You're an absolute legend, its been a struggle trying to do solid hair with no delays. I've managed to finesse it well but now imma officially start incorporating this in my workflow
The reason the hair "goes away" sometimes, is because, in the Preview/Output tab in the Xgen menu, the option "Only primitives in view" is turned on meaning it will only draw section of the hair where the roots are visible in the viewport. Its a performance thing but on modern computers you can usually turn this off with no problems.
I was about to add this comment, not knowing this made me hate xgen and label it as not working, from when I discovered this I'm enjoying this powerfull tool
This looks super simple and incredibly hard at the same time. But it was really awesome! It's incredible we have access to these industry grade programs
About the Arnold hair shader not showing in the viewport: you can plug it into the surface slot in the Arnold tab of the physical hair's shading group and then you'll get the arnold one in the render and the physical hair one in the viewport and you don't have to switch back and forth anymore :D
Man!! Thank you for taking the time to put together such a comprehensive tutorial! Much Appreciated! You've gained one new subscriber! I'm learning so much from every minute of your tutorial. You tutorial is very concise with no "ummm...ahhhh..." pauses. Audio is crisp and video is sharp. Appreciate the quality of your tutorial.
J, man, really thanking you from my heart, I always felt XGEN pretty hard, but your simple style of teaching just taught me everything about XGEN I wanted to know, didn't find any tutorial this easy, Thank you once again
Great video as usual! One tip I can add to using xGen is for your aiStandardHair shader, in the shading group for that material you can middle mouse drag the hairPhysicalShader into "Surface material" and add the aiStandardHair material into "Surface Shader" which is under Arnold. Then when you render it uses the aiStandardHair and in the viewport is has the hairPhysicalShader. It works as well using this method to have a Arnold material for surfaces and then in the viewport a lambert material if you need to paint masks and such since Xgen doesn't allow you to paint maps onto objects with arnold shader on it.
Dude, seriously, thanks for this. I have been pulling MY hair out for months just trying to figure out Xgen. Just working with clumping alone made me want to scream and quit altogether. Could you make a tutorial on saving your xgen hair as a preset for use with other models?
How exactly do you get from 36:10 to 36:17? What do curves mean exactly? I've tried adding more guides and rebuilding my guides with a higher CV count. I've also created both maps, nothing I do seems to make the hair follow the guides closer to the head, it's decently out there like in 36:10...what am I missing? Thanks so much for the vid, this has been the best tutorial I've found, will be eternally grateful
All I did there was add more guide curves to wrangle the hair. If you don't have enough then the hairs far away won't be guided. Don't need to add more CVs for that issue. If the hair isn't following guides you may have another problem. Go to the Discord for more assistance if needed
At 13:57, the hair disappears and that is because by default if a portion of scalp is not inside the camera frame (inside the resolution gate and not the actual viewport), it turns off that portion of hair that is not in view (optimization reasons, I guess). You can turn this behavior off by going to Preview/Output tab and turning off 'Only primitives in the view' But apart from that it is a solid tutorial for people who want to start out with Xgen. Keep up the good work!
Hello, Jason, in this video, you have mentioned there will be more intermediate courses in your patron. But, I did not find it yet. Can you please provide more information about it?
I am a bit confused between collection and description, as u said at 18:33 that u are not supposed to do what u did but what u did was correct right? i mean head should be the name of collection as it is the collection of multiple descriptions and brows should be the description right? sorry if i am wrong but please help me out with this
Hey J! To solve your problem with the groom sometimes not showing, go to the Preview/Output tab in the Description and uncheck "Only primitives in the view." You gotta do it for every new Description, but it will make it so previews always do ALL the hair. Great and relevant stuff as usual.
hi J, awesome video as usual, I have not finished yet, I'm around @14:00 and noticed that problem with the hair disappearing when you are too close. I dunno if you'll eventually aknowledge that later in the video but if you go into the PREVIEW/OUTPUT tab, under PREVIEW you'll find an option flag with something like "only primitives in the view". Uncheck it and xgen hairs will always be dislpayed. It's an optimization to hide the hair not framed by camera at that moment
This is truly a great tutorial. Great explanation! I do have two problems though: 1) Tried to create a map (16:00) but it simply won't create it. All the icons like the save icon don't appear. Any ideas why? 2) Also when I re-open the file, the hair doesn't appear. They are listed in the outliner but don't show in the viewport.
