3D-Grooming tutorials from CharlyTutors

[akcharly]

Hello everyone!

My name is Andrew and I have been working in 3D since 2009.

My portfolio

Now I am focused only on grooming. That is, I make hair/fur for cinematic characters, movies, NFTs, cartoons and commercials. I work with Ornatrix + 3ds Max/Maya/C4D/Unreal Engine.

I can do both for rendering - Vray/Arnold/Redshift/Octane, and for Unreal (new workflow) - GroomPlugin/Alembic Hair.

As of today, I started to translate my channel with answers to cg grooming questions - into English. Yes, it's not that fast - but I'm trying. Because not everyone likes to read subtitles and would like to listen to the lessons in their own language. I do the voiceover with AI - because it's not realistic to do all the voiceover myself.

If you can't wait to see all my lessons, there is the main Youtube-channel and there is support for English subtitles.

Obviously, I could not add them to the rest of the video... I'm working on it. But all the old ones are already supported. There is a lot of videos - not only CG Grooming. Still working with this channel - since 2016.

At the moment I'm translating the channel with answers to the questions

Then I'll finish the translation of the main channel.

Basically, for the last time, the topic of all the lessons is CG-Grooming in Maya-3ds Max - Unreal Engine.

The next post will be the first lesson with AI voiceover.

Because of the war - I don't always get to do it - but I try. So any support from you would be appreciated.

So. Happy viewing!
And good mood to you.
Regards,
Andrew.

[akcharly]

Ornatrix Maya | Making of dreadlocks | Episode 1 - Stream - Oct 8, 2023

[akcharly]

Ornatrix 3ds max | Two ways to plant the interpolated guide between guides

[akcharly]

Ornatrix 3ds Max | Clump Amount from Surface Comb Channel

[akcharly]

Ornatrix 3ds Max | Use Procedural gradient for Clump Count

TIMING:

0:00 - Picking up where we left off in the previous lesson
0:03 - Creating an additional Furball that I will use as a procedural guide for Clump
0:07 - Remove the ChangeWidth modifier as we don't need it.
0:14 - Go back to the previous Ornatrix object from the previous lesson and copy the Ox Surface Comb modifier. We already applied a procedural gradient to the channel.
0:23 - Select our new object, choose Edit Guides and add the Surface Comb modifier above. As a result - we get a channel that can be used in Clump.
0:34 - The Mode should definitely be Sink Size.
0:39 - Change the channel name for convenience.
0:44 - Enable HairFromGuides
0:54 - Temporarily change the generation method to guides as hair. It's more convenient for me. But you don't need to do this step.
1:01 - Change the hair to guides using the "Guides from Hair" modifier. Because these are the guides we need for the external clumps.
1:07 - In Distribution Channel, select the channel we created in SurfaceComb. In my case it is called GuidesGEN. Don't worry about the other channels. We don't need them.
1:21 - It may look like nothing is working, and it is. Because you need to change the generation method to something else. For example, Uniform.
1:33 - Everything is working now. I'll tell you right now - it's not perfect. The developers know and are thinking about how to improve it, but already you have parametric guides thanks to this approach, using a mask that we didn't draw, but created in Surface Comb. That's pretty cool!
1:36 - Now you can control the number of them in Root Count. And we can see that the gradient is working, but not perfectly. We'll fix that manually a little bit later.
1:46 - Let's rename our new guide object to GUIDES CLUMP. Again - this is for convenience. You can name it whatever you want.
1:52 - Selecting the main object. We remove the Surface Comb modifier from the last lesson. We don't need it anymore.
1:58 - Go to Clump and select External Clump Strands. Click on the slot with the same name and add our GUIDES CLUMP object.
2:16 - Click Create to create a clump through its guides. We end up with a series of clumps controlled by a parametric gradient from the Surface Comb. Pretty cool, right?
2:32 - Using Root Count, we change the number of guides, which affects the number of clumps. Note that this is not visually updated (hopefully they'll fix this in the future).
2:39 - So you have to go to the Clump modifier and click Create again after changing the number.
2:43 - As you can see - it all works.
3:00 - Now I will show you how to add additional guides if there are not enough. Only do this if you are 100% sure that you are not going to change the number of guides.
3:05 - Inside the GUIDE CLUPS object, create an additional Edit Guide.
3:12 - Select Brush mode and create a brush. With this brush, Ornatrix will allow you to create interpolated guides. You can watch this tutorial on this topic - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gg5LEQscwvs&t=1s.
3:16 - Choose Position = Center, this is so that when you click on an object - a guide will be created, not a random number.
3:19 - Add guides where you want. You can add as many guides as you want. You can move them, rotate them. Whatever you want 😃 It is already as your imagination desires.
3:40 - Update the clump with Create and get a nicer result. Thats all. Enjoy 😃

[akcharly]

Ornatrix 3ds Max | Octane Renderer | How to fix paint color in viewport?

