Animation advanced Character Modelling
Hello
This is Yoon Seunghan for Maya modelling lectures
In this lecture, we will learn about the features of Xgen
Xgen is a powerful plugin that lets you
generate and control hair and large objects
Compared nHair, which was previously available in Maya
It is a more advanced form
and because it is provided as a basic feature
it is used in many studios
But if this is your first time,
Because of the unfamiliar concepts and functions
You may feel burdened
Moreover, if you dig deeper,
we have to use Maya's Expressions too
For modelers like us who like things intuitive,
You will experience a lot of frustration
The reason I'm saying this is because I actually did that
But don't think too hard about it
Areas where we use Xgen are
Limited to animation hair production
If you're feeling any burden, please put it down for a moment
Through this lecture
I hope you find an opportunity for you to become familiar with Xgen
I will first tell you what you need to know about hair production
and the frequently used things
For the functions that are not used very often
I'll just go ahead and take a look around
The learning objectives for this lesson are
character hair creation using Xgen
The learning content is first
Learn Xgen's features for hair creation
Second, making Xgen hair
Getting familiar with Xgen features
Before entering Xgen
We have to check
if a project folder set up
File - Project Window
It is confirmed
Windows - Settings/Preferences - Plugin Manager
You need to check if Xgen is enabled
Next go into Maya's Generate
You will be able to see the Xgen Editor
I opened it like this, but I usually
Use Xgen Shelf
because when using Xgen, the tools here are
more convenient to use
To do a test
I'll hide the bear modeling for now
Take out one object
Here we will separate the scalp
Instead of always applying Xgen directly on the character,
Just peel off the scalp part and separate the face
If you apply Xgen to that, it will be easy to edit
and it will also be easy to texturize
Be sure to separate the scalp
and then work from there
Things to keep in mind before making a scalp
Xgen hair is a concept that is created based on the face
The size and shape of the face
has to be relatively uniform
This is just a demonstration for testing now
Even if the face is not uniform now
Let's just go ahead and do it
Reopen the Xgen window
Click Create New Description
Here, Collection is the superstructure of Description
This Description is a substructure
Just write the hair name in Description Name
Sometimes, you may need to use more than one Description
For example, if you have a character with both hair and a beard:
In one Collection
Create separate descriptions for hair and beard
and write down the appropriate name for each
Xgen is not only for hair
Short hair of common animals
Here is Groom
Next, Custom objects, Sphere, Card, etc.
It is provided in various ways, but
Because we are going to make hair
We will use the most commonly used Spline method
Below this is the layout method
Randomly generated and uniformly generated
This picks up on a specific point
and creates only on that face
I will choose the random method
Below this is the section on control types
It can install a guide and control the hair around it
or use expression
I will use the intuitive guide way
What you shouldn't get confused here is
Guide and hair
Hair is called Primitive to be exact
I'll just call it hair
A guide is a device for controlling a large number of hairs at once
If you create a guide,
Hair is automatically generated around it
The flow of hair is controlled through guides
Let's create and save it
This is how I created Xgen
First, let's take a look at where Xgen-related data is stored
If you look at the modeling folder,
An Xgen folder with the same file name is created
And if we go into the folder we saved in,
Collection file with
Collection Xgen after the file name is also created
This file, to put it simply,
is a file that includes
settings of Xgen
including this Maya file's guide
It must be attached to the Maya file
Back out and on the Xgen folder
The folders haven't been created yet
When we work, folders and data are created here
This folder and its data too
should be attached like a Maya file
The modeling file I am currently working on is
When you open, Xgen automatically
Connects to data on this path
When moving Maya files to another computer or another path
You have to move the entire project folder
to maintain the connection to Xgen that you worked on
If it is not exactly the same as the existing path
You need to set a separate path
The path is here in the Collection
You can check by opening Edit File Path
But in front of this, a dollar sign and the name Project are written
This means that the path is set as what's after here
in the currently set project folder
This project folder
can always vary depending on the individual or computer environment
It is recommended that you specify the path precisely
For example, the current project path is
It's like this
Copy this and paste it into notepad
Then copy and paste the path
And here, we'll change the folder symbol to a slash
And copy - OK - save
Let's reopen Maya
You can see that it remains exactly as we wrote it down
If the path is clearly stated like this,
Even if you open it on another computer, as long as this path is correct, it will be fine
If the path is wrong, you can correct it here
and you'll be able to see the correct hair look
This process, when working in practice
is something you absolutely must know
When opening a file received from outside
If the hair is a mess
It is mostly a path issue, so please check that
If you look at the Xgen window,
I will explain mainly the frequently used functions
In the menu, File is
used when exporting the created Description
Especially after finishing all the settings for the hair part
When you want to apply the same settings to other objects
This is a very useful feature
Let me show you briefly
Import Preset here
If you select testHair and click Import,
You can see the hair setting we created
coming in as is
If you use this feature well,
You can create hair for many characters in a short amount of time
Collection in the menu
This is the part about the path I explained earlier
Delete Collection is a function used to delete a collection
If you simply delete a folder
You may run into problems
You must delete it using this function
Description next to it
Create Description creates another Description
Not only do they divide the hair and beard like this,
Even within limited hair
Braids, headbands, sideburns, etc.