I have the same problem with not able to create a map, it shows an error that Maya is unable to locate something in my files but I don't know what it's looking for in the first place lol. Help!! D;
Even if you are Maya Artist & Zbrush. Im watching your Videos for my Blender / Houdini journey cause the knowedge that you provide is pretty transferable between others softwares. For example this Groom tutorial helped me a lot to understand basics :D
A few months ago I made a comment bashing XGen due to it crashing/being unusable. Turns out, there was a way to solve my issue, I just had to do a TON of research. If anyone runs into the problem I did where interactive groom cant be used, its possible that your Maya.env file has OpenGL turned off. If you open that file up with notepad, and delete that line, interactive groom will work like a charm. Another issue I had, was the hair going through my mesh. Turns out in the brush setting of interactive groom, you can turn on collision. I really hope someone who is running into the issues I ran into reads my comment before pulling their hair out like I did. GL everyone.
no really for hair cards, though it can be used. It's sometimes used to make hair then rendered out as image passes for real time materials in engines like UE. You can export it as curves now and render that in UE which looks great but that's the most expensive and most games can't do that yet
Does Xgen need real world scale model to work properly? I try adding guides but it so huge, i changed the width afterward but when moving guides it still show huge indicator that block my view and hard to move around guides too. Thank you!
@@artofjhill I`ve seen you set the density for the brows is 80 and it`s get pretty much, i had to do set up to 500 to get the same result. Is it any wrong with my set up?
I have thought about using Xgen again, But the crashing was a nightmare during school and it literally kept me from finishing a project. Since then I have changed over to Ornatrix and it works virtually the same way. Basically what I'm saying is if you can sculpt hair guides it doesn't matter if you use Xgen, Ornatrix, Yeti, whatever
I usually hate tutorials. Usually, they get to the point slowly, they figure out what they're gonna say on the fly. They screw things up and go back. But this tutorial series is sooo good. You could do a tutorial on anything.
I've been watching binge watching all of your tutorials and all I can say is thank you so much for your tutorials, I've watched your tutorials from zbrush skin textures to substancepainter. As someone who is new to both maya and zbrush (mainly because I use blender only) your tutorials are so easy to understand and its a great help! One question tho, I've been having a hard time with the hair clipping through the ears do i just add more guides? Anywho thank you so much for the tutorials it really is a big help for someone like me who wants to learn more.
Hi, J your tutorials are really the best. I have a doubt guides are selectable while i was making eyelashes and brows as soon as i add description for scalp hairs after placing guide on scalp desc i can't select guides anymore, not even brows and lashes guides are selectable. there is a button beside hide or show guides (turn the selectability of guides on and off) does'nt work. turning off camera based selection does'nt work. please help..
I get a really wobbly result with the interpolation of the hair shape along the guide shape. It doesn't seem to follow the guides very well, even if I place more to try and control it.
Great tutorial, i-m new to maya, when I create density map, I can paint, but I cant see the black and white color, only grey material of the mesh. Try to change vewport setttings, nothing happend, I miss someting?
Hi ! I'm following your video which is incredible by the way and I wanted to know if you also created a Density Map for the last hairstyle of the video because you only show the part when you create the red map, thank you in advance !
Just a side note for anyone watching this video. When he says Xgen is bad for crashes; it actually goes beyond that. I've been toying with Xgen in Maya on and off for the past few years now, and let's just put it this way; Save often, and do not be afraid to create multiple save files. Because Xgen is bad enough, but Maya will bork entire save files at random. And if you don't have a backup, you could lose your entire work. I am lucky that I learned that some time ago; because just earlier today I nearly lost an entire day of work on my character. I saved it, then went to reload the save, and the character model itself poofed, and everything else in the scene was neon green (all materials gone). But I was able to load a previous save I made just minutes sooner.
@@KarelChytilArt I don't do much with nodes tbh. Since I'm self taught, the entire node system seems almost like Japanese to me. At least in contrast to manipulating things thought the UI, and attribute settings. I've done the odd things with material nodes, and followed a couple step by step tutorials otherwise, but outside if that, it just seems a bit complex. Is Houdini worth using if I don't make intricate use of nodes? I'd also be thankful for any other information you'd be willing to share in terms of Xgen style grooming. I made the mistake of having the first character I made be the most Xgen intense use character I could possibly make, and it's been taxing to say the least.
