome two large challenges. The first challenge was the logistics of getting the hair from one program to the the other. Due to the nature of Houdini, I wasn't exactly sure if I could successfully get it into Maya on my own. There were several other options, including comping in the hair in post or possibly even using a program within Maya instead of Houdini. However, I didn't like the way that hair created in Maya looked or simulated, plus I had heard that the simulation programs within maya could be finicky at best.
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The other issue that I knew I would have to face was that I was creating two very different hairstyles for two very different characters. Not only were they two characters, but the fact that they weren't from the same species would pose a problem. Human hair acts very differently from animal hair in a variety of ways, I learned from my research. It clumps differently, has different thickness, grows out of the skin differently, and even moves differently. Because of this, I knew that I would also have to create the hair networks differently for each character.
THE DRAGON'S HAIR
Because I thought that his hair would be more difficult to create, I started with the dragon's hair. It covered not only more of the dragon's overall body, but clumped in interesting ways that would cause issues with simulation. I was particularly interested in seeing how I would make the beard for the dragon feel human and kempt while still having the rest of his body feel more animalistic in the way that the hair behaved.
Creation
After a lot of research online, I was able to successfully figure out how to create the hair of the dragon. I started by importing the geometry of the dragon for me to sculpt the hair onto, placing it where it needed to be and painting out the geometry of where the hair didn't need to be.
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The biggest help in the creation of this hair was learning how to paint the direction of the hair onto the geometry of the dragon's body. Instead of going in and sculpting each area of the hair, I was able to paint on the skin of the dragon the direction that I wanted the hair to go. This helped a lot with the blending of the hair, making sure that it didn't clump strangely in any spot or push into the skin.
GEORGE'S HAIR
George's hair proposed its own set of challenges. One of the greatest was optimization.
OPTIMIZATION
I knew that, alongside the groom of the hair, I needed to optimize the hair in such a way that it would simulate fast and accurately. By splitting the hair into different sections I was able to greatly improve the speed of my caching and rendering times. The only section of the hair that is actually simulated is the ponytail. The rest of the hair simply moves along with the skull, meaning that the computer doesn't have as much to think about.