and other different shapes
is better to create it separately and work on it
and more efficient
Delete Description is also used when deleting a Description
Here, the Collection and Description is used
when selecting the Collection or Description
I am currently working on
When you click, a window will pop up and you can make your selection here
Next here we have the Collection and Description selections
I'll add one more description
On one hair, one collection
Two Descriptions are created
Description Alternating between selecting the first and second
I can edit the items I want
All the icons below are
what you can find on the shelf
Let me explain based on the shelf
The Xgen window, when an initial Description
is not created, the creation window is called
If it has been created, it will bring up the settings window
Here, the eye shaped icon
has the function of showing and hiding hair for a while
You can expand it here
The automatic update feature is convenient, but
On low-spec computers, the task may be difficult
In that case, disable this function
You can update it by pressing the button as needed
If you turn the auto refresh feature back on and make changes,
Changes are reflected in real time
The icon of the closed eyes on the side is
hiding only the hair, excluding the guide
Coming back here again
This icon is the Create Description button
Select your scalp
This icon creates a plane
and add hair to it or
deletes it
Select only the part you want
Create a description
When you Add Selected Faces
You can create additional ones again wherever you want
Replace below here replaces what was created
Remove literally means deletion
Below is the Bind Faces Based on Map feature
When creating a texture, on the selected face
it creates hair based on texture
However, this feature itself is not actually used very often
The following icons are core functions that are used quite frequently
which creates a guide
Just press the button and click where you want
You can see that the guide is being generated
If you created the guide in the wrong location
If you hold down Ctrl and left-click and drag the guide,
You can move the location
The following shows and hides the guides:
This is the guide lock function
It's a feature that literally locks something so it can't be edited
Actually, I don't use this feature as much
Leave the desired part and hide it
Or you can just select the parts you want and edit them
The icon next to it is the mirror function
This is a very commonly used function
If you have a symmetrical hairstyle, just make one side
and use the mirroring method to do the other side
Next, if you hide the object
This is a function that hides together
It's not used very often though
This function is activated by clicking after selecting an object
then it selects the corresponding description
Conversely, if you select a guide and click on it,
You can select the object
It is used when
Multiple objects and Descriptions are mixed
This icon selects the hair
This icon deletes the hair
The icons right next to it are frequently used icons
This is a feature that sculpts guides
Basically, the guide has the properties of a curve
The segments are divided like curves
Each curve has its own points Right click on the curve and
Right click on the guide
You can see it by selecting the guide control point
By moving the control points
You can refine the guide shape, but
if there are too many control points
if the hair is long
it can be difficult to hold these
one by one and move them
At that time, you can easily manipulate the shape with the sculpting tool
Basically, when sculpting,
The length of the guide does not change
If you want to change the length of the guide as well
After double clicking, you can turn off Lock Length
Then, you can sculpt while
changing the length of the guide as well
The function next to it makes the hair into polygons
After completing the hair, it is used when converting to card format,
that is, into polygonal form, not Xgen
The icons on the side are Groom's control commands
Groom is often used for short hair on animals
It is not used much when working with human hair
So let's move on
Back in the Xgen window,
Let's take a look at the Primitives tab
Here is what was set when creating the Description earlier
which indicates a randomly shaped arrangement
Below this is where you set your variables
for the shape of the random
Below this, Density is the amount generated number of hairs
per unit area
Create a Mask to control your hair
If you look here, when you press this button
You can control it with Xgen Expression, but
It's not intuitive
We will control with maps
Let me show you briefly click the expand button to Create Map
The map name will remain the same
The Resolution below is important, so let me explain briefly
Maps supported by Xgen are
In the format we commonly know as jpg or png
Instead of a map in bitmap form
We use an unfamiliar map called PTS
PTS maps are, simply put,
It is a concept that increases the resolution of the face to
use them like pixels in an image map
Unlike image maps, it does not use UVs that are spread out
I brought back a sample image
When we unfold the UV map
There are some empty spaces that are unavoidable
This space does not affect the rendering result
It will be a meaningless space
To reduce the resulting waste of capacity
We used to place UV shells tightly together
But the PTS map divides the face
and we use those pieces as pixels of the image
Therefore there is no wasted empty space
and even small capacities can be used efficiently
The biggest advantage is efficient use of capacity
There are also major drawbacks
It is that with a general image viewer
It's difficult to verify the data
So we create an image file in bitmap format
By pressing the save button
We will be working on converting to PTS
In fact, this process is one of the biggest reasons
why you cannot get familiar with Xgen
Coming back to Resolution, it depends on the case, but
I will boldly give it 100
Below are the colors provided by default when created
I usually choose black
and put white only the necessary parts
