Sacha Hair

TUKUY - A short film following a jaded mother tree grappling with her sense of purpose

As CFX Lead on this project I was responsible for creating the hair groom based on concept art, setting up tools for simulating the hair, and maintaining a USD pipeline during the on the CFX portion of the film.

https://vimeo.com/1169607570

Animation by Madison Jennings. Character Model by Sania Khullar

https://vimeo.com/1172353665

Animation by Delphine Peck. Simulation by Kendrick Lam and Mia Laplanche

overview

Created main character, Sacha's, hair groom with staggered simulation based groom. 4 different hair gens simulated into place, falling a top each other 100 frames apart to avoid any collision between different hair grooms. Hand groomed elements present on the top of her hair to achieve her crooked middle part following concept art.

Braid and Vines created procedurally. Vine tool gives artist ability to change leaf shape, frequency of leaves, and curliness of vines. Both utilize guide deform node, in geometry level, to simulated guides and guide groom, instead of conventional guide groom>guide deform>guide sim> hair gen workflow. This other workflow allows for braids and vines to hold their shape as they simulate with the character's animation.

Sacha skirt simulation created using Vellum. Point deformed attach nodes follow where she is in space during first from of animation. Appropriate parameters for bend, stretch, rest length scale, and friction are applied to make simulation believable.

https://vimeo.com/1169607486

character model and textures by Sania Khullar

pipeline

• Animators export clean fbx's or alembics to us with run up specific to Sacha simulation

• CFX artists import alembics and start caching based on first frame of run up

• Artist must go through all 5 simulations; Dreads, Curls, Shape Hair, Braids, and Vines. Front hairs are not simulated just guide deformed

  • Artists find shot by shot solutions for any issues depending on animation

• In stage CFX artists must ensure all textures for hair, skirt, and character are applied correctly

• Must cache out all hairs are separate usd and compile them all together into 1 final Compiled hair USD.

• Cache out final USD of compiled hair and character with cloth and send over to lighting artist