FiberFX

Hair and Fur for LightWave 3D

FiberFX Users Manual: By Jon Tindall

Introduction
FiberFX brings to LightWave 3D several innovative ideas. Fiber volumes used for shadows and reflections,
Fiber Modeling, Vparm driven parameters, Biasmap combing, Realtime fiber drawing in the LightWave
interface and Inverse Kinematic modeling tools.

FiberFX consists of 4 plugins, Fiber modeler, Fiber filter, Strand tool, Strand maker.

FiberFX features two methods to create fibers. A fiber model can be built in LightWave Modeler using the
Fiber modeler or fibers can be “grown” on the surface in LightWave Layout. Surface fibers are most suit-
able for fur and short hair. Modeled fibers can also be used for fur but can be affected by dynamics and can
be styled precisely. Both types can be affected by bone animation. Surface fibers naturally move and bend
as the underlying polygons are animated with morph maps, making them especially useful for facial hair.
Modeled fibers can be animated using Motion Designer’s cloth mode or other dynamics plugins. FiberFX
automatically creates weight and UV maps when modeled. Both types of models are rendered using the Fi-
berFX filter. This filter handles the chores of creating the volumetric structure, shadowing and drawing.

Fiber Modeler is responsible for creating polygonal models. These can be multi-sided for rendering directly
without the fiber filter or can be comprised of a chain of edges. Fiber modeler can create feather like flat
polygon strips suitable for transparency mapping complete with UV coordinates for texturing and weight
maps for animation.

Fiber Filter operates much like LightWave’s own hypervoxels. Fiber Filter, actived in the Image
Processing>Pixel Filter Menu as FiberFX, is a pixel filter that controls multiple handlers. A list of objects
loaded in the scene is shown. The object can be selected and activated. Once activated, changes can be made
to the various parameters. Objects can have their fibers drawn in the Layout view for immediate feedback.

Fiber filter places a volumetric filter during render time that is able to render shadows on surfaces without
adding any surface shaders. The shadows are integrated into LightWave’s render pipeline. When Light-
Wave shades a surface it calls FiberFX to add its shadow contribution.

Volume shadows.
FiberFX’s volume shadows create a density object that can serve up opacity data from any viewpoint. Unlike
a shadow map a volumetric shadow can be more or less opaque where the fiber density changes. Common
shadow maps require a spotlight. A shadow map also requires a shadow structure be built from every light
source included in the shadowing calculation. Only one volumetric object needs to be built for any number
of lights, but one must be built for each fiber object. You can view the volumetric object in Layout by using
the “view voxels” button.

The fiber object is broken down into voxels or small boxes enclosing discrete regions of space. Each voxel
includes a list of the objects it encloses. Then a ray is cast through the voxel object accumulating the density
of the contents of each individual voxel it travels through. This results in a density at the end of the ray that
can be used as an opacity value.
 

Volume reflections
The voxels can also be raytraced to produce reflections and refraction. Currently only the base color of an
object can be seen in reflections. This approach to reflections may not be perfect but can be affected by
curved surfaces and produces results that are better than a bare model.

Volume fibers
The fiber volume can be visualized directly in the volumetric ray march by using this control. The fiber vol-
ume is coarser than fibers but able to participate in all volumetric effects including volumetric lighting.

Vparm panels
Most controls feature envelopes and textures. Envelopes have channels and are capable of being driven by
expressions. Textures can be used to alter fiber characteristics as well as color. Gradients can make fibers
change according to slope and weight maps and can be used for color mapping root and tip colors. Weight
maps can also be used to adjust most parameters. For instance a weight map accessed in the gradients can
be used create longer and shorter fur, or more shaggier looking in some areas. Color drawing in viewports
reflect vparm evaluation for the beginning of each strand.

Bias mapping
When a fiber object is created in FiberFX a bias map is also created. The bias map is a LightWave VMap or
vertex map indicating the direction the fiber leaves the polygon as well as the polygons relative size. This
map can then be used to control the furs direction and scaling.

Surface fibers
FiberFX doesn’t need a fiber model to make fibers. It can also parse the objects polygons and make guides
from them. Even subdivision objects can provide guides on the fly. These are most suitable for short fur type
fibers that don’t need to react to forces in the scene. Currently surface fibers are an extension of guide fibers.
That is one guide is grown at each polygon center. From this central guide additional fibers are randomized
across the polygon area.
 

Viper and Shelf

Preview and save settings into LightWave preset shelf.
 