by painting with a brush to create the map
Double click on the brush icon on the left
The Paint Tool window appears
Here we select white and choose the brush shape
This kind of blurring brush is good, but
I prefer a brush that doesn't blur
Because it gives you more control
Let's draw together with a blurring brush on the side
When you're done, click the Save Textures button here
Just click the Save Disk button here
In this way, hair is created only in the areas I have colored
The reason I clicked the Save Textures button here earlier is
What we have drawn here is
will be saved as a bitmap
You should also have the original bitmap file
so that when there are revisions later or something like that
You can reopen that bitmap and edit it
To keep it safe
Please click the Save Textures button
And the moment I press this button
Image files are saved in PTS format
The location of this PTS texture is
When you go into the project folder
collection1 - description - paintmaps - mask
You can see that it is created here
Next, Primitive Attributes
Primitive Type is Spline
This type of line shape is called a Spline
You can exchange it to card or other things, but
We will continue to use Spline
For control type, we'll use guide to control hair
If you select Attribute here,
There are many options below
Depending on this option, Curvature and directionality
and degree of inclination can be set
egree of inclination
A grassy plain or
grass
Back to the guide, the Modifier CV Count is
Used to divide hair into segments
If you look at hair, you can see that it is divided
into segments
If the hair becomes longer
or when maintaining the shape of the curve
This segment stands out, let's try it out
When I made the guide in the shape of a curve like this,
If you create the hair as is, you can see the angular appearance
In this case, increase the CV Count
to make it a little softer
Below, Length literally means length
If you edit this, it will deviate a lot from the guide format
If you want to adjust the length,
I recommend that you adjust the size of the guide
Let's set it back to 1
You can grab the guide and just modify it to Scale
This method is more effective
Width literally controls the width of the hair
The Width Ramp below creates a more detailed shape
You can adjust the width
The left part is the direction of the hair root
The right part is the direction of the hair ends
Taper is a feature that allows you to make it thinner and thinner
Restore this to its original state
The ends look like cut paper
If you adjust the taper
You can make it thinner and thinner
Taper Start allows you to adjust the starting point of the taper
Tilt literally means tilting this, but it's not used very often
Something like Around N
It rotates the hair root
This is also not used very often
These 3 options show the thickness
pointing it towards the camera
and tube-shaped shading
These three should always be turned on
If I turn this off
It may be necessary during the process, but when rendering
When doing final rendering or detailed work,
You must turn it on and start working
The Rebuild function below is important
The guide is also shaped like a curve
That means there is a curve point
When the number of curve points is insufficient
It's difficult to create complex hair shapes
Rebuild can modify the number of curve points
to allow more complex hair control
Region control divides the head into two groups
It is mainly used to define where and what shape the part is
Displacement is used when applying a Displacement map
It's rarely used in animation
The rest is of little use
Next, Preview tab
The most commonly used here is Percent
The amount of hair is very large
Depending on the computer's performance, the task may become difficult
to handle
In that case, use Percent
It only reduces the amount in the display view
It has nothing to do with the actual rendering result
Primitive Color has the function of changing the color of hair
This only applies to the display view
Guide Color also plays a role in changing colors
If depending on the head part
the description is different
and if you want to differentiate the guide accordingly,
modify the Guide Color
to make it easy to distinguish
Custom Shader Parameters
is used to change color depending on the part of the head
For example, you can express a bridge-like effect on your head
Next, the Modifiers tab
When we make hair
This is the most important item used
Modifier stacks each item in the form of a stack
When you press the + button, a window will appear
There are many functions, but the most frequently used ones are
Clumping, Cut and Noise
In fact, the hairstyle used in general animation
can be produced with these three things
First, if you select Clumping,
Clumping stack, with error message, will appear
Clumping refers to the function of gathering the ends of the hair
This feature is very important
If you look at the shape of the hair,
Although they appear to be aligned evenly,
In fact, most hairs are grouped
Being grouped means
The hair is a little bit clumped together
If you look, the hair is a little clumped together
This also, the hair look neat
If you look closely, you will see that they are clumped together
And these forms
feel like it's a more natural form
Because it is a feature that can be applied to almost any hairstyle
It must be created based on clumping
Clumping requires a center to gather the ends
We will collect based on the guide
Click on Setup Map below
In the newly opened window, click the Guide button
As you can see, a baseline has been created based on the guide
And Save
A hair group was created right away
If you look at the detailed options,
Mask refers to the strength of the entire Clump option
You can also control it with PTS textures
That means, by painting it with a brush
you can apply strength depending on the area
Clump Effect is the shape and intensity of a clump
This part allows you to define the shape
Again, the left side is the root and the right side is the tip of the hair
Clump Volumize, through this part
A little more precisely
volumized shape can be made
Do you see the difference?
