In my 6 years as a pro 3D hair & fur groomer, I have groomed and shaded the hair of 90 characters and 4 animals. (Of course, grooming wasn't my only job. Otherwise, I could have groomed a much higher number.) In addition to creating the groom and shading it, I was responsible for setting up the hair for simulation and / or rigging. So I worked very closely with the rig artists. I ended up doing much of the shot-to-shot simulation myself, but also was able to train some others to take on this task.
3D hair & fur grooming is one of my favorite things to do, as it uses a perfect blend of artistic and technical skills. A character's hair contributes so much to their look and personality. I feel this is quite an underrated aspect of character / creature creation. I believe it was in 2019, after I had been at the studio for about a year, when one of my coordinators approached me and said, 'We're interested in a hair grooming plug-in called Ornatrix. We were wondering if you could learn hair grooming, test the plug-in, and if that goes well, start grooming all of our characters. There will be about 20 for our upcoming show.' That was quite the daunting challenge but it went well! Then a couple of years later we switched to Yeti. Hair grooming was nowhere on my radar of skills to learn, but I'm so glad it worked out that way. Despite the often-tight deadlines, I've enjoyed it very much and look forward to continuing to improve and learn more tools.
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