Fiber Modeler
The FiberFX fiber modeler is a tool to create polygonal fiber models. Fibers can be composed of
single edges or multisided geometry. Fibers can be subdivided down their length as needed. FiberFX creates
weight maps and UV maps when the object is built for ease in animating and texturing.

HotKeys
The navigation window supports many of the same the same hotkeys as LightWave.
Holding down alt rotates, alt+ctrl zooms and alt+shift pans the view.
The “a” key auto fits the fiber object and centers it in the view.
1 – 6 numeric keys shows front, back, top, bottom, right, left views respectively.

Global
Surface control menu (bottom-left corner)
Selects the surface that will be used to grow fibers using the current settings. You can create fibers over mul-
tiple surfaces in one modeling session.
 

Grow
Toggling this to the checked position will indicate fibers should be grown on the selected surface.

Hide
Hide the fibers when working on multiple surfaces.

Stats
Statistics for the currently selected fibers and fiber total for all surfaces.

View
Set the desired direction of view.

Mode
Solid or wireframe view.

Pan
Pan the view without holding the alt+shift hotkey down.

Rotate
Rotate the view without holding the alt hotkey down.

Zoom
Zoom the view without holding the alt+ctrl hotkey down.

Okay
Accept the settings and build the fiber object.

Cancel
Cancel the fiber object building.

Fiber Tab

Scatter Type
This controls how fibers are placed on the models surface. Two basic methods are available. By area and per polygon. By area
is useful to when a random distribution is required. Per polygon creates a much more ordered arrangement of fibers. Both types
offer a scaled version, scaling fibers according to surface area.

By area
Scatters fibers on the model randomly. As it parses each polygons area it distributes a number of fibers on it according to the
fiber qty setting.

By area scaled
Scatters fibers on the model randomly. As it parses each polygons area it distributes a number of fibers on it according to the
fiber qty setting. Additionally you can scale the percentage of scaling using the Area scale control.

Per polygon
Places one fiber at the center of each polygon. Creating an ordered array. When the fiber filter is used to render these fiber
strands many more virtual fibers clustered about the “guides” can be created at render time
 

Per polygon scaled

Places one fiber at the center of each polygon, creating an ordered array. When the fiber filter is used to render these fiber
strands many more virtual fibers clustered about the “guides” can be created at render time. Additionally you can scale the
percentage of scaling using the Area scale control.

Area scale
Available when the scale scatter method is used. This adjusts the percentage of scaling from the largest to the smallest
polygons.

Fiber Qty
Determines the number of fibers, distributed according to Scatter type.
Fiber length
Set the length of the fibers. In the case of fiber scaling being active this would be the length of the polygon(s)
with the largest area. . Length is measured from end to end, with the fiber in an absolutely straight position.
Effects such as curl, kink, and gravity change the shape of the fiber, and may cause the overall length to
seem shorter.

Edge qty
The number of edges of 2 point polygon links in each fiber strand. The more edges the smoother the strand.
For rendering in the fiber filter subdivision can be enable for smoothing low polygon chains at render time.
FiberFX can cover an object with single point polygons by setting the segments to 0. There is a limit of 127
edges on a strand.

Fiber sides
Fiber can have a number of sides. 1-sided creates 2-point polygon strands. Setting this to 2 creates 2-sided
blades (actually only-1 sided. You will want to turn on double sided in the surface setting). 3 creates a trian-
gular cross section and so on.

Fiber radius
The thickness of the fiber at the base. Only available when the sides are set to over 1.

Angle
Multi-sided fibers can be oriented using this control.

Taper %
Multi-sided fibers can taper down their length. This creates sharp pointy fibers. If set to a negative value,
fibers with greater than 2-sided can be made to have blunt flat tips.
 

Guides Tab

Spline type
Change the spline type for the guides. Interpolating spline goes through each knot of the guide. Approximat-
ing spline stays within the knots convex hull but never goes though intermediate knots. Interpolating can be
bent tighter. Approximating is smoother.

Add guide
Position the model and use this button to select a visible polygon to use in placing a guide. A maximum of
one guide per polygon can be created using this method. Many guides can be placed at once by growing
fibers then using fiber to guides available in the load guide popup.

Del guide
Any selected guides can be deleted using this button. Multiple guides can be shift selected then deleted.
Guides can also be shift-dragged to select many at once within a drag box.

Add node
Adding a node will add a node to all guides projecting off the end of each guide. Currently all guides must
have a uniform knot count.

