Hair and Particle Systems - Blender Master Class: A Hands-on Guide to Modeling, Sculpting, Materials, and Rendering - page 132

of some kind because splitting the hair into two par-
ticle systems makes it much easier to comb outward
from the parting on either side.

Controlling Particles with Textures
While so far we have focused on using vertex groups
to control particle hair properties, Blender can also
use texture input to control aspects of particle
systems in the same way that we use vertexes. To
use a texture this way, first assign a particle system
to your mesh, switch to the Textures tab of the
Properties editor, and click the Particle Textures
icon (see Figure 9-14). Now you can add textures
and use them for the same inputs as you would ver-
tex groups, including the density and length of hair
for hair particles, as well as clump, kink, and rough
values. (Values such as time and velocity are used for
dynamic point particle systems.) By default, white
will be mapped to 1.0, and black to 0.0 for these
values.
Controlling particle systems with textures allows
you to use Blender's procedural textures to add vari-
ation to how a hair or fur system looks. For example,
by using a cloud texture to affect the rough value
of the fur for the Bat Creature, I could quickly add
some randomized roughness to the creature's hair,
without having to edit vertex groups manually.

* Textures can also be used to affect the look of par-

Figure 9-12: Using different particle systems
with unique Density vertex groups allows
more control over the look of each. Here, I
have created separate vertex groups for the
hair, goatee, eyebrows, and stubble.

ticles through Blender's materials, as you'll learn in
Chapter 12.

other uses for Particle Systems
In addition to modeling hair and fur, Blender's par-
ticle systems are useful for numerous other tasks.
For example, for the Jungle Temple, I used a particle
system to create patches of grass on the ground,
using the Group render type to duplicate a few dif-
ferent grass objects many times.

Grass for the Jungle Temple
While I placed most of the plants in the Jungle
Temple scene by hand, I used a particle system to
generate some grass around my scene. While hair
strands on their own can look a lot like grass with
the right materials, I chose to create models for the
individual blades of grass. Then, I used a particle
system to scatter them around the scene, as shown in
Figure 9-15.

Figure 9-13: Multiple particle hair systems combine to cre-
ate the full effect. Here, five different hair systems are used
to create the final hairstyle on the bottom right. Each can be
combed and have its settings adjusted separately, allowing
considerably more control.