Autodesk Inc. has recently released the newest installment of the CG package 3ds Max to their software subscribers. This new version, 3ds Max 7.5, is sent automatically to subscribers as part of Autodesk’s yearly subscription plan. This shipment is the second this year, following the recent release of 3ds Max 7.0 Service Pack 1. This new release, while not totally relevant to my personal daily workflow as a video game developer, packs a pretty mean punch with the single most impressive addition since particle flow… the new hair and fur system.

Hair and fur after 30 seconds of tweaking and 30 seconds of rendering. Unless otherwise indicated, images courtesy of Ryan Lesser.

Hair and Fur
In fact, the release of Max 7.5 marks a pretty major milestone for this software package, as it finally ships with a built in, top notch hair and fur system based on Joe Alter’s now famous Shave and a Haircut technology. This hair system is one of the industry’s most highly regarded hair packages. It is absolutely great that it is now totally incorporated into 3ds Max… and free to boot!

The hair and fur system is basically broken down into two interfaces. First, there is the standard 3ds Max side panel that contains many of the software’s procedural information. Here you alter (no pun intended) tons of parameters for your hair/fur such as Root and Tip Frizz, Root and Tip Kink, Random Scale, Root and Tip splay and more. For those unfamiliar with Shave and a Haircut, here are some definitions for these parameters:

• Root and Tip Frizz — Frizzing at the root will move the default hairs away from the standard straight, simple hair and more into the more natural unevenness as the hair grows out of the follicle. Tip frizzing will do the obvious… make the ends of the strands frizzy. You can also alter the Frizz Frequency, which will change the scale of the frizzies.

• Root and Tip Kink — Kink uses a similar noise function as Frizz, but its application will affect the hair in a more overall fashion. The result is hair that looks as if it has been in a crimping iron (remember the ‘80s?).

• Random Scale — this very simple parameter will add randomness to the length of the individual hairs. A setting of zero is a newly cut head of pin straight hair. A setting of 1 will yield a more natural, soft end to the hairs.

• Root and Tip Splay — Root splay will add jitter to the roots of multiple adjacent hairs, effectively clumping the hairs at their tip. Combined with Frizz you get a very effective wet dog look! Tip splay will do just the opposite, adding jitter to the tips of clumped hairs, producing something more akin to how bristle hair brushes appear.

In view hairs and guides, and final render. Property of Autodesk Inc. Media and Ent. division © 2005.

The second interface is the native styling window for the Shave and a Haircut plug-in. Here I must say that it would have been nicer if Autodesk integrated this interface a bit more. The launched secondary window is not only totally separate from the 3ds Max interface, but it also looks totally different. The window, the icons, the spline style… everything is the standard Shave and a Haircut interface instead the 3ds Max interface. I understand that there might have been legal/licensing issues at work here, but this non-integration is pretty jarring and not nearly as slick as if it were an integral part of the 3ds Max UI. This Shave interface is where you get to do some of the really fun stuff. Here, you can interactively comb the hairs, cut the hairs, shape and style the overall do as well as perform dynamic simulations on it to sort of shake up the hair a bit in a naturalistic way. The artist also has the ability to instance objects like flowers and trees as hairs, there are many other functions in this toolset, but this should give you all a sense of what hair and fur has in store for you.