Blender Tutorial - Creating Animal Fur

Setting up the Scene

• It's important to set up the scene before adding the hair system.

• The look of the hair will depend on the lighting and environment, so it's necessary to tweak the hair system according to the scene.

• Subdivision modifiers can be applied to smooth the object's surface.

"Because of the look of your hair will largely depend on your scene...important to set that up before adding the hair system"

Camera Placement and Position

• Place the camera in front of the object.

• Adjust the camera's rotation to make it face directly towards the object.

• Position the camera closer to the object to capture the desired composition.

"I'm going to move closer to Suzanne so we are right about at Thrones"

Creating Ground and Background

• Add a plane to serve as the ground and background.

• Scale and position the plane to cover the camera's view.

• Create a smooth background by selecting and extruding edges of the plane.

"Just add a quick plane this will be our ground and background as well and press g z move that down and scale it up with s of course"

Setting up the HDRI

• Set the render engine to Cycles.

• Set up an HDRI environment texture for the lighting.

• Choose an HDRI image that provides soft shadows and a cloudy environment.

• Delete the default light source.

"I'm going to set up an hdri and I've got a specific one in mind for this one...this looks fine and I'm going to delete that default light right there"

Adjusting HDRI and Shadows

• Use the Shader Editor and go to the World tab to adjust the HDRI.

• Rotate the HDRI to achieve soft shadows.

• Increase the amount of detail in the fur by using soft shadows.

"Let's set up another Tab and set this to Shader...so we get um very soft shadows and it's pretty much lit up from the front"

Reference Images for Fur

• It's helpful to have reference images to guide the fur creation process.

• Search for images of animals with thick fur to gain inspiration.

• Look for images that showcase different types of fur patterns and strands.

"My idea is um that I want to create something like one of those Alpha casts with thick fur or buffaloes with thick fur as well...so we're gonna keep that in mind...and we're gonna play around with The Strand"

Adding the Hair Particle System

• Go to the Particle Systems tab and add a new particle system.

• Adjust the hair length to resemble the base fur.

• Increase the number of particles to cover the object.

• Modify the strand steps for a smoother appearance.

"And let's just hit that plus and we need hair...so we can tweak this into something that we actually want...and we're going to play around with The Strand steps as well"

Interpolated Setting

• Set the children settings to "interpolated" to add new hairs between the parent hairs.

• Display amount set to 30, with a random amount.

Interpolated setting adds new hairs in between the existing ones, giving a fuller look.

Clumping Settings

• Adjust the clumping settings to control how hairs stick together.

• Increase the clumping value to create clusters of hair.

• Set the shape value to determine where clumping begins on the hair.

Clumping settings control how hairs stick together and create clusters.

Roughness Settings

• Set roughness to add a textured appearance to the fur.

• Add random roughness for a more natural look.

• Adjust the size value to control the chaos of the fur.

Adding roughness to the fur creates a more realistic and textured look.

Curling Settings

• Set the kink setting to "curl" to add curves to the fur.

• Adjust the amplitude value to control the size of the curls.

• Increase the frequency value to add more curls to the hair.

• Adjust the clumping setting to control how much the curls overlap.

• Set the shape value to determine where the curling starts in the hair.

Curling settings add beautiful curves to the fur, creating a wild and natural look.

Hair Shape and Diameter

• Adjust the hair shape to determine where the curling starts in the hair.

• Set the diameter and tip values to control the thickness of the hair.

Hair shape and diameter settings are crucial for achieving the desired look of the fur.

Adding Melanin Redness to the Fur

• The animals in the tutorial have a reddish tint, which gives them a nice look.

• Melanin redness will be added to the fur to achieve a similar effect.

• Color variation will also be introduced to create darker and lighter spots in the hair.

• The color ramp and noise texture will be used for this purpose.

"I like the way that looks a lot so we're gonna add some melanin redness and I think this looks beautiful."

"We want some darker and some lighter spots, so I'm gonna swipe this to the left and I'm just gonna add a color wrap around there it is and then I'm going to select this one and I'm going to add a noise texture."