Up until recently, there was a bug in Ornatrix 3ds Max and Octane Renderer that prevented you from seeing the hair color in the viewport when Octane Hair was assigned to an object. Starting with the new Octane build 2023.1.2.14.10, you can use the special Conceal Layer option, which is located in the Special tab - for almost every material.

You can read more about it here

You can also get the prepared scene that I show in the lesson there.

In this video, I'll show you where the option is enabled and we'll color the Ornatrix object a bit more to check the working function.

Previous video on this topic

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TIMING:

0:00 - Open the scene, which is available on the Octane forum, I linked it above
0:05 - Assign Octane Hair Mtl
0:09 - We see that there is no color in the Viewport. I'm just showing the problem that was in the previous builds
0:14 - Go to Ornatrix Edit Guides and enable the СolR Channel. How to get it - I told you in the previous lesson.
0:18 - So, we have this channel selected, but the color is still not visible in the viewport. Now I'll show you how to fix it.
0:22 - Scroll down to the very bottom of the material settings and activate the Conceal Layer option. As a result, we will see the color in the viewport and the problem is solved.
0:29 - But I want to check if everything works correctly - by additionally painting the object in other colors. Go to Brush mode and in Current Brush - select Paint.
0:34 - Activate any color and paint the hair. Everything works
0:45 - Using Display Options and Opacity - you can adjust the strength of the color overlay.
0:53 - I'll paint in a few more colors
1:09 - Now, for this to work in the render, you need to create an Octane Color Vertex Attribute and connect it to the Albedo slot in the Octane Hair material
1:16 - Then in the node itself you need to select HairColor1 in the Name field.
1:22 - Check on the render. Everything works.
1:39 - Again turn off and on the Conceal Layer option and see that everything also works and the color in the viewport matches the color in the render.
1:43 - Watch the previous video, subscribe to the channel or open my page on Artstation

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Enjoy watching!
Best regards,
Andrew Krivulya Charly.

[akcharly · Accepted solution]

Ornatrix 3ds Max v8 | Plant Guides with different CV

In Ornatrix 3ds Max v8, starting from version 8.1.1.34275, you can create new guides with different numbers of CVs. This is very convenient when you need to optimize a hairstyle and not have the same number of segments everywhere.

Just select the Plant Guide Tool, enter the desired number of segments in Num.Segments in the Planting Options tab, and that's it. Just be sure to turn Adopt Shape on and off before doing this to start the point distribution algorithm.

TIMING:

0:00 - Check that you have the new version, not lower than this one.

0:10 - Create a Furball on a Plane or something else

0:13 - Delete ChangeWidth and HairFromGuides - we don't need them in this lesson

0:17 - In Edit Guides, go to Root Mode and select any two guides.

0:23 - Invert the selection and delete everything else

0:27 - Then turn Adopt Shape on and off to start the point calculation algorithm. ATTENTION! Turn it on and off. If it was on, turn it off, on, off. That's right. Otherwise nothing will work.

0:31 - Then enter any number of segments you need

0:37 - Activate Plant Tool and create a guide with this number

0:40 - Then I just show different quantities. The procedure is the same.

0:53 - Go to Strands to enable the display of these points. To do this, turn off the Num.Control Points option - setting its value to 0.

0:57 - This way we will see the desired number of points. Everything works.

1:07 - Ending, subscription to the channel, Artstation and other videos on the channel.

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Enjoy watching!
Best regards,
Andrew Krivulya Charly.

[akcharly]

Uncover the Hidden Secrets of Ornatrix Maya | Discover the Real Curve Count for UE!

To verify the number of curves in Ornatrix Maya before exporting to Unreal Engine, assign an additional Edit Guides modifier on top of HairFromGuides. This is important because the hair count value does not always match the number of exported curves. Often, this value is much lower (e.g., for eyelashes and eyebrows) or approximate. This depends on the interpolation and mesh type. Remember that Unreal Engine also has its own interpolation, so the number of curves may differ. This video shows several examples of different hair types to help you understand why it's important to assign Edit Guides on top to get an approximate idea of how many hairs will be exported and imported into Unreal Engine.

[akcharly]

Ornatrix Maya | Hair Bun Series | Episode 1

This is one of my methods for creating a simple bun using a Torus. With each new episode, we'll gradually make the result more complex and render it in V-Ray and Unreal Engine.

Enjoy watching!
Best regards,
Andrew Krivulya Charly.