Grooming
Hair and fur are complex, dynamic, and critical to a large percentage of characters or creatures. Maya and Houdini offer powerful tools that enable artists to wield intuitive control over, potentially, millions of individual hair strands via guide curves, textures, and forces. These hair and fur grooms must not only be art directed to various styles and looks, but must also react realistically to the character’s animation or behavior. In this series of 10 Workshops, professional Groom artists share the workflows they developed working on films such as The Jungle Book, Avengers, Fantastic Beasts, Madagascar, and The Lion King.
Fantasy Creature Grooming in Houdini
Senior VFX Artist Sohrab Esfehani teaches the complete production workflow for film-quality creature hair/fur grooming in Houdini and Arnold. The workshop covers reference gathering, scene structure, face/body detail, and guard furs...
Creating Creature Hair & Fur Grooms in Houdini
ILM Grooming Artist Kristin Farrensteiner teaches advanced procedural hair/fur grooming techniques for production in Houdini 18 using a photorealistic cat model. The workshop covers non-destructive workflows, guide creation, grooming fixes, and Mantra shading...
Realistic Dog Grooming for Production with XGen
Grooming Artist Jordan Soler shares the full production workflow for creating a realistic dog groom using Maya, XGen, and Mari. The workshop covers file setup, guide creation, XGen refinement, color maps, and final render output...
Creating Creature Fur Using XGen & Arnold
Senior CFX Artist Bruno Tornisielo teaches XGen fundamentals and a production workflow for realistic creature fur using Maya and Arnold. The workshop covers curves, modifiers, layering, lighting, and rendering the final interactive groom...
Introduction to Grooming With Ornatrix in Maya
Santhosh Koneru introduces the Ornatrix plugin to create realistic facial hair, eyebrows, and eyelashes in Maya for animation and stills. The workshop covers the Ornatrix UI, distribution maps, modifiers, V-Ray hair shaders, and dynamics...
Creating a Male Groom With XGen
Senior Modeler Crystal Bretz details a production workflow for creating a realistic male groom using Maya and XGen. The workshop covers density map painting in Mari, modifiers, flyaway expressions, and Arnold rendering...
Creating a Female Hairstyle for Production with Maya XGen
Senior CFX Artist Bruno Tornisielo shares his process for creating a female ponytail hairstyle using Maya XGen and Arnold. The workshop covers XGen fundamentals, guide creation, layered grooming, modifiers, and rendering.
Creature Grooming Techniques in Houdini
Groomer Luis Cadavid details a Maya, Houdini, and Nuke workflow for creating a production-ready werewolf groom. The workshop covers importing the model, basic hair setup, advanced guide processing tools, and final rendering.
Creating a Stylized Groom in Maya & XGen
Lead Groom TD, Bhavika Bajpai, shares her professional workflow for creating a stylized groom using proxy tube geometry with XGen to create hairstyles quickly and efficiently. The workshop covers XGen basics, the tube-grooming process, modifiers, and Arnold rendering.
Grooming in Yeti
This animation workshop by Hair & Cloth Lead Victor Javier Garza introduces how Yeti can be used to create convincing hair for use in a professional animation pipeline. The workshop provides all the steps needed to create a final groom, including the network setup, grooming tools, and V-Ray shading/rendering.
Unlock Unlimited Access
- Over 350 Workshops. 250+ Instructors.
- Concept Art, Visual Effects, Games and much more.
- New Workshops released every month.
- Beginner, Intermediate and Advanced Levels
Join thousands of artists from around the world, who are developing their skills with The Gnomon Workshop.
Learn at your own pace with 24/7 access Monthly or Annual plans available
Already have an account? Log in
Level up your Team
If you're an artist at a Studio, School, College, or University, we have Team License options available for every scenario. Join top studios and schools including Blizzard, Riot Games, Disney, Gnomon, LCAD, Digipen, London Met and many more.

