View Single Post in: Hair Animations

world renowned whogivesafuckologist
retired moderator
#2 Old 13th Jan 2007 at 11:39 AM
Get the new Unimesh.

It includes the new ability to do hair animations without having to do the SMD export/import step in SimPE that was how we were doing them before, which is great.

Hair animation is really no more difficult or complicated than any animation - and if you've been making hair already that animates properly without the bounce and sway, you really probably do already know how, you just don't realize you do.

Hair animation is just a matter of weighting - instead of weighting everything fully to head, neck, spine2, etc., you'll add some weight (it can be secondary or tertiary) to f_hair, b_hair, l_hair, or r_hair... A weight of about 30% to animation bones is fairly subtle... much less and you won't see it at all.

If you're curious about exactly how to weight something, try taking a look at the weights on a Maxis mesh after observing how that mesh behaves in-game as a sim moves. That'll give you a good idea of some basic weights that you can test and then adjust to your individual mesh's needs.

Just remember that animation of hair - any animation, including just getting longer hair to move smoothly at the back of the neck/when the head turns - is incredibly fiddly. I wouldn't say it's really hard, but be prepared to go though many versions changing your weights by a few % here and there to tweak the animation.

my simblr (sometimes nsfw)

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