The zen Hairs is a Monk who apply few controls for a lot of hairs.

It's perfect if you have a mass of hair, where giving all of them animable directly would cause a lot of controls, and then time for animator.

Look this characters : 169 hairs meshes are driven by 18 controls only. Could be less, as the rigger want. 18 seems here a good compromise.

It’s also one of the most complex Monk, because of the manu options you will have. This help is here to assist you.

Here you have the resume of what you need :

Main Strategy to apply zenHair

1. First, if you are setting up the option, set the debug mode and skipMeshes.

• -debug allows you to print out some interesting informations and leave interesting objects visibility on. It’s made when your are searching the good options.

Without -debug option, and with Ctrl put to 1

With -debug option. All what you need to figure out the best options

• On complex hairs, as building this monk can be long, you can also set -skipMeshes N with N as integer. This will skip 1 mesh on N on generation. You can also set -skipUnselectedMeshes to skip… unselected meshes on generation.

-skipMeshes = 3, and faster generation.

2. Determine the hair type.

• Without option or with -type_fivePlusJoints
  • By default, without options, this monk allow you to apply hairs made of 4 joints = 4 vertices given. This is good for hairs that are not too curly and not too complex.
  • If you need more joints (=more vertices) you meed to unlock it with the -type_fivePlusJoints option. This is to assure the user understand the behaviour will have to be tweaked.
  • for the type without option, or -type_fivePlusJoints, the joints will be attached to a simplified curve. So at the end, joints can may be be offseted a bit from the surface.

This is a pretty simple hairs. Could be driven by 4 joints, but riggers decide to drive with 5. So it need the -type_fivePlusJoints option

5 vertices given.

• if -controlled_tipPoints option is not given, it will be automatic. Each joint chain is driven by a curve (with less CVs than joints). In our exemple the -controlled_tipPoints option is set to 2. But you can change it if you want.

  

  Print out the automatic -controlled_tipPoints

A hait of 5 joints (vertices given)…