Hi, Thanks For Your PERFECT TUTORIAL! would you mind making a video about how to get rid of some unwanted hair and how to perfctly avoid hair entering model?
after i add the guide, increase density or add modifiers or create density mask and then add a new or move the guide,all the hair will become no effect even i adjust the density or modifier. what is the problem? i seen your video after masking the eyebrow u add more guides to it.
why does it usually happen that there is hair that seems to go through the topology? As if it came from within? I used a part of the head as a base and not the entire topology, could that be the error?
Dude, this is one of the best guides I've ever seen. You cover it thoroughly, but as simply as possible. So freaking good! Thank you.
Agreed
I've been doing grooms since august and this is the nr.1 video I keep coming back to! Thank you so much! Absolute master tutorial! Only love bro!
Love to hear that! Glad you’re finding it helpful. Make some dope hair
You're an absolute legend, its been a struggle trying to do solid hair with no delays. I've managed to finesse it well but now imma officially start incorporating this in my workflow
dope, glad to hear it
The reason the hair "goes away" sometimes, is because, in the Preview/Output tab in the Xgen menu, the option "Only primitives in view" is turned on meaning it will only draw section of the hair where the roots are visible in the viewport. Its a performance thing but on modern computers you can usually turn this off with no problems.
I was about to add this comment, not knowing this made me hate xgen and label it as not working, from when I discovered this I'm enjoying this powerfull tool
I finally have MAYA!! So I'm literally binging your videos on creating hair in maya. Probably the only reason why I got it.
This looks super simple and incredibly hard at the same time. But it was really awesome! It's incredible we have access to these industry grade programs
this has motivated me to do the most feared thing in maya or as a cg artist . Thanks J for the indepth tutorial.
You got this
About the Arnold hair shader not showing in the viewport: you can plug it into the surface slot in the Arnold tab of the physical hair's shading group and then you'll get the arnold one in the render and the physical hair one in the viewport and you don't have to switch back and forth anymore :D
Man!! Thank you for taking the time to put together such a comprehensive tutorial! Much Appreciated! You've gained one new subscriber! I'm learning so much from every minute of your tutorial. You tutorial is very concise with no "ummm...ahhhh..." pauses. Audio is crisp and video is sharp. Appreciate the quality of your tutorial.
Thank you! I hope it helps.
Plenty of umms and uuhhs, I just edit them out ;)
J, man, really thanking you from my heart, I always felt XGEN pretty hard, but your simple style of teaching just taught me everything about XGEN I wanted to know, didn't find any tutorial this easy, Thank you once again
Happy to hear that. Good luck with it and have fun
You're a good teacher J. clear and to the point:)
I appreciate that. Thanks for checking out the video :)
Great video as usual!
One tip I can add to using xGen is for your aiStandardHair shader, in the shading group for that material you can middle mouse drag the hairPhysicalShader into "Surface material" and add the aiStandardHair material into "Surface Shader" which is under Arnold. Then when you render it uses the aiStandardHair and in the viewport is has the hairPhysicalShader. It works as well using this method to have a Arnold material for surfaces and then in the viewport a lambert material if you need to paint masks and such since Xgen doesn't allow you to paint maps onto objects with arnold shader on it.
Awesome thank you
tbh, one of the best cg hair i ve seen
Grazie.
Thank you!
Nice one. I didn't know about our nested folders not being able to have spaces. That explains why my xgen sometimes break I hope haha
Thank you so much for such thorough yet quick tutorial!
Man. I've already watched this video 3 times and I'm still getting things out of it!
love to hear that. Glad you're finding it useful
This is the best tutorial video on xgen. Thank you
these videos, the information in them is worth 1000 of $USD. Thank you J. You are an excellent teacher. New sub.
