How do I create fuzzy materials?

Aybars replies Fuzzy materials can be used for carpet, grass, clothing, both facial and body hair, fur and many other assets that you will need to create a scene or a character. I will walk through my methods of making fuzzy materials on one of the stylised characters that I created (with character concept art by Julia Sarda). This character is an old villain and his hair and clothes are dirty and scruffy.

There are many different approaches to creating a fuzzy material, but in this case I used Maya 2015’s Shave and a Haircut, and V-ray. For part of the project, I used V-ray because it has one of the best and fastest procedural fur plug-ins, however, it has its limitations. The fur is only generated during render time and is not actually present in the scene, meaning it can be hard to visuallise how it’s going to look. To create a Vrayfur object, select a mesh from the Maya scene, then go to Create>v-ray>add Vrayfur to selection. You can also explore other options like Maya Xgen, Zbrush Fibermesh, Ornatrix, Yeti, GMH2 or Modo Fur and Hair to create the fur style you like. A lot of the time you will have to cross between different software to get the best look as fast as possible. I also use Shave and a Haircut for facial hair.

First, I create the hair or fur style with Shave and a Haircut. Then, I convert the hair to curves and export it as .fbx file format. I re-import the curves into the scene and adjust the position of curves and populate them by hand if necessary. I create a basic mesh underneath the main object for curves to be attached using a Wrap deformer. Select the basic mesh that the curves are attached to, as well as the curves, and go to ndynamics>nhair>make Curves Dynamics Option box. Tick Snap Curve Base to Surface and click on Make Curves Dynamic. Next, go to ndynamics>nhair>assign Paint Effects Brush to Hair. Now you can control the hair by using a hairsystem node, which is a Maya hair system. To start visualising, set the Hairs Per Clump to 50 to see the hair in your viewport and play with the settings. You should be able to make a variety of hair or fur with this method. For rendering, first create a Vray material attribute for the hairsystemshape and connect a vrayhairmtl to it. Then, in the Hypershade create a vrayhairsampler and connect it into the following inputs of your vrayhairmtl: diffuse color (a 0.455 gamma node), secondary spec color (a 0.455 gamma node), and transmission color (no gamma correction needed).

V-ray is good for creating fuzzy textures as it has one of the best and fastest procedural fur plug-ins, however, it has its limitations