Cornrow Creator
The Cornrow Creator is a work-plane (geometry plane) based system for quickly building “side curves” for cornrow hair. Using these planes, you can easily shape and guide the flow of each cornrow, then generate clean, organized curves directly from that setup. This makes it fast to block out patterns while keeping everything easy to adjust and refine.
Cornrow Creator work planes requires a count of 3 for best results
Create Work Planes / Generate Curves
Open the Cornrow Creator UI, select the path curve (you can select the strand layer from the main UI), set a base mesh, and then click on the Create Work Planes button to generate the two plane strips.
Adjust the work plane width, then click on Create Cornrow Curves
Controls
Work Planes
Create Work Planes: Creates the two side planes from the path curve selected. The topology of these strips are based on the crossing of the braid knots.
Show Planes:
Show Current Planes: Sometimes the work planes will be hidden (either automatically by the UI or manually), choose this option to shows just the current work planes
Show All Planes: Allows us to see all the planes from other cornrows. This is useful if we need to make sure the side curves line up with one cornrow to another.
Hide Planes:
Hide Current Planes: Hides both work planes of current selected strand.
Hide All Planes: Hides all work planes in scene.
Flip Work Planes: Each strand layer has two planes created, A, and B. This check box flips them to the otherside.
Plane Width: The width of the two work planes.
Plane Shift A: move plane A forward or backward.
Plane Shift B: move plane B forward or backward.
Any changes on Flip Work Planes, Plane Width, Plane Shift A and Plane Shift B will 'reset' your work planes.
Editing Work Planes
Maya Quad Draw Tool is a very efficient tool that allows drawing directly on a base mesh. Many artists use it for re-topology purpose, but in our case, we are utilizing it to help shape our cornrow strips.
It's good to know the hot keys for the Quad Draw Tool. Find it here:
Topology Requirement for Cornrow Curves
IMPORTANT: The two strips need to remain as single continuous row of strip at all time, and the facets need to be quad.
Quad Draw A: Automatically set the base mesh live, and enters Maya's Quad Draw Tool on work plane A.
Quad Draw B: Automatically set the base mesh live, and enters Maya's Quad Draw Tool on work plane B.
To exit the Quad Draw tool, simply press, W, E, or R. Make sure to turn the live mode off.
After existing Maya Quad Draw, chances are that you are still in live mode. Find this bar at the top section.
And turn it off:
You do not need to use Quad Draw buttons to edit the work planes. Since the work planes are just Maya geometry, feel free to move the work planes vertices directly. You can also delete faces/edges, or add extra faces/edges, as long as it remains one single continuous row of quad faces.
Make sure the base mesh is set to 'live' before doing so though !
Cornrow Curves
Create Cornrow Curves: From the work planes, generate cornrow curves.
Per Face: Controls how curves are generated on each individual facet.
Spread - Root: Controls how wide the curves spread at the base (outter).
Spread - Tip: Controls how wide the curves spread toward the tip (inner).
Fan Random: Adds randomness to how curves spread across the face.
Fan Seed: Changes the random pattern used by Fan Random.
Curvature Shift: Offsets where the curve starts bending along its length.
Curvature Y: Controls how much the curve bends along its main flow direction.
Curvature Z: Controls how much the curve bends towards or away from the work planes.
Delete Planes: Deletes current work planes only.
Delete Curves: Deletes cornrow curves only.
Delete Both: Delete both work planes and cornrow curves.
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