🙏
22:56 I created Density Mask but mesh doesn't change into black. I can see the brush tool, but I can't paint mesh .. anyone help me plz :(
Idk but be sure it has a Maya material applied not Arnold or anything else
Thank you for putting this tutorial series together! Appreciate your calming voice and knowledge :)
You got it
Thats such good timing, im right now working in my character hair i'm struguling for it to feel "alive"
17:00 I can't see the white/black mask. I just paint on it and hit save for it to update
Thank you very much for your various videos (Student who tries to specialize in Cfx here) Your pedagogy is perfect!
Could u make a tutorial about curly\afro hair that would be amazing!! Thank you so much for all the tutorials
Solid as always!
Dude, seriously, thanks for this. I have been pulling MY hair out for months just trying to figure out Xgen. Just working with clumping alone made me want to scream and quit altogether. Could you make a tutorial on saving your xgen hair as a preset for use with other models?
One word it's a 💎 gem
another solid tut J, helped me understand Xgen a bit better, with more control
Like that second hairstyle you showed at the end a lot. Good stuff.
Thanks, glad you liked it
How exactly do you get from 36:10 to 36:17? What do curves mean exactly? I've tried adding more guides and rebuilding my guides with a higher CV count. I've also created both maps, nothing I do seems to make the hair follow the guides closer to the head, it's decently out there like in 36:10...what am I missing? Thanks so much for the vid, this has been the best tutorial I've found, will be eternally grateful
All I did there was add more guide curves to wrangle the hair. If you don't have enough then the hairs far away won't be guided. Don't need to add more CVs for that issue. If the hair isn't following guides you may have another problem. Go to the Discord for more assistance if needed
I have the same problem, did you end up solving this?!
@@rubysnell6755 I did exactly what J Hill recommended, more guides. A lot more, but it did fix it.
@@darkiedark6218 Amazing, thank you very much :) just wanted to see if it worked!!
Awesome tutorial! It was clear, concise, and very well taught. Thank you very much for creating this!
🙏 I’m glad you liked it
At 13:57, the hair disappears and that is because by default if a portion of scalp is not inside the camera frame (inside the resolution gate and not the actual viewport), it turns off that portion of hair that is not in view (optimization reasons, I guess). You can turn this behavior off by going to Preview/Output tab and turning off 'Only primitives in the view'
But apart from that it is a solid tutorial for people who want to start out with Xgen. Keep up the good work!
Thank you!
Very helpful J Hill. So simply explained all the basic info. Easy to understand. Thank you so much!
Hello, Jason,
in this video, you have mentioned there will be more intermediate courses in your patron. But, I did not find it yet. Can you please provide more information about it?
I am a bit confused between collection and description, as u said at 18:33 that u are not supposed to do what u did but what u did was correct right? i mean head should be the name of collection as it is the collection of multiple descriptions and brows should be the description right? sorry if i am wrong but please help me out with this
Hey I did confuse them myself :p
You’re right. Collection is everything and descriptions are each groom
@@artofjhill ha ha ikr happen to the best of us, thanks for helping out tho 😁
Hey J!
To solve your problem with the groom sometimes not showing, go to the Preview/Output tab in the Description and uncheck "Only primitives in the view." You gotta do it for every new Description, but it will make it so previews always do ALL the hair.
Great and relevant stuff as usual.
Thank you!
Best Xgen lesson on UA-cam as far as I'm concerned.
Appreciate that! Hope it helps out
@@artofjhill Yes it has.
Great teacher, Thank you so much for this! Would be great to see a tutorial about creating hair for videogames.
Greetings from Colombia!
Thanks. Making Game Hair sucks though
You are the reason I jumped back to 3d modeling. Thank you so much brother.
🙏 happy to hear that. Keep it up and make some dope stuff
the hairs of my guides come out too far just like at 35:33. I want to get them close to the mesh like at 36:18. how do i do this please?
Thank you Sir to make such a great tutorial about XGen, WE appreciate it a lot!
You got it
hi J, awesome video as usual, I have not finished yet, I'm around @14:00 and noticed that problem with the hair disappearing when you are too close. I dunno if you'll eventually aknowledge that later in the video but if you go into the PREVIEW/OUTPUT tab, under PREVIEW you'll find an option flag with something like "only primitives in the view". Uncheck it and xgen hairs will always be dislpayed. It's an optimization to hide the hair not framed by camera at that moment
great tip thank you
I keep coming back to this for the details. Stunning tutorial, you're the best.