Del node
Delete the last node from all guides. Currently all guides must have uniform knot count.

Load guide
Load guides available on other layers. Previously made fiber chains can be loaded back in as guides. While
working guides can be saved to a layer then loaded back in and used to create more fibers. Work in progress
can be saved and edited using this. Guides can also be created from fibers currently growing on the surface.

Save guides
Save the current guide set onto the next available modeler layer.
 

Select node
Selects every node of the listed number. First, last, next, previous lets you step through them all.

Clear guides
Clear all guides on the surface.

IK guides
Turns on and off IK handling of guide chains.
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Interpolation
Guides have several interpolation methods available to them when multiple guides are present. Clicking the
first knot in a guide changes its color and its interpolation method.

Radius
Some interpolation methods can be restricted to only exist within a specified radius of influence. These
modes will have a handle and an adjustable radius.
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Bundle %
The bundle percentage pulls all fibers in the radius of influence together forming a ponytail.

Bundle bias
Controls the profile of the bundle and how it comes together.

Randomize Tab

Length
Randomize the lengths of the fibers for a shaggier appearance. The lengths can also be randomized if render-
ing using the fiber filter.

Jitterx
X axis randomization of the direction the fibers leave the surface.
Jittery
Y axis randomization of the direction the fibers leave the surface.
Jitterz
Z axis randomization of the direction the fibers leave the surface.

Gravity Tab

Strength
Percentage of gravity affecting the fibers. Gravity bends the fibers in the direction of the arrow in the gravity
direction control.

Use normals
Percentage of force pulling fibers into the direction of the surface normal. Useful for creation of surface hug-
ging fibers instead of being pulled only in the direction of gravity.
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Gravity direction
Rotate the arrow into the direction you want the gravity force to be directed.

Reset
Reset the gravity direction arrow to point down.

Slope
Changes the force of the gravity effect according to the slope of the surface. Handy for making the top or
most horizontal part of a hair style hang down more than more vertical slopes
Tools 1

Curl %
Percentage of curl. Use in combination with curl turns to create various curl types. These require many
edges for the smoothest effect.
Curl turns
The quantity of curl revolutions. Set to 1 a curl would make a single 360 degree curl.

Randomize curling
Randomize the phase of the curl start.

Kink
Sets the percentage of back and forth kinking like pleats or accordion fold.

Slope shorten
Shorten the fibers according to the slope of the surface. At 100% the fibers facing down are scaled to 0 and
fibers in between are scaled accordingly.
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UV bias
Set the directional bias to be applied over each polygon laying the down according to the direction chosen.
Think of this like a joystick at the North Pole. Setting this to have a specified direction lays all the fibers
over into this direction. Handy for creation of parts and the whorl at the top of the head.

Bias works by laying a fiber up or down against it’s underlying polygon. It can be used to create sleek lay-
down types of hair. To illustrate, say you are doing a Wolfman. In the normal UV position, the hair part
would be at the top of the head when contoured. All the hair would be flowing down over the face. If you
changed the UV contouring setting appropriately, the same operation would produce the part at the nose.
Then the hair will flow from the nose back across the face, more like animal fur.

Reset
Reset the UV bias and directional bias back to default.

Dir bias
Use this to tip the “UV bias joystick” at the North Pole into a different orientation.
Tools 2

Clip object
Select another modeler layer as a clipper object to cut the hair that intersects it. The clipper object is shown
in wireframe. For instance you can use a box in another layer to clip hair into a flat top style. Imagine hair
growing into a form and stopping where it intersects.

Clip transformation
The clip object can be moved by selecting the transform and using the ctrl key to manipulate it.
Reset
Resets the clip object back to origin.

Hide
Hide the clip object.
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Collision
Set the fiber collision with the surface. These are subject to effects and be aware that guides plus effects can
drive fibers into the surface since by nature those are predetermined and subject to interpolation.
Guide knots themselves are subject to collisions and can be place down on a surface.

Axis mirror
Only available when using guides and is handy for creating a symmetrical hair part. Place the guides on one
side and fibers on the other side with use them in a mirrored fashion.

Length vmap
Choose a existing weight map to alter the length according to the weight map values from 0 to 1.

Density vmap
Choose an existing weight map to alter the local fiber density according to the weight map values from 0 to
1.

Make uvs
UV coordinates are created for the fibers. 0 at the base and 1 at the tip. Useful for weighting animated fibers
using clothFX.
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Options

Fiber color
Interface fiber color.

Bkg color
Interface background color.