Mainly when the guide has this kind of curved shape
You will be able to feel the difference more clearly
Quickly moving on, Copy Effect
It is used to adjust the degree of interference with the side guide
As you go up, interference actually decreases
Interference is at its peak when it becomes 0
Cut Effect adjusts the position of
the gathering ends
Noise Effect adjusts the noise of a group of hairs
As you can see, the direction of the noise is
centered around the guide
Hairs that share one guide
all have noise in the same direction
And the Flatness Effect
flattens the hair group
The Offset Effect controls
how far the clump deviates from the baseline
Curl Effect is used to create curls in curly or permed hair
Hair created with guide-centered Clump
Sometimes seems too artificial and formulaic
It might be appropriate for a stylized character, though
But the actual hair shape is grouped more finely than this
So I'll give it another clumping
I adjusted the shape of the hair a little bit
In clumping, for the baseline, instead of the guide,
I will produce it in a random form
If you open the Setup Map again,
Here is the Density in this part
This is, when creating a baseline in random form,
the density
And Generate
The lower this number, the lower the density
The results are centered around randomly generated reference points
Regrouped again
Because there is a Clump centered on the guide below
This part is processed first
Then, as a sub-concept
Random Guide Clump is processed
So the random guide Clump
can't deviate too much from the guide
If you don't like this
In the guide-centered Clump
You can just release the mask numbers
To make it more natural and messy
By changing the numbers in this way,
You can make your hair more detailed and natural
Next we'll add some noise
You can see that each and every strand of hair has noise applied to it
This is a different concept from the noise in Clump earlier
To show high quality noise
The hair segments should be high
Originally, it was 5
As the numbers get higher and higher
You can see the quality increasing
This part indicates the intensity of the entire mask noise
Of course, it can be adjusted with a map
Frequency adjusts the interval between
the curves of the noise
Magnitude can control the width of the curves
After adjusting the noise like this
If you look at the bake options,
You can see that it is checked on live
This noise is applied in real time
The final rendering
must be done with this baked
If not, for every frame,
it will be calculating the degree of the curves
one frame may glitch
It may also overload rendering
Click here to Bake Noise
After changing to Baked, in the path
The path has been selected, but
You should always write down the path clearly
The last stack is Cut
For a more natural hair look
I will make the length of the end random
It is difficult to determine the length of the end due to noise
Let's turn off the noise for a moment
Let me explain this here:
The mask also indicates the overall intensity of the cut
and you can make it with a map
Here comes the important part: rand(0.0, 0.2)
This is an Expression in Xgen
The concept of Expression
means controlling the hair by directly entering commands
The rand in front means random
The numbers are mentioned later
The 0 0 in front of the number indicates the minimum value
The 0 2 at the end indicates the maximum value
That means cut randomly from 0 to 0.
When the length of the head is considered as 1, if 0 is applied
Since it was cut by 0, the length will be the same as the original
If 0.2 is applied, it is cut off by 0.
