Maxon’s Hair module is intended to let Cinema 4D users add uniquely realistic hair to objects rapidly, using an extensive toolset and high rendering quality. The manufacturer emphasizes ease of use and high speed with “incredibly low” memory consumption. Maxon says even millions of hairs can be produced without difficulty on averagely equipped computers.
Hair completes Maxon’s offering for character designers, who already have tools such as Mocca and the Clothilde cloth simulation for bringing digital figures to life. The modules are designed to work seamlessly together, with the viewport display always operating in real time. Users can configure the preview quality of the hair to suit their requirements.
Maxon says particular emphasis was placed on interactivity. The toolset provides more than a dozen tools, including a brush, comb, curling iron and scissors. The appearance of the hair itself is controlled with a dedicated Hair Shader. In addition to hair colour, which can include patterns such as tiger fur, users can set properties including gloss, curl and shaggy texture.
Once the generated hair has been styled and coloured, Hair Dynamics can apply different forces. These include gravity, wind, turbulence and rotation, along with collision detection. Hair also includes a cache system that can precompute animations for rapid playback or network rendering. The company notes that individual frames can also be retouched manually.
Maxon Hair requires at least Cinema 4D R9.5 and normally costs €379. Introductory prices apply until 31 December 2005, however, bringing the Hair module alone to €249. It costs €448 together with the update to Cinema 4D R9.5, or €548 with the update to R9.5 and Advanced Render 2.5.