Grid
Draws a x-z grid.

Reset current surface

Reset current surface to default settings.

Surface offset
Push points off the polygon by set amount. Useful to offset single point polygons from the surface.

Knots only
Show only the guide knots, turning off the spline drawing.

About
Show product information and version number.
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Strand Tool

Modeler tool for adjusting fiber strands using IK. When launched strandtool scans the selected layer and
builds a list of fiber strands. A handle is drawn at the end of each strand and inverse kinematics is used to
calculate the new position when moved. ‘n’ key brings up a panel letting you set the strength. The numeric
panel also lets you toggle all knots to adjust interior knots in a strand.

Strand Maker
This Modeler tool allows you to create fiber strands using standard tools. It scans the polygons in the current
layer then moves to a new layer and builds fiber strands. You can use the curve drawing tools like sketch and
spline draw. You can convert whole objects into fibers. Polygonal objects create edge loops. Curves create
strands.

Creating something like a spiderweb is easy. Make a ball, delete one hemisphere. Flatten, convert to fibers
with strandmaker.
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Fiber Filter

FiberFX is activated in the Image Processing>Add Pixel Filter Menu. Click on the surface that will have Fibers and select Activate
to turn FiberFX on for that surface.

Show Voxels draws Voxel boxes in the OpenGL viewports.

Reflections allows the fibers to be shown in Reflections.

FiberFX has a new volumetric render engine. The original pixel filter rasterizer is still available along with the original interpolated
volumetric shadows. The rasterizer is the default render type. Volumetric evaluation is enabled by using the Volume Only global
button on the main panel.

Volumetrics works by dicing the volume into small cubes. As the ray marches through the volume, it only has to check the fibers
intersecting the cubes it encounters, thus cutting down the number of fibers it must check against the pixel’s view frustum. The
cubes are only used for intersection test so it requires less depth of subdivision than the original for shadows and reflected/refracted
rays. This is different from the original method which used the cube’s density itself for shadows and reflected/refracted rays and
required a finer level of subdivision for acceptable results, thus using more memory than the new method. The new method gathers
samples along the ray, and lights and shadows each sample, stopping when the density reaches 1 or exits the fiber volume.
 18

The original method sorts all fibers in the scene, then draws them from back to front; Volume only does not require sorting and
draws from front to back. There is an additional shadow option, Raytraced. Raytraced fiber shadows does not interpolate the
density but uses the same ray-march method as Volume only, resulting in more accurate and sharper shadows. Both methods are
available for ray-marched and rasterized shadows. Reflections and refractions always use the new ray-march. Volume only does not
need the backface cull and fade control as these are handled naturally by the front to back ray-march.

Ray-marching does not draw into separate buffers and composite the results; as a consequence, Save RGB and Save Depth Buffers
are not available in Volume only mode.

Global Items

Geometry

Edit Nodes
Node editor for fiber displacements and color. This editor opens a standard LightWave node editor. The root
node for this editor is a fiber node allowing you edge by edge control. There are 4 inputs, vector, amplitude,
length and color. Double clicking the root node displays several options for how to calculate the resulting
direction. Local orients the displacement to be performed down the underlying polygons normal. Use Local
to create swirls and make ripples radiate down the fiber body. Click it off for object space displacement, use
this for fields or grass waving

You can also set the order that the nodes and other effects are evaluated.
It may be useful sometimes to switch the order of evaluation. For instance if you have gravity set to make
the fibers droop it is possible to set the nodes to override the effect of the gravity. The default position of
nodes first will prevent this.

The FiberInfoNode allows access to edge information.

Fiber U is the position of the evaluation down the length of the fiber. Starting from 0.0 at the root. to 1.0 at
the tip.

Fiber base normal is the normal vector that the fiber initially grew from.

Fiber tangent is the normal vector of the edge currently being evaluated.

Fiber base position is the position in local coordinates of the current fiber base.

Fiber edge position is the position in local coordinates of the current edges start.

Offset amount is the distance from the center of the wisp.

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This node network shows an x/z vector driven by the distance down the fiber for a swirl.
The vector input allows you to control the edge direction. The old and new fiber directions are interpolated
together by the amplitude amount.

The Amplitude allows you to control the blending of the nodal displacement effect.

Color allows you to control the color using a variety of inputs.

In other nodal contexts the fiberinfo allows you to find the closest fiber to a point being shaded in a surface
node. By using the fiber input number you can gather information for a single fiber.

