Aim Controls
The strand builder offers three aim modes:
Curve Normal
Auto Normal
Aim Curve (Default)
Aim Modes
Curve Normal
Orients the mesh along the curve's normals at each control point.
The least user friendly, but it can be useful in specific situations.
Auto Normals
Automatically determines how to orient the mesh based on its normals.
When using Auto Normal as the aim mode, strands are not relying on a aim curve. It can be easier to adjust strands without having to worry about an Aim Curve coming into influence in some cases.
Aim Curve
Orients the mesh towards a specified curve.
When a strand is created, it's automatically set to Aim Curve mode.
You can adjust the aim curve to determine how a strand is oriented, either by brushing part of the CVs, in which only the nearby faces of the strands will be affected.
Or simply move the entire aim curve away, and all the faces will be oriented accordingly.
As it allows more level of controls with the strands builder, this is set as the default method unless you change the Aim Mode On Create option in the Scene Presets. Aim Mode On Create
Flip Normal
Available function in all three aim modes. When flipping the normal, and if UV Retaining is active, it will also automatically remap your UV.
Aim Curve Controls
Aim Offset
Distance of the aim curve away from the strand curve. Depending on how your curve is oriented, sliding this attribute can flip your geometries.
Aim Spans
This slider changes the aim curve CV counts. It can sometimes be extremely useful when dealing with more complicated shapes (like coils and curls). You can reduce the cv counts on the aim curve to so the curve sits in the middle of the coils, causing the coil faces to align properly.
In other cases, you can also increase the span count to to get more CVs on the aim curve, this will allow fixing of a strand area that has pinches.
Use Given Normal
If you like to keep the Aim Spans with higher CVs, another alternative to fix the normal is by turning on the Use Given Normal control, and manually imputing a value to the x, y, z field for the given normal,.
Capture Normal (Maya Python 3 Only)
Or, you can aim the camera so it's pointing roughly perpendicular to the opening of your twist/curls, and click on Capture Normal. The tool will automatically capture the normal vector and apply to the x, y, z fields.
This will be extremely useful for for making twists and curls.
With this, it gives you a very nice starting point on curls/twists. We can fix the 'pinching' of the strand by using the Interactive Sculpting Tool on strand curve and the aim curve.
Toggle Aim Curve
Clicking on the Toggle Aim Curve button will show the Aim Curve.
The Aim curve will be displayed in white.
Upon existing the Strand Editor, all aim curves will be hidden away again.
Reset Aim Curve
Resets the aim curve.
If you have any transform values on an aim curve, they will not be reset. Please use Maya's Modify > Reset Transformations
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