Hair and Particle Systems - Blender Master Class: A Hands-on Guide to Modeling, Sculpting, Materials, and Rendering - page 122

Current particle system
Name of current particle system
Particle settings datablock
Particle system type

Enable advanced emission controls

Emission settings

Emission Velocity settings

Render settings

Figure 9-1: The standard particle system in Blender with the particle system type set to hair

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Figure 9-2: Hair particle systems at different stages

particle system to the mesh you have modeled and
intend to texture and render later. However, this
means that you can no longer edit your mesh (at
least beyond moving vertices), as changes to the ver-
tex order of your model will corrupt the hair.
In the case of the Bat Creature, the final render
will be done using a mesh created by applying some
of the multires subdivision to the model and leav-
ing the rest to be re-created using a displacement
map. Because this will require creating a new mesh,
I could either wait until that stage before creating
the hair or create the hair system using a different
mesh, which I would keep in the . blend file for the
final render later. The latter option allows me to
work on a “safe” mesh, which I can then use to work

on the fur—the mesh won't change if I make further
changes (within reason) to the “skin” model later. I
will use this mesh only to hold the hair for the char-
acter, and its surface will not be rendered.

Creating a Scalp

A similar strategy can be useful when creating a
haircut for a character. While we might wish to
make all kinds of changes to the model for a head,
the shape of the skull is likely to remain reasonably
static. In order to keep the hair separate, then, it
is often useful to create a “scalp” object to which
the hair can be added by duplicating the head
mesh and deleting any parts that aren't needed