Simulation - Animating with Blender: How to Create Short Animations from Start to Finish - page 276

shown in the 3D view and is used to give you an idea of what your child settings will look. The Render
Amount value is, obviously, the number of child strands that will be created at render time.

Due to the large number of child parameters, it's not really possible to give an in-depth explanation of each
one here. However, we can at least take a brief look at what is available.

NOTE
All of the child strand options function relative to their parent strand. For example, clumping or
curling of child strands will occur toward or around the parent strand that most infl uences them.

Clump: Causes the ends of strands to clump together at the tip for positive values and at the base for nega-
tive values. Tip clumping will give hair or fur a wet look because wet hair tends to gather in just this fashion.
Base clumping gives a “hair plug” effect, like a doll's head.
Shape: The shape of the clump. Positive values cause the clump to plump out before gathering. Negative
values lead to a slender clump.
Rough1: Strand noise that varies with the strand's starting point.
Rough2: Random roughness that applies across all strands. The Threshold value allows you to apply this
roughness only to a very few strands. By setting it near 1.0, you can create the effect of a normal hair style
with a few stragglers sticking out on their own.
RoughE: Roughness applied to the tips of the hair. This can keep hair from looking completely uniform, as
though it has just had the 100-brush-stroke treatment.
The Kink/Branch button brings up a completely different part of the interface, shown in Figure 14.70.
These tools allow child strands to wrap themselves around their respective parents in four different confi gura-
tions: a wave, a curl, a radial, and a braid. In The Beast , both the dogs' fur and the mother's hair use the curl
option to varying degrees. If you are interested in the exact values used in the production, just check out the
main asset fi les included in the production directory
of the disc that came with this topic.

Materials

When using particle systems for effects such as fi re
and smoke, it is the materials that do the heavy lift-
ing toward believability. Hair and fur are no differ-
ent. While it is true that you must groom your strands
properly to achieve believability with each particular
character, good materials can make even a simple fur
ball look realistic. A bad material can ruin the illusion
of believability on an otherwise well-constructed char-
acter. Figure 14.71 demonstrates this effect.

Figure 14.70 The Kink/Branch options