Thank you. I hope it helps
DAYYYUUUMMM here we gooo!! Thank you J
Enjoy!
This video has all the basics 🙏🏻
This is truly a great tutorial. Great explanation!
I do have two problems though:
1) Tried to create a map (16:00) but it simply won't create it. All the icons like the save icon don't appear. Any ideas why?
2) Also when I re-open the file, the hair doesn't appear. They are listed in the outliner but don't show in the viewport.
I have the same problem with not able to create a map, it shows an error that Maya is unable to locate something in my files but I don't know what it's looking for in the first place lol. Help!! D;
Even if you are Maya Artist & Zbrush. Im watching your Videos for my Blender / Houdini journey cause the knowedge that you provide is pretty transferable between others softwares. For example this Groom tutorial helped me a lot to understand basics :D
Happy to hear you find them helpful!
A few months ago I made a comment bashing XGen due to it crashing/being unusable. Turns out, there was a way to solve my issue, I just had to do a TON of research. If anyone runs into the problem I did where interactive groom cant be used, its possible that your Maya.env file has OpenGL turned off. If you open that file up with notepad, and delete that line, interactive groom will work like a charm. Another issue I had, was the hair going through my mesh. Turns out in the brush setting of interactive groom, you can turn on collision. I really hope someone who is running into the issues I ran into reads my comment before pulling their hair out like I did. GL everyone.
Thanks a lot for sharing this video, very helpful
Pure gold !!. Great teaching ...
So fucking good man. Never reallylooked into Xgen before as I'm a Blender user but can really see the control you have here. very enticing...
It is the best. If blender had something like this it would be god tier
You’re a gem!!
No YOU!
Is there any way to adopt this workflow into game-ready models? Just curious before I watch later. 😄
Unreal uses this sytem.
no really for hair cards, though it can be used. It's sometimes used to make hair then rendered out as image passes for real time materials in engines like UE. You can export it as curves now and render that in UE which looks great but that's the most expensive and most games can't do that yet
Hey J, this video is gold. Thanks a lot to share your process with us.
For sure. I hope it helps
Thanks for this. Always found the original Xgen complicated:)
Great tutorial. It actually MADE SENSE.
Happy to hear that! Glhf
Does Xgen need real world scale model to work properly? I try adding guides but it so huge, i changed the width afterward but when moving guides it still show huge indicator that block my view and hard to move around guides too. Thank you!
Yup. Works best at a physical scale. So for human hairs, human sized
@@artofjhill I`ve seen you set the density for the brows is 80 and it`s get pretty much, i had to do set up to 500 to get the same result. Is it any wrong with my set up?
I have thought about using Xgen again,
But the crashing was a nightmare during school and it literally kept me from finishing a project.
Since then I have changed over to Ornatrix and it works virtually the same way.
Basically what I'm saying is if you can sculpt hair guides it doesn't matter if you use Xgen, Ornatrix, Yeti, whatever
I usually hate tutorials. Usually, they get to the point slowly, they figure out what they're gonna say on the fly. They screw things up and go back. But this tutorial series is sooo good. You could do a tutorial on anything.
Thank you, really appreciate that and glad you like them
Exactly what I needed. Thank you so much :D
Glad to hear it
04:51 It's actually Pascal Case Camel Case only has Caps in the middle, like the humps of a Camel.
Thank you for that
Love it - Amazing tutorial as always!
You are unique in teaching
Cool
I've been watching binge watching all of your tutorials and all I can say is thank you so much for your tutorials, I've watched your tutorials from zbrush skin textures to substancepainter. As someone who is new to both maya and zbrush (mainly because I use blender only) your tutorials are so easy to understand and its a great help! One question tho, I've been having a hard time with the hair clipping through the ears do i just add more guides? Anywho thank you so much for the tutorials it really is a big help for someone like me who wants to learn more.
Hi, J your tutorials are really the best. I have a doubt guides are selectable while i was making eyelashes and brows as soon as i add description for scalp hairs after placing guide on scalp desc i can't select guides anymore, not even brows and lashes guides are selectable. there is a button beside hide or show guides (turn the selectability of guides on and off) does'nt work. turning off camera based selection does'nt work. please help..
Update - Toggle select by components, object type worked for me.
