Manage Density Maps dialogue... settings keep disappearing ^^;

eponica

Hello again... ^^;

I am still working on my Sasquatch here, grooming it over and over and making a real study of Carrara hair as I am just blown away by how beautiful it can be! :D If I can ever get this right, I might even enter it in the newbie contest :)

I'm wondering if someone can set me straight, step by simple step, on how to get my individual Hair Density maps to 'stick' without them going global. The documentation indicates this can be done but I am not quite certain what the step by step workflow is. Unfortunately my bandwidth is very limited, otherwise I could watch a bunch of YouTube tutorials and probably get it! ^^;

My situation is this: I'm using the DAZ Sasquatch with its original UV's. In the hair room, I pull down the menu to find "Manage Density Maps." Opening this, we see a global setting as well as settings we can make for each individual material zone.

I have made several black and white hair density maps for various parts of the Sasquatch UVs according to the wonderful comic book Fur Tutorial in the Carrara Cafe. When tested the maps work great, but they are applying globally rather than to just one area of the Sasquatch.

Now, going back to the "Manage Density Maps," I create a name for an individual map, say, "Arms" and assign the relevant section of Sasquatch to it instead of the default Global setting. I click OK. Then I have been going to the texture room where I am assigning my Density map to the relevant arm section. But when I render, I am seeing that density map being applied globally to all the UV's, not just the area I am indicating. Upon returning to the hair room, under "Manage Density Maps" the "Arms" item has vanished, and I am back to Global or New in the menu. Obviously I'm doing something out of order... ^^;

If anyone has time to walk me through these steps in the right order I would be very grateful! :)

evilproducer

Maybe you need to have hair groups? For instance a hair group for the the arms and one for the torso? Maybe then the maps would stick?

If it gets too hairy (sorry for the pun), you can apply multiple hair objects to an object or figure. Coms in handy of you need different hair types, such as large or thin.

eponica

Hi again, Evil ^_^ Sorry for all these persistent newbie questions! :)

I did make hair groups. I am doing the head, face, arms, and torso separately. I am not having any problem now selecting the groups, just getting my hair density maps to work locally and not globally.

I would say a large part of my problem is just locating step by step PDF or HTML tutorials. So many tutorials are on video, but I'm stuck on satellite (ie nonexistant) bandwidth. If only they made an advanced fur tutorial! The first one is perfect as far as it goes, but it does not deal with using multiple UV maps. %-P

I think I will try it again using the Guide Based method as described in Chapter 20 of the documentation ^_^ This is so much fun even when I can't quite 'get it' right away :D