Flow Creator
The Flow Creator is a tool for shaping how hair flows into a braid.
Instead of manually placing and tweaking every strand, you can quickly lay down simple guide curves (flow roots), and the tool will automatically generate flow curves that follow the structure of the braid. These curves define how strands travel from the scalp into each knot, giving you a clear and controllable flow direction.
Set Mesh and Sync Braid
With a braid layer selected, open the Flow Creator, set a base mesh first (the flow curves relies on this base mesh to snap to their roots).
On fresh strands, click on Sync Braid button.
Sync Braid
Whenever the braid is changed, either from an parameter update, or path curve edits, Syncing Braid is required. This is to make sure the underlying central curves (built from sycing braid) lines up with the braid. This is important for our flow curves to merge into the correct spot.
Strand Tabs and Flow Layers
The number of avaliable strand tabs is based on the 'Count' parameter of your braid, and we can have up to 6 strands per braid.
Each strand has its own tab color, and you can create multiple Flow layers as needed.
Create Flow Layer: Creates a Flow Layer
Create Flow Layers (Auto): Automatically create multiple Flow Layer with "turn peak" set.
Peaks
Peaks are the 'turning' point of the braid its local X-axis, determined automatically by the tool. Think of the Turn Peak in real life as the point where extra hair are added into the braid.
Show Peaks: Shows all the turn peaks determined by the system. The peak annotations in viewport is camera based, if they appear jammed up, try rotating your camera.
Show Current: Shows the current peak point of the Flow layer.
Hide Label: Hides all peak annotations.
Create Flow Curves
Determine the Peak
First, determine the peak point, or the 'merge point', you can either use the 'Merge Point' slider or the left (◀ )and right arrow ( ▶) to go to the previous or next system determined turn peak.
Adding and Tweaking Flow Curve
+ Add: Click on the base mesh to create a flow curve.
~ Tweak: Move existing flow curves around. When a flow curve is moved, it uses the current settings when re-drawn.
x Clear: Removes all flow curves in the current layer.
Flow Points, Falloff, Offset
Merge Point: The point that flow curve will merge into.
Flow Falloff: Controls how gradual the flow curve flows into the braid.
Offset From Mesh: The tool does a post process to push the root section of the flow curve away from the base mesh. This slider controls how strong that push is. For Braid style that are tightly made, such as Cornrows, the slider should be low.
Re-Draw: Re-draws the selected flow curves.
Refresh Ramp: Sets Flow Falloff gradient strength to default.
Cut At Merge
Depending on your preferred groom workflow, you can also generate none-countinous flow curves.
Turn off the 'Cut at Merge Point' checkbox, and Re-Draw the selected curves.
Moving / Merging Flow Layers
Moving to Other Strand
Flow Layers can be reassigned to a different strand using the Destination Strand buttons. This is useful when flow layers already exist and the braid knot layout changes, allowing the layers to be moved onto the correct strand instead of rebuilding them from scratch.
The destination strand buttons will depend on the 'Count' of your braid. If the braid has a count of '5':
Merging Flow Layers
Sometimes we may decide to merge Flow layers, simply shift select the Flow layers, right click, and choose Merge Flow Layers.
You can only merge Flow Layers from the same strand, and with a caveat: once merged, it can not be undone. (Ctrl + Z) will not work.
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