Fiber Qty
The quantity of fibers to be built for each guide fiber. These form the wisp. The wisp will follow the move-
ment or animation of the guide fiber. For surface fur the number of fibers is multiplied by the number of
polygons then distributed across the objects entire surface area. Small polygons might not receive any fibers
if they haven’t accumulated enough area for a fiber to be placed.

Radius
The radius of the fibers to be scattered about the guide hair. This forms the wisp. Effects like clump occur by
pulling the fibers forming the wisp together. This control is disabled for surface fur.

Cluster
Additional fibers to be added around each virtual fiber within the wisp. These are different from the fibers
specified in Fiber Qty in that they are all alike and not independently controlled they can be used to thicken
the wisp.

Cluster Radius
The Radius of the clustered fibers. This is a relative distance dependent on the radius setting.

Fiber Smooth
Fibers can be smoothed by subdivision. This option sets the amount of subdivision. Each iteration mul-
tiplies the polygons by 2, with a maximum subdivision of 4, creating 16 smaller segments for each line.
(1=2,2=4,3=8, 4=16 lines created for each smoothing level.) Subdivision is performed just before the edges
are lit and projected and are not used in creation of the shadow volume. Shadows will not include the effect
of smoothing.
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Fiber Kink
When a polygon is subdivided the new end points can be perturbed. This creates a kinky look to the fi-
bers. Subdivision is performed just before the edges are lit and projected and are not used in creation of the
shadow volume. Shadows will not include the effect of kink.

Fiber Width
Fibers have a width. Thinner fibers are more transparent and build up density slower. Thick fibers build up
density faster and look coarser.
Model scale has an effect as does the distance to camera. Fibers further away are smaller in screen
space and are more transparent. The percentage is based on human hair which has been measured at
.017mm<>.181mm with blond hair the thinnest and black hair the thickest. At 100% a fiber is calculated us-
ing a median value of .05mm.

Splay
Each wisp of fibers can be tilted away from each other. The center of splay is the position of the guide fiber
all others tilt away.

Swirl
Each wisp of fibers can swirl about in a curling fashion.

Tuft
Each wisp of fibers can be scaled by the radius from their center creating a tufted effect.

Stray
One fiber in each wisp can be scaled to a larger size, but following the original shape. This creates a look
where just a few strands of hairs poke out from the rest.

Random Length
Each fiber in a wisp can have random lengths creating shaggier looking fibers.

Clump
Fibers can clump together as if sticky or wet. Only fiber within a wisp can clump together.

Bump
This effect perturbs the initial fiber direction by simulating a surface bump using the local gradient of the
texture. Similar to the bump in LightWave.

Scale
Scales all fibers up or down by the specified amount.
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Surface Fur Options

Edges
This is the quantity of edges to be constructed for each fiber strand. Like most other controls this can be
driven by a texture or weight map. The more edges the longer and smoother each strand will be. There is a
limit of 127 edges for a strand.

Gravity
Gravity can pull fibers in a downward direction. Like most other controls this can be driven by a texture or
weight map.

Use dot
Affects how gravity is calculated. With “use dot” active fibers on the lowers slope of an object will hang
down like gravity is affecting them. With” use dot” inactive the fibers will “hug” the surface and look more
like fur.

Direction Bias
If a bias map is available this controls the amount of the bias contribution.

Bias Vmap
A bias map is an RGB vmap indication the direction the fibers leave the surface. When a fiber object is mod-
eled in FiberFX a bias map is created. It is added to the polygonal object itself (not the fiber object). Useful
in the creation of fur this allows you to specify what the initial direction the fibers leave the polygon. The
map is not created until a fiber object is built in Fiber modeler using the okay button. The fiber object is not
required and can be deleted if it’s not going to be used directly.

Surface
If surface fur is being used this will allow you to indicate a single surface you would like to be used. You can
easily isolate different areas of the model with the same surface name using weight or image maps to control
length and color.
Instance Tab

Ray-marching enables instancing the fiber mesh. Instancing saves memory by not requiring every fiber in the scene to be present in
memory for the depth sort and drawing of rasterized fibers into a separate buffer for compositing. The ray evaluation is tweaked to
a new direction and intersects the fiber mesh, lit and shadowed by the position and orientation of the instanced mesh. This allows
millions of fibers to be derived from the original fiber mesh without the overhead of millions of distinct fiber meshes. Instances are
placed by using a particle system to position and orient the original fiber mesh. ParticleFX allows many different nozzles to control
particle placement of which surface, verts and normals are the most useful for particle placement, thus controlling where the instances
are positioned in the scene.

