# Blender 3D: Noob to Pro/Furry

|previous=Making Fire
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*There is an older version of this page created with Blender
v2.40.*

(NOTE: **New:** marks  Notes
added for newer versions. I\'m not an expert but they seem to work.)

!**Figure 1:** The result of this tutorial: some furry
thing{width="300"}

This tutorial deals with fur, i.e. lots of relatively short hairs
covering a body. We will use particles to create the fur, and discuss a
few aspects here:

-   How to determine the length and the thickness of the hair.
-   How to determine the place to grow the hair.
-   How to color hair.
-   How to render efficiently.

The particle system is far too complex to show more than one method in
this tutorial. You can achieve many of the same effects shown here in
different ways.

## The emitter

framed\|**Figure 2a:** Adding a particle
system.

-   Remove the cube.
-   Add an *UVSphere*. This will become our emitter.
-   Change to the *Particle* buttons in the *Object* buttons
    (**Fig. 2a**). **New:** looks like !20
    px in newer versions.
-   Click on *Add New*. **New**: Click on !20
    px in newer versions.
-   Rename the particle system to \"Fur\".
-   Change the particle system type to *Hair*.

A *Hair* particle system has a lot of specialties, the most important
thing is that we can edit the particle \"motion\" by hand if we want to.
Apart from that normal particle physics apply, so everything a particle
does hair can do also and vice versa. A particle hair shows the way of
the particle during its lifetime at once. To do that efficiently not
every single frame is rendered as a point, but a certain number of
control points are calculated. Between these control points there will
be drawn an interpolated path. The number of control points is the
number of segments + 1.

framed\|**Figure 2b:** Particle system
settings For
fur you need lot\'s of particles, like 1.000.000 upwards. This will hurt
us badly if we have to deal with so many particles in the 3D window and
want to render it. Therefore, we will create the great amount of
particles with so called \"children\", that mimic the behavior of their
parents. The amount of particle parents should be as low as possible,
but you need a certain amount to control the distribution of the hair.
We will also use as little control points as possible, three segments
should be enough for short fur.

-   Set the *Amount* to 1000.
-   Set the number of *Segments* to three. **New** I can\'t find this in
    2.69. **New2** In 2.7x, it\'s right next to the particle system type
    you just chose (emitter or hair), below the slider *Seed*.
-   *Emit from:* **New** I can\'t find this in 2.69. **New2** In 2.7x,
    you must check the *Advance* box near the *Segments* slider in order
    to see it.
    -   *Random*:*Faces*
    -   *Even* :*Random*

This will create a nice, uniform distribution.

Let the hair grow - the hair shows the path of the particle:

-   Set *Normal* to 0.05. **New:** Hair Length under Emission. **New2**
    In 2.7x, you must check the *Advance* box in order to see the
    *Velocity* panel and adjust the *Normal* and *Random* slider. If you
    change the *Normal* value, *Hair Length* will set itself to 0.2.
-   *Random* 0.005

Nothing special here: the hair grows in the direction of the face
normals. Length and direction are a bit randomized.

The *Visualization* type changes automatically to type *Path* if you
select a hair particle system. If you would render now, you couldn\'t
see the emitter object any more.

-   Activate *Emitter* in the *Visualization* panel. **New:** In the
    Render panel.
-   Activate *Strand Render*. **New:** In the Render panel.

The *Strand Render* (which I have baptized *keypoint strands* to
differentiate from the \"normal\" *polygon strands*) renders the hair
strands extremely efficiently and magnitudes faster than the normal
strand. It is the only way to handle many hairs in terms of memory
consumption. But it has a few disadvantages:

:   \- They are not seen by raytracing, so you don\'t get raytracing
    reflections and no raytracing shadows. You can use environment
    mapping to compute the reflections and *Spot Lamps* with buffer
    shadows for the shadow.
:   \- If the hair is very thick (like 1 BU) sometimes the shape is not
    correct.

-   Activate *Children from Faces*. **New:** I chose Interpolated under
    Children. Interpolated is known to give better results when making
    Fur. Simple, maybe, will work with one color, but we\'re going to
    use 2 colors from an image.
-   *Amount:* 5 This is the amount of children particles for each
    parent.
-   *Render Amount:* 50 This is the amount of particles during the
    render.
-   *Rough 2:* 0.1 **New:** I used *Roughness \> Random* for this
    setting. Random variation of the shape of the particles. So the
    hairs will not stand plain upright and appear a bit curly.

