https://www.mikecauchiart.com/

Micheal is a groom artist and an avid modeller and look dev artist who has come from Bournemouth University which he attended from 2014 - 2017. He will soon be going to Bangladesh to lecture and teach in the groom department.

Introduction to groom with xgen  and a tutorial on how to  generate and manipulate hair with xgen from Micheal's blog which breaks down everything into steps so you can follow and learn from in digestible bits and makes it easier to learn and remember.

Resources on Micheal's website that i plan to look at  as instructional videos are sparse and outdated or are demonstrating the wrong methods for the use of groom and xgen:

https://www.mikecauchiart.com/single-post/2017/08/29/Beginners-guide-to-XGen-pipeline-for-beginners

https://www.mikecauchiart.com/single-post/2018/04/15/The-dos-and-donts-of-guide-grooming

https://www.mikecauchiart.com/single-post/2016/10/16/Beginners-guide-to-grooming-maya-2016

 

Understanding hair style structure and form:
https://flippednormals.com/tutorial/sculpting-hair-zbrush/

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Xgen grooming techniques: 
http://sharktacos.com/Forums/misc.php?action=help&hid=51
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBzQGgMG3dg
https://gumroad.com/tarkansarim

Yeti grooming techniques:
http://www.creativebloq.com/3d/how-create-realistic-3d-hair-and-fur-91412900

Vray hair shading:
https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/VRAY3MAYA/Hair+Sampler+%7C+VRayHairSampler
https://docs.chaosgroup.com/display/VRAY3MAYA/Hair+Material+%7C+VRayMtlHair3
 

This is what Micheal did he give us his model and showed us how to get from this  using groom and xgen and the proper methods and habits to get into to improve your workflow and also tolded us the do's and don'ts of groom:

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To get to this : BFX Character Micheal Worked on Circa 2016

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Then Produce this Showreel with the skills he learnt making award winning work and being hired by several different companies :

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I have also found out that Micheal has been working on the new Live action Pokemon film coming out and he created the hair/fur on MR Mime. I heard this while talking away to Becca Blair discussing my work and trying to get feedback.

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I was only in the class for a while as i was feeling unwell and i had to leave but i did look at what Micheal was teaching and attempted to do a bit using the files of off blackboard but felt overwhelmed and lost so i then began to look at his website to understand all the different processes and how to get from start to finish. Up to this point i had still not used xgen for anything and as a result i couldn't follow in the tutorial and only manged to grasp some small things and take some note. It was very confusing for me and being sick didn't help so i go lost and felt worse and ended up leaving early as i could no longer follow in Maya and felt like i should go home. 

From what i can recall and the notes i took about the lecture, it was an introduction to xgen in Maya and a tutorial on how to create realistic hair using Groom. This was relevant as many of the tutorials on the internet are outdated or incomplete or are teaching the wrong methods. Micheal  went through the process from start to finish and a final year asked would the same thing work with other materials like feathers and fur and he said yes but he suggested an alternative program that may work better which was "Yeti" that works with Maya and it would help solve the problem in creating realistic feathers and fur on creatures and characters.

I like how Micheal works and shares his stuff on his website and i found it incredible helpful to break down what was happening and how to do it along with some other pointers to optimize my abilities and functionality in Maya when  working with files and using Alembic Cache. The website is professional and easy to navigate with helpful tips and also tutorials on xgen.

 

I also learnt the does and don't when using xgen and took them down as notes and pointers:

 

Do's :

Set projects into folders and organise them and  save in a convenient location that is easy to find , if you don't it will not load.

Use logical naming conventions for files.

Give the Model Specs

Space out your guidelines on the model for editing later

Use yeti for anything other than hair

 

Don't :

Don't have too much clumps or clumping, this will cause Maya to crash or this will result in the characters hair being very artificial and having a bad volume hair.

 

I learnt: 

That you can do it manually which takes a longer time and may look better, or it can or automatically generated but there are aspects to this that need to be avoid or else it will impact your workflow or cause it to crash or errors to occur and you can then go back over it and make any amendments to the hairs length orientation and density and anything else you can think off.

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I also looked at:

https://www.cgmasteracademy.com/courses/121-grooming-for-vfx

https://lesterbanks.com/2017/12/learn-basics-xgen-grooming/

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It is a very valuable thing to look into as it is important for many things not just creating hair for characters and creatures Xgen can  also  be used to generate grass and vegetation and a range of other things. I just need to find the time to go back over and learn this stuff which i plan to do in my free time over the Christmas break and for my own personal project.

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Instructions for xgen:

Make sure your guide spacing is uniform this is to ensure that the character interacts with their hair. Use the correct hair guides to move and manipulate and have several variants of the files as they will crash and some . As practice use a sphere to pipeline the process and rig it to see what is possible in your scope of Xgen to understand the mechanics and the basics before advancing onto more difficult and in-depth topics.

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Setup scene for Xgen:

Keep start colour black for the hair it can be changed and altered at a later stage.

Make sure the Map resolution is 45-50 any more and Maya won't cope if you don't have a high spec laptop any less and the hair will be very frayed and thin and won't be as layered.

Click save textures in tool settings.

Rig the character then and only then start grooming for the hair.

Work in layers/ start with the hairline and develop ontop of previous layer until it looks thick and full until you are happy with the outcome, use display options to make the lower layers visible ot to hide the upper layers of the hair in groom for the model to keep it handy and so you can see any in-perfections or bald parts or clumps. Spend most of your time on the guidelines as they impact everything else then just tidy and you are done.

 

Steps:

• Hair guides

• Mapping 

• Clumps - Make clumps 2-3 times denser with clump cache 

• Expressions 

• Modifiers

 

Other Programs to use and learn to help workflow and reduce file size of work:

Alembic Cache 

 

Try using Vray for rendering hair as it will better at render the 1000 different hairs on the character or creature and it produces a higher quality render and is less likely to crash than using Maya or Arnold

 

Eyebrows: For doing eyebrows look for tutorial on youtube, use at least three layers of guides or you can use the paint brush tool for creating hair, select the guides they create and modify them  by converting them to punt in effects and also set them to curves. Use the sculpt tool to pull the eyebrow guides out from the head. The mapping can be worse thing and tends to create stray long hairs that don't look right and detract from the work.

 

Eyelashes: 

Make a  thin geometry to follow, for the top eyelid it will usually have around 150 hairs. Make sure to make multiple copies of the model as you go along and have the original file saved so you can always recover the original so you won't lose it as xgen has a tendency to break the scene. Use weights to paint the hair to the model for a ponytail  and use two sets of groom one for top of head and one for the ponytail itself.

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As you can see Micheal is very talented and knows what he is doing and understands xgen and groom and has a diverse portfolio of modelling, texturing and creating hair using groom which i hope to have for my own specialism when i choose it.

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Later on  Becca sent a link to some of his work like recovering lost or corrupt Maya files and how to use referencing and other things like how to import scenes so that they are lighter and faster and less demanding on a computers RAM using Alembic Cache.  .

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Reflection:

I found this interesting and plan to use this in some shape or form when it comes to working on one of my own personal projects in the future where it will come in handy for doing realistic hair or fur for both human and creatures. It adds a new level of dept to design 3d work and can make characters look more realistic and will aid in adding to the level of detail and the aesthetics i wish to create and look into when i create my own character and rig it as i think i would like him to have a scruffy beard and dirty frayed hair in some sort of hairstyle. On a creature it could make it look nice puffy fur and make it look more friendly, cute and cuddly.

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