Instancing creates a whole new fiber object at each instance, and does not simply duplicate the single fibers. This means you could
either have a small patch of hair attached to a source mesh multiplied many times over a surface such as a ball, driven by the particle
system, or a you could take a single fully covered fur ball and turn that into a whole field of fur balls. However, if you take a ball and
place hair directly on part of the surface, then try to use instancing to cover the entire ball with hair, you are duplicating the entire
ball multiple times and will produce an image with extensive visual artifacting, usually exhibiting as the image being broken into
rectangles of various sizes, as a result.
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Shading

The surface attributes operate much the same as the attributes in the Surface Editor. FiberFX uses Kajia Kay
lighting.
Color
Fiber color can be mapped or can be procedural. A gradient can control color based on the slope. A special
gradient “U” can create colored roots or tips. This uses the percentage of distance down the fibers length to
control the color. Colors are interpolated on edges so you cannot have colors change rapidly where there is
no edges. An important note is volumetric fibers currently only use the base color.

Highlight
Highlighting allows some randomization of the fiber colors.

Highlight Color
Dyed hair often has a colored highlight.

Diffuse
Set the basic illumination response to lights in the scene.

Specular
Specular controls the brightness of the highlight from the light.

Gloss
Gloss controls the width of the highlight. The higher the gloss the smaller the reflected highlight.

Luminosity
Luminosity sets the amount that fiber can appear self illuminated.

Ambient
Amount of fiber lighting received even when in shadow.

Tip Transparency
Set the percentage of fading. At 0% the fibers will look blunt ended. Higher values will start fading the fiber
over the interval indicated. 50% will start the fibers to fade at halfway down the length. At the default of
20% the fibers will fade only over the final 20%.

Translucency
Set the percentage of backlighting by lights behind the fibers. At 0% no backlight will be apparent. At 100%
fibers can be strongly backlit.
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Cuticle tilt
Hair and fur exterior is covered with fine scales that have the effect of tipping the specular reflection back
toward the root. Use this control to simulate this effect by entering a negative number to move the specular
highlight approx -10% to -20%. You can also move it towards the roots if desired.

Secondary Specular Highlight

Most hair and is translucent. This translucency allows light to shine through and even reflect from the inner
surface of the hairs back side.
FiberFX can simulate this secondary reflection.

Gloss 2
Gloss 2 controls the width of the highlight from the inner surface of the backside of the hair. The higher
the gloss the smaller the reflected highlight. The secondary highlight is tinted by the pigment color of the
hair itself. The secondary highlight should be wider than the primary highlight due to scattering of the light
through the hair medium. Setting this control to 0% eliminates any calculation and speeds rendering if you
don’t need the effect.

Pigment
The hair medium itself has some pigment in it unless it is pure white. This pigmentation shows up in the
secondary highlights.

Cuticle tilt2
Light reflected off the inner cuticle on the backside of the hair will have a tilt opposite the outer tilt, towards
the tip.
 24

Shadow Tab

Self Shadow
Set the density of the self shadowing. Denser shadows will create thicker looking fibers. Less dense shadow-
ing creates thinner looking fibers.

Cast Shadow
Set the density of shadow cast onto other objects.

Multi Sample
Creates multiple shadow samples randomized on a hemisphere about the
Light direction. This smoothes out shadow at the expense of more shadow rays.
Sample Width
Defines the width of the cone used to multi sample. More rays will be needed to sample are larger width
without excessive noise.

Shadow Depth
This controls the shadow quality. Volumetric shadows are created by subdividing the fiber object into many
small boxes. The density of each little box is measured and used to create shadows and to measure density as
rays pass through the volume.

Etc.

Cull Angle
Cull the back facing fibers. This speeds things up by eliminating fibers early in the drawing stage that would
be behind the object and not be drawn. At 100% fibers on the profile edge will be culled. At 0% no fibers
will be culled.
 25

Fade Angle
This is the angle the fibers fade out over. Use this to have long back facing fiber fade gradually instead of
just popping off.

Scene Edge limit

Set a limit to the number of lines that the custom draw handler draws. If you have a fast system you may
want to raise this limit.

World
Setting the world button on, gathers the coordinates in terms of the world and not the items parent. Typically
you want to set this off. If you are using MotionDesigner to animate the fibers, set this on and UN parent, to
gather the coordinates correctly.

