Hair and fur using brushes - Flash tutorial

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 8:46 am

I threw this together tonight... uh... this morning?

Anyway I hope it is helpful.

http://lowrestv.com/moho_stuff/hair-brush-tutorial.html

This specifically focuses on using two different "angled" hair brushes to create "directional hair" but the technique is similar for just one hair brush stroke on a shape.

There is a link at the end for the zip file with the project and brushes.

-vern

Genete · Post by **Genete** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 9:23 am

Great tutorial. Very helpful. Thanks a lot vern.

Genete.

jahnocli · Post by **jahnocli** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 10:03 am

I agree - great tutorial. Couldn't download the zip file tho' -- computer thought it was a Flash file...!

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 11:35 am

Hmm.... weird. It worked for me fine with Firefox on Mac... it's just a link to the zip file. Must be something to do with a link from within a Flash file.

Anyway, here is the direct link to the zip file for those having trouble:

http://lowrestv.com/moho_stuff/hair-brush-tuturial.zip

And yes, I realize "tuturial" is spelled wrong on that file.

-vern

Rasheed · Post by **Rasheed** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 11:36 am

Thanks for that tutorial, Vern!

ulrik · Post by **ulrik** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 2:08 pm

Thank you heyvern for a great tutorial!

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 2:45 pm

thanks vern, great tutorial and smart technique.

bupaje · Post by **bupaje** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 3:48 pm

Thanks. Very useful.

J. Baker · Post by **J. Baker** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 4:16 pm

Nice tutorial, thanks!

jahnocli · Post by **jahnocli** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 6:27 pm

That second link worked -- thanks for the tuturial!

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 7:18 pm

Here is additional info on this technique that I left out due to... being just... crazy.

When using these directional brushes you can't flop an arm shape or a leg or hands, etc. When you flop the vectors the custom brush inverts and you can't use those 2 brushes at all. The drawing order of the points switch places.

... so

I actually use 4 brushes, left, right, flopped left and right.

It is easier for me to just change those shapes then to move the points of a copied shape to match the other side.

-vern

dekka · Post by **dekka** » Wed Dec 20, 2006 9:19 pm

thanks vern for the tutorial and the brushes. that's areally interesting technique. i am not usre if i understand your last post about FLOPPING an arm. does it mean when you animate an arm, the brush reverts? is that what it is? please enlight me...
thank you

heyvern · Post by **heyvern** » Wed Dec 20, 2006 10:53 pm

The way brushes work is to align to the path based on the ORDER of the points.

So let's say you draw a shape for an arm and use this technique to get the hairs to point down.

Now you want to do the OTHER arm. Let's imagine this is a front view so you copy/paste the points of the arm and use the flip horizontal tool to create the other arm shape.

You will see now that the custom brushes have "flipped" upside down... or... inside out... whatever. they aren't correct. The inside is on the outside. You can't just switch the brushes left to right, you have to use completely opposite oriented brush images that are flipped horizontally. This is why I almost always make 4 brushes right off the bat if they are directionally oriented.

You can't avoid this by putting the other arm shape on a different layer and flip the layer. Same thing happens. The brushes change how they behave based on the ordering of the points.

I kind of avoided this issue with most of my bear character by using an "omni-directional" hair image that looks the same in all directions.

Hope that helps explain it.

-vern