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Adding and Styling
Hair and Fur, and
Using Cloth CHAPTER

I IN THIS CHAPTER
want to start this chapter with a bold statement, “Bald Is Beautiful.” I make
this statement because I have a brother who, upon discovering his hair had
started thinning, decided that bald was the way to go. But, after seeing far
too many 3D models that were bald because of the unavailability of a decent hair Understanding hair
plug-in in Max, I can also declare that “Bald Is Boring.”
Growing hair and setting hair
Now that Max has hair and fur, I expect to see the level of realism for a number parameters
of Max artists, including myself, take a quantum leap forward.
Styling hair
Creating cloth isn’t that difficult. In fact, with a plane primitive, you can easily
create a perfectly straight blanket, towel, or flag. However, animating cloth that Understanding cloth systems
drapes realistically over a character is very difficult and best left to dynamic Creating cloth panels using
engines like reactor.
Garment Maker
Although you can still animate cloth collections using reactor, Max also has a
separate stand-alone cloth simulation system aptly named Cloth that you can use Using the Cloth modifier
to create deformable cloth and to animate it as well.

Cross-Ref
The hair and cloth systems in Max are dynamic, meaning that they are affected
by forces in the scene such as wind and gravity. The dynamic nature of hair
and cloth is covered in Chapter 44, “Animating Hair and Cloth.” n

Understanding Hair

Although a section titled “Understanding Hair” sounds like it would be taken from
a beauty salon guide, the way Max deals with hair is unique and needs some expla-
nation. Hair, like particle systems, deals with thousands of small items that can
bring even the most powerful computer screeching to a halt if not managed.
In Max, hair doesn’t exist as geometry but is applied to scene objects as a sepa-
rate modifier. This level of separation keeps the hair solution independent of the
geometry and makes removing or turning off the hair solution as needed easy. It

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