Raytrace Transparency
Leave off will allow the pixel filter to draw fibers behind transparent objects. Toggle on to allow the volu-
metric engine to draw voxel fibers if the render globals are set to raytrace transparency and raytrace refrac-
tion.

Before Volume
Runs the pixel filter composite and sets the depth buffer before rendering volumetric plug-ins. This allows
volumetric effects like hypervoxels to respond to FiberFX’s depth buffer.

Save RGBA
Save the rgba buffers to a separate file. When this item is active the fibers will not be drawn into the image
filter buffer. Be sure to select an RGBA image saver.

Save Z
Save the depth buffer information in separate floating point buffer. When this is selected, z values will not be
written to the image filter buffer. Select a floating point image saver.
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Node controls

Fiber Info Node Outputs

Outputs fiber data. Not all outputs are available in contexts other than the Fiber node editor.
Fiber U
The U coordinate down each fiber. Starts at 0.0, ends at 1.0. Use this as input to opacity on a node to control
effect strength down the length.
Fiber Base Normal
Indicates the direction of the start or base of each fiber.
Fiber Tangent
The direction of each edge along a fibers length.
Cross
The cross product of the base normal and offset.
Fiber Base Position
Indicates the position of the base of each fiber.
Fiber Edge Position
The position of each edges start.
Offset Amount
The offset of each added fiber from the parent.
Fiber Number
Returns the fiber number that is being evaluated
Cluster
Clustered fiber number. Use it to determine if a clustered fiber is being evaluated.
To Up
Transform from polygon coordinates to up.
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From Up
Transform from up to polygon coordinates.


Fiber Info Node Input
Edge #
The edge number used from outside the fiber node editor to retrieve data for a specific edge.

Fiber Node

Color
Changes the color using a color node. Use a Fiber U to change colors based on the position down the fiber
length.

Amplitude
Use this input to Change the amplitude of the Vector input perturbation. Without using amplitude 100% of
the Vector input will be used often resulting in harsh changes of direction.
Vector
Vector indicating the desired direction of perturbation of the fiber strand.
Length
Alter the length of the fiber based on input.
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Getting started

Quick Start
Make a ball in modeler.
Save, send to layout.
Activate FiberFilter in image filter panel.
Select the ball object in the FiberFX filter list.
Select activate.
Select draw checkbox.
You should now see single edge fibers drawn on the polygons of the ball. Select edges and set it to 6. Set up
the gravity and make the fibers droop. Setting the fiber quantity grows additional fibers randomized about
the center of the polygon. The width of the randomization is set with the fiber radius control. Set the Light-
Wave global render shadows to see the fiber shadows on the ball. The fibers will self-shadow regardless of
the render shadows control in LightWave’s global render settings.

Creating guide strands

Growing hair or fur doesn’t require a fiber model, but if your project requires precise control or dynamics
you will need to build a model. The fiber model is like a guide for creating the hair that’s going to be ren-
dered in layout. It can be as detailed as you require.

At its very simplest fiber models should have one fiber per polygon so additional fibers can be randomized
on the same plane as the polygon. When the fiber object is created information about the polygon it was cre-
ated from is saved into a polygon tag. One tag is made for each fiber strand. When this fiber object is read
by the fiber filter it knows which direction to offset the additional fibers. Even fibers that leave the polygon
surface on an angle are correctly placed on the surface when rendered by the fiber filter.

Fiber models made by other programs or by other means do not have tagged information available to the
fiber filter. They will be randomized on the plane defined by the surface perpendicular to first edge in the
strand.

Fiber models made by FiberFX strands consist of a single point polygon containing the strands tag, followed
by points defining the strand, connected with 2-point polygons (edges).
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Fiber models made by FiberFX can be rendered in Saslite. Be sure to rename the fixed end to root, the re-
maining fibers to hair.

Fibers need to remain on their own layer. Fiber modeler automatically finds the next empty layer to save to.

You can grow fibers on a specific surface like scalp of brow, or the area fibers are placed can be controlled
by a weight map areas of the map with a zero value are culled.

FiberFX modeler needs polygons to work. If you have a subdivision object freeze it to build your fiber
model from. You can delete the frozen model when the modeling is finished.

FiberFX filter can use subdivision objects when creating surface fibers. As the object is subdivided more
polygons are available to grow fibers from and the fibers get denser. The level of subdivision can be different
from interface to rendering as these fibers are created on the fly.