Changing material in particle systems

• In order to see the desired changes, we need to go to the particle systems first and change the material.

• We can now observe the changes in the fur by adjusting the darkness and lightness of the material.

"What we're missing...we have to go to the particle systems first and change the material...now we can see those changes."

Creating a base for fur

• The initial particle system serves as the base for the fur.

• By combining different particle systems, we can create a foundation for realistic fur.

• The base particles already give a nice dark value, which adds to the realism.

"So we got a base for...looks like a nice Foundation of fur."

Adding additional particle system for animal strands

• Another particle system is added specifically for random thick strands of fur.

• By selecting certain areas, such as the head, ears, eyebrows, and chin, we can generate the appearance of strands sticking out.

• The base model is subdivided and weight painted to create space for the strands.

• A vertex group is created to define where these strands should appear.

"Let's add another particle system...I want them to be on the head, the ears, the eyebrows, the chin...they point out."

Adjusting settings for the random thick strands

• The length of the strands is modified to achieve the desired look.

• The number of hairs is decreased to make them appear less frequently.

• The randomness of appearance is enhanced by adjusting the seed value.

• Additional settings such as segments, clumping, shape, and roughness are adjusted to create a more realistic and entangled appearance.

"Let's decrease this length right away...we want a lot less hairs...change the seed number...we want these strands to be sticked together, dirty, and entangled."

Fine-tuning the appearance of the fur

• The hair strands are further refined through particle editing.

• The comb brush is used to adjust the positioning and direction of the hair strands, taking into account gravity and random variations.

• The goal is to match the natural shape and movement of the fur, ensuring it doesn't look too straight or uniform.

"I'm just going to comb it to match a little bit of the head shape...consider gravity...some random variation in that hair."

"Let's see how this looks...looks nice, but I do think I want some more curliness in there."

Setting the Fur Length

• Set the fur length for the long hairs of the third system to achieve the desired look.

• Adjust the fur length to ensure it complements the other hair systems.

"I'm going to set that at the longer for material there we go so let's see how it looks all together."

Refining the Fur Length and Shape

• Modify the fur length and shape to achieve the desired appearance.

• Adjust the length of individual strands using the particle edit mode.

• Decrease the length of selected strands to create variation and improve the overall look.

"we're going to change the shape of the hair so we'd still set at one meters so we're going to set this at around 0.2 0.05 right so there are some sticky strands sticking out but it is not too crazy right what we can do if we think there are too many sticking out for example at the top or those bottoms ones are too long we can go to skill mode or sorry to a particle edit at this height those first two first two particle systems and we can now just go through that length and set us to shrink and then we can just shrink down some of those right so I think these ones are a little bit too long and we need some more variation in that length so we can just decrease some of these this one as well"

"just play around with it right here it's very organic so just make it into whatever you feel like should it should look like so let's go find out how it looks I think that's perfect right so we got some random strands sticking out beautiful"

Adding a Fourth Hair System

• Hide all existing hair systems and add a new hair system.

• Rename the new hair system as "Random Strands."

• Add additional hair systems to create a total of five.

"I'm gonna hide all of my systems and add a third one and we're gonna call this one let's say random strats beautiful hit that plus sign it's going to be a fourth one and we have five in totals we're always there and we're gonna rename this fourth one to Long top hair"

Customizing Hair Distribution

• Create a vertex group for the top hair to control its distribution.

• Use weight painting to specify areas where long hair should appear.

"I want some actually long hair to appear on the sides a little bit as well on the back of the head a little bit as well even more I'd kind of be seeing that I'm still gonna draw it of course in case you want to make an animation or something like that later or a 360 render something like this beautiful right so go back to object mode"

"let's just right away add that to the density so room top here and let's set this to here and you see the hair only appearing from the top now"

Adjusting Length and Detail for Long Hair

• Set the length of long hair to achieve the desired effect.

• Increase the number of hair segments and strand steps for added detail.

• Enable children particles for a more natural appearance.

