When you use a mask for Fibermesh, that mask controls both density and fiber length. Is there a way to break up that relationship?
For example, I would like to have less fibers in some areas but they should still have the same length. Or I would like to reduce the length along a gradient but keep the density high?
In the modifiers section of the fibermask menu, under the MaxFibers slider (which controls density) there’s a slider named “ByMask”. This slider will control how much influence the masking has on the fiber density/length variation. Turning this to the lowest value will remove density influence, resulting in the mask determining where fibers are placed but keeping them mostly the same length/density, depending on variance settings.
There’s no rule that you need to accomplish everything with a single fiber mesh application. A series of masks with different settings, or even the same mask with different settings will often achieve much more realistic results. Simply do one pass, generate a subtool from that, then apply subsequent fiber masks to achieve a blend of varying fibers, creating new subtools in turn. These subtools can be merged together.
Save your fiber in between passes so you only need to tweak it from pass to pass, rather than recreating it each time.
Thank you. This does not have the effect I wanted because it does not respect my gradient mask. I want the fibers to get sparser but not shorter.
But it seems it can’t be done in one go. I’ll have to use layers, which seems overly fussy for such a simple task… Ah well.
Thanks nevertheless! 