To allow a novice user to quickly start using "Beast", a Python script for Blender that creates hair, fur, feathers, etc. This tutorial will concentrate on the "Hair and Fur" mode.
This document was originally written by Matt Nelsen. Look for "teo" on the Elysiun.com forums to contact.
Feel free to use, distribute or modify this as you see fit.
Last updated January 5, 2004.
1) Blender
2) Python
See Blender.org or Elysiun.com for help with installing these, if necessary.
3) Beast beast05Beta.zip.
1) Unzip the Beast file to any convienient folder.
2) Copy the "logo.py" file to the Blender executable directory. On Windows this is commonly C:\Program Files\Blender Foundation\Blender. You may have several folders marked "Blender..." under the Blender Foundation folder if you have installed multiple builds. If in doubt, copy "logo.py" to all of them.
Card: A mesh that represents a clump of texture.
Stacks: The number of segments in a card. If a card is a hair, think of it as how many times that hair can bend.
Curl: How bent a card is.
Density: The number of cards created per face.
Alpha Map: An image that defines where a card is to be transparent. Black values are transparent, white are opaque.
Image map: An image that determines the color at any point on a card.
Start Beast:
1) Start Blender. Ensure that you have at least two windows available.
2) Open a text window, click on "File" and then "Open"
3) Navigate through the browser to the directory where you unzipped Beast and select "beast0_5Beta.py"
4) Press "ALT-P". If you do not get a Beast GUI at this point you may not have Python installed correctly.
5) The mode should already be set to "Hair and Fur" in the pulldown in the top-left corner of the GUI.
Create a mesh to grow hair on
6) Add a plane to the scene and Fractal Subdivide a couple of times. Scale it so that it is about 6 units square.
7) Switch to Object Mode.
8) With this new mesh selected, click on "Assign" in the middle part of the Beast GUI. This selects what mesh will be used as the base for growing hair
9) Click the "All" button just below which will select all of that mesh's faces.
Grow some (blocky) hair
10) Leave all options as is for the "Options" and "Random" tabs in the bottom part of the GUI.
11) Click on the "Card" tab.
12) Click the "Preview" button in this tab. A new mesh will appear at the cursor. This is a card. Take a good look at it to get a feel for its structure.
13) Select and delete the card.
14) Now to create a whole bunch of cards: Click on "Unleash Beast!".
15) You should now see some new meshes.
16) Add a lamp, adjust your camera, and render.
The image you see will just be some brown bent plus-like objects, the cards, but this gives you an idea of how Beast does its work.
You can now experiment with the other settings like height, width, curl, etc. but realize that each time you click "Unleash the Beast" more new cards will be created, so you probably want to erase the cards after each go.
Save this image to your computer:
1) Erase any cards from previous experiments.
2) Click on the "Alpha" tab and click the "Add" button.
3) Select the picture that you saved.
4) Click on "Unleash Beast!".
You should now have something that looks kind of like brown hair when rendered. If you want to make some adjustments to the material, you can select one of the cards and go to the material buttons window.
Now download this image to your computer:
1) Again, erase any previous cards.
2) Click on the "Colour" tab.
3) In the "Texture" pulldown, select "Image".
4) Click on the "Select" button and find the new image you saved.
5) "Unleash Beast!", but don't render yet, there is a small bug that you can fix.
6) Select on of the newly created cards, go to the Material Buttons, Select the "ColourTex" texture and change it's "Map Input" from "Object" to "UV".
7) Now Render, and you should have light brown hair with dark roots!
* In "Face Select" mode you can pick parts of your base mesh to grow hair on. Just select the faces you want and click "Assign" in the top part of the GUI.
* Beast will create cards in the currently viewed layer. It's helpful to have the target mesh on a different layer than the cards. Beast creates a lot of new meshes, and it's hard to select the original target when it is surrounded by them.