Sunday, August 22nd, 2021 Posted by Jim Thacker

Master the art of grooming CG hair in XGen


The Gnomon Workshop has released Creating a Male Groom With XGen: a guide to creating realistic digital hair in Maya, recorded by Framestore senior modeler Crystal Bretz.

The workshop, which assumes some experience of Maya but is designed for new users of its XGen toolset, comprises over five hours of video training, and also covers Mari and the Arnold renderer.

A beginner’s guide to using Maya’s XGen toolset to create photorealistic digital hair
During the workshop, Bretz sets out the process of creating a realistic groom for a male character, including eyelashes, eyebrows, and coarse and fine facial hair.

She begins by setting up the head model for use with Maya’s XGen hair toolset, before moving on to the grooming process, covering modifiers, painting density maps in Mari, and stray hair expressions.

The tutorial concludes with a section on procedural hair look development and rendering using Arnold.

In addition, Bretz provides tips and tricks to speed up the grooming process in Maya, based on her experience of working in professional visual effects pipelines.

As well as the tutorial videos, viewers can download all of the content needed to follow the workshop, including the base head geometry and photo references.

About the artist
Crystal Bretz is a senior modeller at Framestore, having previously worked at visual effects and animation facilities including DNEG, Method Studios, Bron Animation and Artifex Studios.

She has worked on a range of movies, episodic TV series and short films, including Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Black Panther and Netfilx animated feature The Willoughbys.

Pricing and availability
Creating a Male Groom With XGen is available via an online subscription to The Gnomon Workshop. Subscriptions cost $49/month or $490/year. You can try the training for free.

Read more about Creating a Male Groom with XGen


Full disclosure: CG Channel is owned by Gnomon.