The parent particles are not rendered by default, so now we have 5.000
Particles that render on my old machine in 6 seconds. If we use 1.000
children we have 1.000.000 particles, that need approx. 1 GB of RAM and
render in 1:42 minutes. If you render *keypoint strands* with *Children
from Faces* you can also use *Child simplification*, which will reduce
the amount of particles on objects far away from the camera
automatically. **New:** Don\'t see this when using Children - Simple,
When using Children - Interpolated, you\'ll see it all down the Render
section. However, the result is very bad, with the standard settings.

!**Figure 2c:** The first render without
material.{width="300"}
Now we should change the lighting to get a preview.

-   Select the lamp.
-   Change to the *Lamp* buttons.
-   Change the lamp type to *Spot*.
-   Change the shadow type to *Buf. Shadow*
-   Change the buffered shadow type to *Classic-Halfway*.

This is a great shadow type that renders keypoint strands very well and
creates fewer artifacts than *Classical* (In my opinion). I have
inserted two other lamps and used a classical three point lighting for
the first rendering (**Fig. 2c**).

!200 px\|left\|Click on image to see larger
version.
**NEW:**  Here are the settings
I used and the render result I got. (Click to enlarge the image and read
the settings.)

## Material

In the material buttons you can set different aspects for the strands:

:   \- their width and form
:   \- the used shader
:   \- the base color
:   \- a texture along the strand
:   \- different particle attributes like length, density or roughness

-   Add a material to the emitter.
-   Name the material \"Fur\".

### Strands Shader

framed\|**Figure 3a:** *Strands* settings in the material
buttons. The
default strands settings for *Keypoint strands* are shown in
**Fig. 3a**. Take a look in the Manual about
Strands
for an explanation of all settings.

-   Change the *End* value to 0.25, this will make the hair more spiky
    (not shown in **Fig. 3a**). **New** In 2.7x, it\'s called *Tip* (and
    *Start* has become *Root*)

### Giving the hair its base color

!**Figure 3b:** Fur color
texture{width="200"}
Strands are rendered with the material of the underlying face/vertex,
including shading with an UV-Texture. Since you can assign more than one
material to each face, each particle system may have its own material
and the material of the underlying face can be different from the
material of the strands. We will use an UV texture and use it for the
surface of the emitter as well as for the color of the hair.

-   Change to *Front* view in the 3D window (*View-\>Front*).
-   Make sure you are in *Orthographic* view mode (also in the *View*
    menu).
-   Change to *Edit* mode of the sphere.
-   Press **U** to unwrap, select *Sphere from View*. This is a quick
    and well working method to correctly unwrap a sphere the easy way.

You don\'t need to assign a texture in the *UV/Image Editor*, we only
need the coordinates now.

!**Figure 3c:** Emitter with color
texture.{width="300"}

-   Add a texture to the material, name it \"FurColor\".
-   Set *Map Input* to *UV*.
-   Go to the *Texture Buttons* and set *Texture-Type: Image*.
-   Load an image texture. I have used the image in **Fig. 3b**.

Normally I would just stop here, I think the material is good enough.
But if you want to make the fur more fluffy and soft, you should a
second texture along the strand, which changes the alpha value. **New:**
For this to work you have to choose *Interpolated* instead of *Simple*
in the *Children* panel of the particle system.

!**Figure 3d:** Settings for a texture along the
strand.{width="400"}
If you want to do that:

-   Activate *ZTransp*.
-   Add a second texture.
-   *Map Input:* *Strand*
-   *Map To:* *Alpha* and *Spec*, *DVar*=0
-   Use a blend texture (*Linear* or *Quad*)

You can change all other properties this way, for example the color
along the strand (bleached tips).

## Changing Hair length with a texture

At first I will show you how to render the emitter mesh with a different
material than the strands. Then I will show how to change the length of
the hair with a texture semi-interactively.

-   Change to the *Editing* Buttons.
-   Change to *Edit* mode.
-   In the *Links and Materials* panel click on *New* in the material
    section (see **Figure 4a**).!**Figure 4a:** Button to
    click{width="300"}
-   Make sure all vertices are selected.
-   Click on *Assign*.
-   Change back to *Object* mode.

