Softimage XSI Hair: Styling & Dynamics 1 Level: Beginner by Raffael Dickreuter www.xsibase.com www.raffael3d.com In this tutorial you will learn the basics of styling hair and applying dynamics.

Load your head object or get a head primitive Get > Primitive > Model > Face - Woman or Man Select some polygons where you want to put the hair. Then switch to the hair panel Ctrl + 4 and Create > Hair > From Selection. In the hair panel set the Emitter SubD-Level to 2 or 3, this will make sure that the hair does not stand away from the heads surface. With the hair selected click on Sclae and drag the mouse, then Comb > Along negative z-axis. At the back of the head you will notice that it doesn't look too good: Click on "strands" in the MCP and select the hair strands that you want to correct. Then comb them along negative Y-axis: Comb > Along negative Y-axis. Now we have an overall shape of the hair that we want and can start to manipulate single guides. Click the "m" key and right click on Prop in the MCP, this will bring up the property page for the proportinal manipulators. Activate Consider Neighbourhood. Now start draging some guides around especially at the back of the head and start to form the haircut you want. Now change the display mode to Render Hairs and set the % to 50%.This will give you a bit more accurate feedback on how the hair looks like, of course you can also drag a render region. Instead of "guide hairs" you could also use "display mode". Then it would only show the render hairs in the viewports that are set to "shaded view". Notice that render hairs will slow down interaction. In the hair panel go to the "Effects" tab and set the thickness of the Root to 0.7 and at the tip to around 0.5, this will make the hair a bit thinner. It's time to recombd the hair abit. Click on Comb > Recomb. Go to the presets tab and play around with the presets and check out what kind of hair style you get. In the local netview under Library > render > hair you will find color presets that can get you a good start for getting a certain hair color. Just drag the presets from the thumbnail over to the hair. Applying Dynamics Set the display mode back to "guides". In the hair panel property page set the collision type to XSI (fast, rough). With the hair selected click on Create > Dynamics. Get a force under Create > Force > Wind. Select the hair then Environment > Apply Force and select the wind object. Play around with the amplitude and the direction of the wind. Play around with the wind ampliute and set some key frames. Select the hair and click Environment > Set Obstacle and select your head. Now you get an Obstacle Property, make sure you set it to "actual shape", So the hair will stay outside of the head mesh. Now change the value of the stiffness in the effects tab of the hair property page. The higher the value, the more resistent to wind influence the hair will be. So if you want to create hair that has Gel/grease in it set the value to around 0.9, otherwise around 0.3. Stiffness value of 0.9, the hair barely reacts to wind influence.