Dear, thank you for your hard work and your creativity, your work is amazing, very inspiring!
This is amazing. Thanks a lot for all the explanation.
For sure. I hope it helps
Hi! My hairs are going below the mesh just like inside of the head, do you know how to fix it?
I get a really wobbly result with the interpolation of the hair shape along the guide shape. It doesn't seem to follow the guides very well, even if I place more to try and control it.
you SIR are GOATED imo :D
Great tutorial, i-m new to maya, when I create density map, I can paint, but I cant see the black and white color, only grey material of the mesh.
Try to change vewport setttings, nothing happend, I miss someting?
after create guide and increase density, add a new guide and ctrl z or delete the new guide will it effect the hair?
2 years later this tutorial still amazing
Hi ! I'm following your video which is incredible by the way and I wanted to know if you also created a Density Map for the last hairstyle of the video because you only show the part when you create the red map, thank you in advance !
another great tutorial and just what i needed for my current project
Thank you. Glad you found it useful
Would like to know how we can export the hairs and render in marmoset like you did for the previous videos
Yup. Next video
Thanks for sharing. I learned a lot.
Very informative really helped me a lot not everyone is able to teach well 👍👍👍
Thank you, I'm glad it helped!
Excellent tutorial, thank you. How difficult is it to animate XGen hair? Do you have a lesson on it?
Your tutos are amazing!
Thank you 🙏
even as a blender user it's very interesting :) thx
(ps: i'm really fan , your art is my wallpaper everyday)
Thank you! 🙏
You're the KING! Thank you very much!
Ty I hope it helps!
This is GOLD, thank you so much
I hope it helps!
U can plug maya hair shader in SG group and in arnold part of it arnold shader. It will show one in viewport one in rendet
Just a side note for anyone watching this video. When he says Xgen is bad for crashes; it actually goes beyond that. I've been toying with Xgen in Maya on and off for the past few years now, and let's just put it this way; Save often, and do not be afraid to create multiple save files. Because Xgen is bad enough, but Maya will bork entire save files at random. And if you don't have a backup, you could lose your entire work. I am lucky that I learned that some time ago; because just earlier today I nearly lost an entire day of work on my character. I saved it, then went to reload the save, and the character model itself poofed, and everything else in the scene was neon green (all materials gone). But I was able to load a previous save I made just minutes sooner.
We are happy for Houdini grooming. No crash, udims, much better nodes.
@@KarelChytilArt I don't do much with nodes tbh. Since I'm self taught, the entire node system seems almost like Japanese to me. At least in contrast to manipulating things thought the UI, and attribute settings.
I've done the odd things with material nodes, and followed a couple step by step tutorials otherwise, but outside if that, it just seems a bit complex. Is Houdini worth using if I don't make intricate use of nodes?
I'd also be thankful for any other information you'd be willing to share in terms of Xgen style grooming. I made the mistake of having the first character I made be the most Xgen intense use character I could possibly make, and it's been taxing to say the least.
How do you render the turn around? When i try to render (with arnold) the turn around the hair does not move when the caracter is rotated
So sick ❤
How do you assign a pre-existing ptx/ Density mask to a description? I made one but the file I made it with won't open without crashing.
i really needed this , thanks so much !
Glad it was helpful!
Hi, Thanks For Your PERFECT TUTORIAL! would you mind making a video about how to get rid of some unwanted hair and how to perfctly avoid hair entering model?
Tnx for tut. Trying with friends from Voicely to repeat. Hope it goes well :3
I've been watching you for almost two years
Thank you 🙏
Thanks for this great tutorial. It helped me a lot to understand xgen. :D
Happy to hear that
This is AMAZING!
Glad you think so!
after i add the guide, increase density or add modifiers or create density mask and then add a new or move the guide,all the hair will become no effect even i adjust the density or modifier. what is the problem? i seen your video after masking the eyebrow u add more guides to it.
Great stuff man. Thanks a lot!
You got it. Hope it helps
why does it usually happen that there is hair that seems to go through the topology? As if it came from within? I used a part of the head as a base and not the entire topology, could that be the error?
awseooome ! thank you so much for this i learned alot !
hello,
once I set up the guide, after that I try to bump up the density, but no hairs appear...
very nice! simple and keep it up man!
Thanks. Will do