Fiber-mesh is a really cool tool inside of Zbrush that allows a user to quickly and efficiently add hair or grass to a model. The interactive work-flow is put together in a simplistic manor that makes it easy to add some col hair. After using Fiber-mesh, you end up with individual polly tubes that can be sculpted and further perfected using the normal Zbrush tools.
To start, you simply mask out the area of your mesh that would like to add hair. Working on this base mesh, I quickly blocked out a simple hairline.
Perhaps a smarter work flow however, is to extract the piece of geometry you want hair added to so that you have an individual subtotal to work with.
Once this is done, simply mask the hair sub-toolool and in the Fiber-mesh settings, click preview. You can also choose from a variety of pre-sets and styles.
Fiber-mesh provides dozens of settings to tweak the look, style and color of the hair. These settings are very intuitive and pretty self-explanatory. I found that I tweaked the gravity, length and amount of the fibers the most.
Once you have the hair in a place that looks good, simply accept it, and Zbrush gives you a separate sub-toolool that is the hair. This is really cool, because now you are free to sculpt, smooth, and groom the hair however you like.
I’m constantly impressed with how many tools Zbrush has. While much of Zbrush tends to be confusing and difficult to master, Fiber-mesh is a good example of a tool that give quick results without a lot of hassle. I can see many good applications with this in the 3D pipeline of a production. Wether that be just to get some quick pre-vis hair on a model or to spend more time manicuring a hairstyle that looks awesome and is render ready!
