80 Level Digest: 10 Useful Tutorials on Creating Hair with Ornatrix

Creating hair is not an easy task, it can be really time-consuming, so Ornatrix from Ephere was made to help with the process. It's a plug-in available for Maya, 3ds Max, Cinema 4D, and Unreal Engine. Ornatrix can help you create and adjust hair.

Before you start watching the videos we've prepared, you should definitely check out the tool's documentation. You can find it on Ephere's website under the DCC software of your choice.

Ornatrix Maya: Easiest grooming workflow by Ephere

As usual, the best and fullest tutorials are from the creators of the software, you will see many of them here. In this short video, you'll see the basics of Ornatrix grooming and learn how to control spacing, correct mistakes while working with hair, and brush it to make it look the way you want.

Ornatrix Cinema 4D: Draw strands tool by Ephere

Our next tutorial from Ephere shows how to work with strands, as opposed to the previous one, where you learned how to groom a whole head of spiky hair. This time, Ornatrix is used in Cinema 4D. The strands tool will automatically plant hair between the hand-drawn strands.

Ornatrix Cinema 4D: Generating hair from NURBS curves by Ephere

Here's another way of attaching hair: Ephere explains how to make strands follow the scalp using NURBS (non-uniform rational B-splines). The author also talks about the way to get the best hair interpolation and explains how to define parting.

Ornatrix Unreal Engine: Editing MetaHuman grooms by Ephere

But what if you've already made a model in Epic Games' MetaHuman? Don't worry, Ephere's got you covered in this tutorial. Learn how to launch Ornatrix in Unreal Engine, edit an existing model's hair there, and grow the strands in just 7 minutes.

How to create a simple male groom in Ornatrix for Maya by Artem Erikenov

Let's move on to some practical examples. Here, Grooming Artist Artem Erikenov shows how to create a male hairstyle from a photo. There are no explanations, but the video is clear enough, so just copy what you see and you'll succeed.

Creating hairstyles in Ornatrix by Marianna Yakimova

Another practical example comes from Marianna Yakimova. The video provides written commentary on every step of creating a cool female hairdo. See how to make bright detailed hair in less than half an hour.

Animating hair using Ornatrix in 3ds Max by Marianna Yakimova

If you're making a game character, you probably want to make sure its hair moves with the body, not just stays perfectly straight. In this tutorial, Marianna explains how to animate different parts of hair according to the character's movement.

Ornatrix Maya: Creating a Procedural Feather by Ephere

Let's see what else you can do with Ornatrix. It's not only about hair, you can also make feathers, for example. Watch the video above to learn how to create a custom procedural feather from scratch using operators like propagation, curling, frizz, and clumping.

Ornatrix Hair for 3ds Max: Creating hybrid feathers on a deforming surface by CGMeetup

Here's another tutorial on making feathers, this time, on a deformed surface. CGMeetup will tell you how to create a set of feathers using a technique that can be used to make procedural surface effects.

Rendering Ornatrix Hair in IPR mode with Redshift by Ephere

The last video on our list today will show you how to render your perfect hair in the Interactive Photorealistic Render (IPR) mode in Redshift to see and adjust the result in real-time.

This is it for our digest today. Hope this list helped you get better at creating hair using Ornatrix. What are your favorite channels and tutorials? Share them in the comments below.

Bonus: Tutorials by Andrew Krivulya

In case you're looking for more tutorials, we also recommend checking out videos by CG Groomer Andrew Krivulya who recorded numerous guides on Ornatrix. Below, you can find a 3-part video tutorial on setting up fur with Ornatrix and rendering it with Redshift.

Preview image by Hyunseok Jin.