Hi,

I made a simple plane and gave it hair particles on the top, so that it looks like a floor mat / rug.
When i export this as an OBJ or a 3DS, the only thing that is exporting is the plane, but no hair whatsoever...

Must i 'bake' the hairs first or something like that ?

Thanks
Wim

Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2735607

The linked thread may help a little.

Quote - Hi,

I made a simple plane and gave it hair particles on the top, so that it looks like a floor mat / rug.
When i export this as an OBJ or a 3DS, the only thing that is exporting is the plane, but no hair whatsoever...

Must i 'bake' the hairs first or something like that ?

Thanks
Wim

I ran into that exact problem... and when I imported into Poser - I was trying for grass at the time - I couldn't even see the character's legs or feet when the grass object was selected in the viewport because of the red lines... indicating the 'grass' did import, but Poser didn't know what to do with it, and wouldn't render it. I think it might have something to do with the thickness of the mesh - need to make the particle strands thicker somehow, but how? Maybe that above link might have a clue...

Attached a quick example of particle generated mesh rendered in D|S.

lisarichie,

Can you explain how to extrude the hairs in Blender ?
And how can i make the hairs editable in Blender ?

Thanks

Create the particle strands and apply all the modifications required.

Press F9 to enter editing

Under the modifier tab click Convert

Press TAB>A to select all the vertices

Press E>ONLY EDGES>X>.001 to extrude a minute amount along the X-Axis. You can of course do this according to whichever axis is most suitable for your situation.

This creates simple strips of faces that are renderable in outside programs after exporting the hair mesh.

Of further note, you can extrude the faces created  by the same amount along the perpendicular planar axis to create square strands then apply the subsurf modifier to round and taper the strands.

This creates much more realistic hair but is only effective for sparse hair such as eyelashes, eyebrows and random body hairs because of the huge increase in poly count.

Example: 1000 particle strands of 5 vertices each after extrusion equals 10,000 vertices. Extruding again raises the count to 20,000 vertices. Applying the subsurf modifier at the default setting will then generate approximately 80,000 vertices.

A good compromise is to create the bulk of the hair using traditional methods and generate a few strands of particle generated mesh strands for realism using the double extrusion outlined above.

Thanks, Lisa... very well explained. I'll have a go with my grass, import to Poser and do a render... plus you gave me some more keystroke shortcuts... this is so COOL!

Thanks for explaining Lisa :-)