As this week began, I dove deeper into the creation and simulation of hair. I still didn't have a basemesh to work with, so I simply continued my work on the default head exported from z-brush.
I started with some basic simulation work. My main goal was to make sure that the hair stuck to the head, following the geometry around and deforming correctly. I also wanted to make sure the two different types of grooms both interacted and simulated slightly differently. I think this worked overall, the longer groom acting differently than the shorter groom while both still interacted well with each other.
I decided to try creating the ponytail in two different ways. The first way I attempted this was to create a ring within Maya, import it into Houdini, and then try and feed the hair through the ring. The ring itself would have collisions on it and would be used to hold the hair in place.
The results were mixed. The ring did in fact hold the hair as I hoped it would, but it turned out rather limp. There wasn't any 'poof' to the hair when I attempted to simulate it. I'm sure with a decent amount of tweaking, I could get it to where I was hoping it would be, but that wasn't my main priority at the moment. The swaying and swishing of the hair was nice, but it wasn't filling up the ring in the way that I hoped that it would have.
The second idea I had was to create a similar ring, but instead of the hair being fitted through it, I would simply have the hair sprouting from the inner geometry of the ring instead. My biggest worry was that it wouldn't be thick enough to look convincing, and that there wouldn't be enough geometry along the inner surface of the ring to fully hold the hair. I hoped it would in fact help with the feeling of 'fullness' within the ring, as well as pushing it up against the other groomed hair so there would be less of a visible part between the simulated and static hair.
Once again, this was met with mixed results. The ring did in fact create a fuller set of hair that looked much closer to what we were looking for for Saint George's design. However, for some reason, the hair does not want to follow along with the geomoetry of the ring, being ripped from the geo to stay in the same place. It is an issue that I will have to troubleshoot.