hello guys my name is Danny Mac and this
is finding your feet with ex Jeff
just quickly before I jump into it if
you came to learn more about action and
you're struggling to find content some
notable is to look out for are displayed
on the screen now and the reason I
didn't just see their names and I've put
them on the screen is because I've got
to be honest I'm not entirely sure how
some of these names are supposed to be
pronounced so check them out there's a
few steps that must be taken in order
for action to work properly they are
important steps so make sure you pay
attention here if we want to render
using an external renderer such as
render mount which by the way I would
recommend you all check out because it's
gray and it's free for non-commercial
purposes but if we want to use it then
we want to make sure the plugin is
lauded before the x-gen plugin is lauded
the reason for this is because when we
load the x-gen plugin is going to look
far available renderers so I'll go
through Windows settings and preferences
plugin manager unlock a trend among
and now our Lord an extra
next we need to open up our project
window and set our project ex Jennings
very particular about file structure and
for whatever reason doesn't like it if
there's a space anywhere in the file
path so I either use underscores or
camel case instead of spaces once we get
further into creating x-gen we'll take a
look around the folder structure that
it's created from my experience
understanding the file structure will
give you a better sense of how HN is
working and can help with the inevitable
troubleshooting the next thing we should
do is check that the model is
appropriately scaled this is not only
important to the functionality of x-gen
but it should already be a habit
anywhere after a quick google search I
find that our model julia Vin's is a
hundred and sixty-five centimeters tall
so the way we find this in Maya is to
first get a front view then we got
create measure tools distance tool the
where the distance tool work is that we
define two locators and the distance
between these locators will be displayed
so your a were the distance it displays
is dependent on the working unit setting
your preferences - set centimeters which
I believe is the default so I'll create
my first bone at the top of the head and
the second point at the bottom you can
see that the measurement isn't 165
centimeters so an easy way to fix this
is by selecting everything including the
locators that we sat down and hitting
ctrl G to group them now when we scale
the groom notice that the distant
measurement updates
once we have the correct size we can now
go and delete the three elements of the
distance door from the outliner if we
also want to remove everything from the
group select everything and hit shift P
so next I'm going to duplicate the
character mesh because I'm going to
create a scalp from which the hers will
grow now we can have the hers growing
directly from the mesh if we wish but I
prefer to create a scalp because there
are certain processes with the next-gen
that take much longer to compute if
you're using a whole mesh like this it
also makes it easier to make changes to
the character mesh if you require down
the line I like to make the scalp cover
a slightly larger surface earlier than I
think it needs to be because it's much
easier to pull it back than to add more
later
now with the scalp in place I'll give it
fresh UV s which is very simple using
the art or mat movies tool just go to
bonus tools UV editing art or rap UVs
tool
and now you select the scalp and hit
enter tool the scalp geometry is very
simple so what we need to do is hit
continue and we have sufficient UVs for
the scalp finally I'll apply the default
Lambert shader and now we're ready to
start digging into extra
okay so the basic idea is to control the
shape of the her using guides and for
the purpose of this tutorial I will show
you three different ways of placing and
shaping guides first let's hide the
stuff we don't need
and I'll just hide the proxy her for now
but I'll come back to this in a moment
now finally let's open up the HTM window
from here we can create a new
description and a new collection so I'm
going to type Giulia description Giulia
collection splines randomly across the
surface and I'll change this to placing
and shaping guides and then I'll hit
create okay let's get some hair growing
in the action window we can click this
add-on move guides button and place
guides where we want them on the head if
we want to mirror these guys over
we just need to press the mirror button
over here to preview the her we just
need to select this eye icon well at
least I think it's an eye anyway to turn
the preview off just click the closed
eye we don't have very many hers so
let's turn off the density that's better
but the hers are too sharp we can make
the guides longer in a few different
ways but when I'm staying the fresh
groom like this I like to use the set
length button over here so I will select
the guides and hit set length 10 should
work again click the eye icon to update
the hearse are a little thick to make
them thinner adjust the width slider us
were just the taper and tap a star for
more realistic looking her okay that
looks a bit better to the guides
you could right click and select guide
control point which gives you controls
to manipulate the guides however this
can be a bit tedious
so instead I prefer to use the sculpt
guides brush holding shift allows you to
quickly resize the brush
it's worth noting that the school gangs
brush works better if we have more
control points so to do this we want to
select our guides and hit rebuild here
we can set the number of control points
used by our guys let's try 10 that's
better
notice how action interpolates the hers
between the guides this is good this is
what we want but not always such as if
we want a her petting for example to
create something like her petting we
need to pen to read your map so come
over to read your map and click this
arrow and hit create map I'll rename the
map
and increase the resolution I'll leave
the start color on red and hit create
let's change our brush settings solid
brush profile stylus pressure off and
I'll leave reflection off but let's set
our color I'm going to set it to red now
this might seem strange given that the
mask is already red but if we hold the
control key while painting we get the
inverted color to the one that we're
using so if I no paint while holding the
control key
I'll get the inverted color to red which
is blue and what this means is that I
can now easily switch between red and
blue making the process a little bit
quicker now click the disk icon to save
them up and it's important that you
don't forget to click this because
clicking this icon will convert the
painted texture into a ptex map which is
what x-gen understands so if you don't
click it the updates won't be read by
ex-champ we also need to turn on the
region mask by setting this value to 1
notice that we now get clean lines
between the her regions
now one thing that you might notice is
that the her isn't very smooth if I push
the gangs a bit more extreme it'll
become more apparent
this is because a modified CV count is
set to five and you can think of this
number as basically being the number of
divisions along the hers
so let's bump this up to twenty and see
the effect now we have much neither her
while we're at it let's bring her spline
segments down to one this will make the
her slightly rougher but it will be much
less taxing on the system also I like to
uncheck only primitives in view which is
a self-explanatory function it's gonna
hide the hers that aren't visible to the
camera and I'm sure this can be useful
to a guest for improving system
performance but in my experience it can
be quite annoying then we can set our
renderer okay enough playing around now
let's get on to the real thing so we've
seen how we can place guides manually so
let's explore some other options for
this I'll bring back my ponytail mesh
and hide the other pieces I'm going to
use this mesh to create guides by using
a process known as tube groom and to do
this I need to make sure the mesh is a
tube okay so that's it for this month's
free tutorial as usual there is bonus
content available on gum rod people who
subscribe to me on patreon should have
already had that delivered into your
inbox or check my boat and I just go
over more of the basics of x-gen as well
as provide a PDF how to avoid x-gen
making you cry a beginner's guide this
month I'm also offering the source files
that went into the production of this
character including Maya ZBrush and
Photoshop files as well as texture files
and render passes etc and I just want to
take this opportunity to thank everyone
that has bought the bonus content so far
and I would really struggle to make
these videos without your help so
sincerely thank you um peace
you