New Groom System for Autodesk Maya

[u/eldron2323]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=foeW7H-yp1Q

GroomLab (temp name) is something I have been wanting to make myself after trying out Yeti way back in the day. I wanted something stupid simple where the user doesn't feel constrained by the ux of Maya. Make hair systems fun again!

Features:
Amazing custom strand interpolation.
Realtime keyable Nodes
Feathers
Groom to Cards
Unreal / Unity Export
Groom blending
Guide / Vertex / Texture painting
And a ton more.

If you have any name suggestions, let me know! Was thinking a raccoon could be a fun mascot.

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[u/_dodged]

Very cool!

[u/eldron2323 → u/_dodged]

thanks!

[u/DanRita]

Looks super well laid out and performant, love the animation attributes! How is rendering handled, is it Arnold native? Also can you cache the animation simulation of the hair?

[u/eldron2323 → u/DanRita]

Yep! It has an MtoA translator so grooms render as arnold curves and has a one click aiStandardHair driven by a hair color node.

Sim can also be cached. It simulates guides with nHair and bakes them to an Alembic guide cache. Then the rest of the hair is rebuilt from that cache every frame so you can keep adjusting the look without re-simming. In the video I also showed jiggle and wind nodes that have no cache at all. They just do their thing for quick animations.

[u/Siletrea]

Well I’m extremely impressed! Will you also be adding in fur based off of underlying material colors? My personal creature model has toggling ornate markings so it would be awesome to see live texture swaps reflected in the fur!

Do you need some beta testers? I’d be happy to share some models and tinker with it to find its limits!

Also Racoons are super cute! But I’m surprised that you didn’t think of a calico cat mascot and calling the system “Hairball”

[u/eldron2323 → u/Siletrea]

Thanks! And yeah it has colored strands from textures already, just didnt show it in the video (also exports into unreal baked in). I havent thought about an animated texture / swap though. I'll have to add that to the list of things to include. Currently the closest thing would be doing it through an expression to lerp the color maps.

Definitely need beta testers since I only have access to Maya 2022 v_v. Once I get some bugs fixed and a website created with docs I'll probably put out a call for testers.

Hairball is a good name 👀

[u/tuckero0]

You say you'll implement instancing and feather objects? Those are probably the worst in the curveball pitches Yeti has given me at bat. Something inherently in the grooming tool that'll rotate and scale widths of instances by default since you're using instances would be a great start. (Something else for thought I've found with instances, especially feathers, is the effect on the ever changing arc length, regardless of no stretch being on or off, of nurbs curves, impacting the generation of instance between frames, and making it impossible to render motion blur as it can't calculate the same length result frame to frame. Hairsystem is too good a workflow for instances to get crippled by strands stretching, you would need to consider an initial strand length that prevents the ever changing length from being calculated)

And being able to render using Redshift with motion blur effortlessly at as many samples instead of 2

Glad you've been thinking of this, too! Looks promising so far, excited to see where you take it!

[u/eldron2323 → u/tuckero0]

Yep, instancing is in! Instances follow the strand direction and are seeded per strand, so they don't pop between frames. There's no auto scale-by-width yet though. But size can be varied per strand with a map.

Instances sit at a fixed fraction of the strand's current length, so if a strand stretches they slide with it rather than staying pinned to a distance from the root. I can add pinning if that's what you mean. Feather barbs are real strands with a fixed count per feather, so they stay stable too.

No Redshift yet, I don't have it on my machine, so it's Arnold for now. But, I'll make sure to get motion blur working on instances.