"so we're gonna set this length to a little bit less so maybe 0.3 and it may not look that long right now but it's going to look a little bit longer when we add like the curls and the roughness and stuff so I'm going to set this number to about 2 000. I want a lot of hair here something like that and the segments are going to be way longer I'm going to set these steps to eight and the Strand steps in the viewport to eight as well because this is going to be longer hair um it needs just a little bit more detail to make it look nice right so eight will do the trick and I want some children of course um and we're gonna go to the interpolated setting and just set it at 10 about 10"

Enabling Particle Settings

• Go to the particle settings and enable all settings.

• Decrease viewport settings if computer performance is affected.

"Enable everything in the particle settings and decrease viewport settings if necessary."

Adjusting Top Strands

• Hide all but the last strand in the viewport.

• Decrease the size in the side parts to reduce wildness.

• Decrease the chaos in the top part as well.

"Hide everything but the last strand and decrease size to reduce wildness."

Tweaking Particle Settings

• Assess the individual settings like curl and roughness.

• Adjust size to bring the fur together.

"Go ahead and tweak any of the settings, such as adjusting the size to bring the fur together."

Adding Random Hairs

• Add random hairs that stick out.

• These hairs add realism by simulating the effect of stray hairs.

• Use a smaller number of random hairs compared to the longer fur.

"Add random hairs that stick out, simulating the effect of stray hairs."

Setting Hair Length and Shape

• Set the hair length to still be visible but shorter than the longer fur.

• Increase the curl of the random hairs for a more natural look.

• Adjust the shape to curl only at the endpoints.

"Adjust the hair length to be shorter and increase the curl for a more natural look."

Adjusting Clumping and Roughness

• Set clumping to keep some hairs together, but not too much.

• Increase the flatness to make the hair stick together a bit.

• Add random roughness values for variation in the appearance of the random hairs.

"Adjust clumping and roughness to control the appearance of the random hairs."

Creating a Material for Random Hairs

• Create a new material for the random hairs.

• Use a principled hair shader.

• Adjust the color and roughness to match the appearance of stray hairs.

"Create a new material for the random hairs and adjust the color and roughness to match the appearance of stray hairs."

Final Tweaks and Appearance

• Make final adjustments to the thickness of the random hairs.

• Ensure the appearance of the fur matches the desired look.

"Make final tweaks to the thickness of the random hairs for the desired appearance."

Adjusting the World Settings

• Increase the strength of the world setting to make the scene brighter.

• Rotate the world setting to add more light to the front of the fur.

• These tweaks enhance the overall appearance of the fur strands and make them more visible.

"Increase the strength [of the world setting]... so it is... a little bit more light... looking fine... those nice details... thicker strands on the top."

Controlling the Random Hair

• The fur contains random hairs that can be adjusted separately from the rest of the fur.

• If the random hairs appear too light, their material can be darkened to blend better with the overall look of the fur.

"random hairs... those hairs that never listen... change their material so this final material... you can always make it a little bit darker if you think it's too present right..."

Final Render Adjustments

• Set the maximum samples to capture more detail in the fur.

• Lower the noise threshold to reduce graininess in the rendered image.

• These adjustments help improve the quality of the final output.

"Max samples... set this at... need a little bit more... noise threshold... bit lower... render this out... turned out quite nicely... have a lot of detail in this hair system."

Reusing the Hair System

• Particle systems created for one object can be reused on other objects.

• Apply the particle systems to other areas of the model to add more hair strands as needed.

• For example, adding longer hairs to the chin can be done by modifying the existing hair system.

"reuse for any other object... just apply those particle systems... add these long hairs wherever you want... can just go to the... long hair one... add some weight paints... longer hairs on the bottom..."

"you can add these long hairs wherever you want... add some more on the chin... just go to the... long hair one... add some weight paints... longer hairs on the bottom."

Final Remarks and Holiday Greetings

• The tutorial has provided insights on using particle systems and combining multiple systems to create realistic fur.

• Wishes the viewers a Merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

• Concludes the tutorial and mentions the next video.

"hope you enjoyed this tutorial... new insights on how to use particle systems... going to be uploading this before the Christmas holidays... wish you a Merry Christmas... have a happy New Year... I'll see you in the next one."