It will be a head length of 0.8
In the end, this means that the head length is from 1 to 0.8
randomly
You can change the numbers as much as you want
It is difficult to visually confirm the numerical changes
Let's reduce the number of hairs a little bit
You will be able to see the numerical changes
This one hasn't been cut at all
Here we will cut from 0 to 0.8
You can see that it is cut irregularly
Random commands are not only this
Frequency and Magnitude as well
You can enter these numbers in the places where they go
Let's look at Utilities
The most important feature in Utilities is Curves To Guides
When creating hair in practice
Instead of just going into Xgen
we go through one previous step
That is the character's hair dummy
The first reason why you should create a hair dummy is
only when including the shape of the hair
you can get an accurate impression of the character
The second is, by linking the hair dummy and hair guide
in the animation stage, looking at the dummy
You can control the movement of your hair
The third is because from the edge of the hair pile
we take out curves and use that as a guide
The third function here is
done by Curves To Guides
There is also a feature called Guides To Surface
This plays a similar role
It uses nubs modeling instead of polygon modeling
so I don't use it as much
Hair dummy has production conditions
It is easier to draw the curve if you make it in the shape of a pipe
The pipe shape means a cylinder shape with open top and bottom
If you look at it for a moment,
A dummy is created
Here we will select the edge and extract the curve
To extract a curve, Modify - Convert
There is also a feature called Polygon Edges to Curve
But because this function can only generate one curve at a time
I'm using the modeling tool I mentioned before
I will select Duplicate Edges
Back at Curves To Guides
Select a curve and choose Curves To Guides
I will uncheck Delete Curves
Click on Add Guides
You can see that the guide has been created
But the shape is a little strange
It doesn't fit the curve and is stuck to the floor now
Let's take a look at the contents of the curve Control Vertex
If you look closely, you can see the shape of the control points
Here you can see a square thing
Curves, uniquely, have the concept of a start point and an end point
This square point is the starting point
This starting point is the direction that should go to the root
If you look now, the starting points are all at the ends of the hair
Let's change the direction of this Select all of them
Curves - Reverse Directon
If you check again, you can see that it is at the end
Then just delete this guide with the Del key
Select the curve again and Add Guides
You can see that it has been properly changed
You can also add more guides here
After adding to the middle part,
When added, the guide
is created to match the existing guide shape
This concludes the explanation of the basic functions required for hair
Let's try making it ourselves
How to make Xgen hair
I duplicated the model for the scalp to plant hair on
I smoothed it out because I thought the face was too wide
Because PTS files are pixelated on a face-by-face basis,
It is better to distribute the density of the face appropriately
Instead, delete useless faces
The guides are planted at equal intervals
The hair of the character I'm making now is
a simple shape, so I applied clumping right away
One is centered around the guide and one more is added
The remaining one was made in random form
I tried various methods, and because my hair was short
Clumping centered around the guide
didn't suit the look I was going for
So I created two randomly centered clumping
Instead, one creates a slightly tighter clumping
compared to guide-centered clumping
The other one was made with very tight clumping
So the hair group
can obtain a disheveled shape
Applying shaders supported by Redshift
I'm trying to figure out the feeling
When the light shines from behind
To create a transparent feeling
You can increase the value of Transparency
Where the surface bends sharply
The hair density seems low
I added one more Description only to the part that bends
The default camera settings when rendering
will have a lot of distortion
Set the camera's Focal Length to around 80
I recommend keeping the camera height
the same as the character's nose
Then the distortion will be reduced considerably
This was the Xgen hair production process
Let's summarize what we learned in this lecture
First, we learned the features of Xgen
needed to crate hair
Second, I created Xgen hair
The hair created in this lecture is
a very simple type of hair
Depending on the different hairstyles
The method of production also changes slightly
It is impossible to learn all the hair styling techniques
If you have a good understanding of the features discussed in this lecture,
you can apply it yourself
to solve those problems
I think it's the same in all fields, but
For a modeler, there is no virtue more excellent than consistency
Always have affection for the characters you create
I hope you continue to move forward steadily
This concludes the entire lecture on character modeling
Thank you for your hard work
Get to know Xgen features - Xgen's various features Powerful plugin for creating and controlling hair and large numbers of objects
Control Type: a method of controlling the surrounding hair after installing the guide or using Expression
Guide: A device for controlling a large number of hairs at once
Petches Building Menu: Create planes to add or remove hair
Add Selected Faces: You can create additional faces wherever you want
Bind Faces Based on Map: Generate hair based on the texture of the selected face when the texture is generated
Density: Sets the number of hairs generated per unit area
When selecting an attribute, set the curvature, directionality, and inclination according to the options
Modifier CV Count: Used to segment the hair
Taper Start: You can control the point where the tapering begins
Rebuild: You can modify the number of cover points
Region control: Used to create hair part shapes
Custom Shader Parameters: Change color depending on the head part
Clump Effect: Control the shape and intensity of the clump
Offset Effect: Controls how far the hair clump deviates from the baseline
Curl Effect: Used to create curly or permed hair
Noise Modifier: The intensity of the overall mask noise
Frequency: Controls the frequency of the noise's curves
Magnitude: Controls the width of the curves
Expressions in Xgen: Control hair by directly entering commands
How to make Xgen hair
Creating Hair with Xgen Duplicate modeling for the scalp to plant hair
Since the character's hair has a simple shape, we immediately applied clumping
One is centered around the guide, and the other is made in a random form with additional features