Now the emitter bears a second material.

-   Return to the material buttons.
-   In the *Links and Pipeline* panel click on the **X** next to the
    material name (*Deletes link to this Datablock*).
-   Add a new material.
-   Name it *Emitter*.

Now you have a new material on your emitter object. Since the particle
system uses material no. 1 you can use different settings for the
emitter.

!**Figure 4b:** Texture
painting{width="300"}
We have already unwrapped the emitter, this is something that will
probably be the case also for any real models. Now we will use an
UV-Image and texture painting to determine the hair length.

-   Split the 3D window.
-   Change the right hand side to an *UV/Image-Editor* window.
-   Change to edit mode of the emitter object.
-   In the *UV/Image-Editor* use *Image-\>New\...* and confirm the
    default settings. This will create a new image, that we will paint
    on.
-   Click on the package icon in the windows header of the
    *UV/Image-Editor* window. Confirm.
-   Change the object to *Texture Paint* mode. **Noob Note:** *In the 3D
    Window, click on the drop down menu. Change it to***Texture Paint**.

Now you see the texture on the object.

-   Paint a structure on the object.
-   Change back to object mode.
-   Go to the *Material* buttons.
-   Change the active material to *Fur* (click on the arrows in the
    *Links and Pipeline* buttons where it reads *2 Mat 2*).

framed\|**Figure 4c:** Material settings for setting the particle
length with a
texture.

-   Create another texture. Name it *FurLength*.
-   Set *Map Input* to *UV*.
-   Set *Map To*
    -   Turn *Col* off.
    -   *PAttr*
    -   *Length*
    -   *DVar=0* All the white areas on the texture will produce a
        particle length of 0.
-   Load the image texture that we have painted.

!**Figure 4d:** Controlling particles with a texture:
result{width="300"}
The result is shown in **Fig. 4d**, you can also see the particles
change in the 3D window.

**New** In Blender 2.7x, things have changed. I followed until the step
*Change the active material to Fur*. Then, I went to the *Texture* tab
and clicked on the *Particles Texture* button next to the *Material
Texture* button (or you can click on the *Particles* tab button !20
px and then click on the
*Texture* tab button). I added a new texture, opened the one I had just
painted in the *UV/Image-Editor*, set *Coordinates* to *UV* (in the
*Mapping* panel). Finally, I enabled *Density* in the *Influence* panel
and set its value to *-1.00* (*1.00* has the opposite effect = hair on
the white areas of the texture). The result should be the same as above.

There would have been other ways to achieve this result, e.g. with
vertex groups or with particle editing. But I like to work with
textures, because you have very fine control and may change the strength
of the effect at any time. Vertex groups don\'t allow for such fine
control or you need very many vertices in the emitter. Particle editing
(what we will do in the next step) is lost if you change the base
particle settings late on, and you can\'t change it\'s effect so easily.

## Comb it!

framed\|**Figure 5a:** Combing in *Particle
Mode*

An effect that is often underestimated is the importance to comb fur in
the natural directions. Fur doesn\'t simply stand upright, and it also
doesn\'t follow gravity (or only to a small amount). So back to the
particle system!

-   Change back to the *Particle buttons*.
-   Click on *Set Editable* in the *Particle System* panel.
-   Change to *Particle Mode*.

*Particle Mode* only appears if you have made the particle system
editable, and only hair systems can be made editable. There are a few
lifesavers to know when working in *Particle Mode*.

:   \- you can edit only the control points (remember the setting
    *Segments* from the beginning of this tutorial)
:   \- you can only edit parent particles, so you need enough parents
    for good control

-   Activate *Limit selection to visible*
-   Activate *Point select mode* for even finer control.

Both settings are in the window header of the 3D window.

-   Open the *Particle Edit Properties* panel with **N** key in the 3D
    window.
-   Select *Comb*.

You have quite a few different tools at hand in *Particle Mode*, see the
manual on Particle
Mode.

-   Comb the hair following the natural flow.

On the example sphere I have used here it is a bit difficult to tell
what the natural flow should be ;-). So I have just very carefully
combed and changed the length at a few places a bit. You find the
rendered result in **Fig. 1**, the Blend file is linked below.

## Links

-   A tutorial in German that shows how to create
    Grass
    with a very similar method.
-   Awesome fur shown here:
    Tiger