Hints and Tips

FiberFX’s controls are simple and straightforward, although the possibilities they create are not always im-
mediately apparent. Here are a few suggestions for your consideration:
Fibers
Fiber strands are built in a particular way. FiberFX expects them to be in an ordered format to correctly
parse the strands.

A strand definition is a single point polygon indicating the head of the strand or the root. This polygon will
have a polygon tag (invisible to user) if built by FiberFX but the tag is not a necessity. Following the single
point polygon is the strand body, a chain of two point polygons or edges.
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Be careful editing strands. If you are deleting a strand be sure to include the single point polygon at the head.
Selecting all connected ‘]’ doesn’t work unless you select the strands head polygon at the scalp.

Creating arrays and copy, paste cycles do work if it is insured that the entire strand including the single point
polygon at the head is selected.

Layers
UV Color or other mapping on guide strands will need a UV map to be created for the strands. Each strand
has a single point polygon at the start, creating a UV map for those polygons. The color will propagate down
the strand.

Surface fur can derive the UV coordinates directly from the underlying UV map. Just use the same map UV
map name in its texture panel. The image doesn’t have to be the same as the underlying surface.
Layers
For a very dense coating of fibers, you may wish to split the original model into several parts.
Few objects have fibers that are all exactly the same length. Animals, for example, may have a dense under-
coat, and a longer, sparser overcoat. You can achieve this look by adding fibers in two consecutive passes, in
separate layers. Place the underlying object in the background layer, and choose an empty foreground layer.
Create the shorter fibers. Then select a different empty foreground layer, and create the longer fibers. Com-
bine the layers to create one object. Or just create the longhairs with a fiber model, and use surface fur to
make the undercoat.

Morphing
Create a hairy object using one combination of FiberFX settings. Create a second object with the same num-
ber of fibers and segments, but with effects settings that position these fibers differently. Morphing between
the two objects will make the fibers move like tendrils, sprout like grass or sway back and forth. You can
animate a morphed moustache by placing the moustache fiber object on a 2nd layer. As you create your tar-
get morph face positions save off the fiber object too. Morph the fiber object along with the face object.
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Tweeking
Fiber Factory allows you to tweek a fiber object after it’s created. Say for instance the object you have
created has hair in its eyes. Run modeler and get the base model. Get the fiber model on a different layer.
Zoom into the eye area and move, bend or delete the offending fibers. Use the strand tool to grab the end of
the chain an place where you want. Selecting just the area you are concerned with and hiding the rest of the
model can speed things up and give you a better idea of what you are editing. Try to leave the fiber bases
against the underlying model. After all hair doesn’t sprout from thin air.

In FiberFX you can develop fiber features that the FiberFX modeler cannot create (yet). Braids, up-do curl-
ing high fat clumps of hair can be built by the imaginative FiberFX stylist. Selecting and renaming just one
polygon off the back of a head allows us to grow just 2 or 3 fibers from it. Select enough segments to make
it flexible.

Select a polygon on the FiberFX model. Use the “]” key to select all connected polygons and edit the strand
to suit. Here, the polygons have been spread into a nice grouping and twisted them together using the twist
tool in LightWave. It’s important to try to leave the base of the fiber on the polygon.
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Then bend can be used to bring the twisted fibers up into a french braid style curl, pony tails etc.

Bones

You can also move your fibers by surrounding them with a halo of bones. Use the spherical or Cartesian
coodinates mode and/or fall off on your bones strength. You can manipulate the model into a new style and
use LightWave’s save transformed option to save the new model.

Displacement maps
You can use displacement maps to make your fibers wave like a wheat field in the wind. If you’ve used ef-
fects to curl or droop your fibers, you may need to use morphing in order for the displacement map to have
its proper effect. Apply the displacement map to a straight version of the object as a morph source, and make
the curly version the morph target. Go to 100 percent morph immediately. Using falloff will affect the tip
more than the base.
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Other Organic Structures

You don’t have to confine your FiberFX activity to hair and fur. Try making the radius of the fiber much
larger than the length, and adjusting the taper. The result is wide, angular shapes that you can use for tree
bark, rock and crystal formations, ferns, etc.2 sided polygon strips make great feathers!
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This feather object was created by first making a quill in FiberFX modeler. A two sided polygon strip was
made at a 90 angle. This places the polygons in a vertical orientation. 2 sided objects actually have only one
side, so we copy flip and paste to create polygons facing opposite directions. In layout fibers are grown in
the filter to create the feather structure.
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LightWave and LightWave 3D are registered trademarks of NewTek, Inc.

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