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LEARNING PATH

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.

Beginner to Advanced 37h 55min 10 Workshops
Sohrab Esfehani Jordan Soler Victor Garza Kristin Farrensteiner headshot Bruno Tornisielo headshot Santhosh Koneru headshot Crystal Bretz headshot
By 9 Instructors
Fantasy Creature Grooming in Houdini thumbnail
01

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...

Sohrab Esfehani headshot by Sohrab Esfehani
Intermediate
4h 29m
17 Lessons
Creature Art Grooming Visual Effects
Arnold icon Arnold Houdini icon Houdini
Creating Creature Hair & Fur Grooms in Houdini thumbnail
02

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...

Kristin Farrensteiner headshot by Kristin Farrensteiner
Advanced
7h 56m
19 Lessons
Creature Art Grooming Lighting & Rendering Look Development Visual Effects
Houdini icon Houdini
Realistic Dog Grooming for Production with XGen thumbnail
03

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...

Jordan Soler headshot by Jordan Soler
Advanced
3h 38m
14 Lessons
Grooming Look Development Scripting Texturing & Shading Visual Effects
Mari icon Mari Maya icon Maya
Creating Creature Fur Using XGen & Arnold thumbnail
04

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...

Bruno Tornisielo headshot by Bruno Tornisielo
Beginner
2h 35m
11 Lessons
Creature Art Grooming Lighting & Rendering Look Development Texturing & Shading
Arnold icon Arnold Maya icon Maya
Introduction to Grooming With Ornatrix in Maya thumbnail
05

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...

Santhosh Koneru headshot by Santhosh Koneru
Beginner
2h 49m
10 Lessons
Grooming Lighting & Rendering Look Development
Ornatrix icon Ornatrix Maya icon Maya Substance Painter icon Substance Painter V-Ray icon V-Ray
Creating a Male Groom With XGen thumbnail
06

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...

Crystal Bretz headshot by Crystal Bretz
Beginner
3h 55m
13 Lessons
Grooming Lighting & Rendering Look Development Texturing & Shading UV Layout Visual Effects
Mari icon Mari Arnold icon Arnold Maya icon Maya
Creating a Female Hairstyle for Production with Maya XGen thumbnail
07

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.

Bruno Tornisielo headshot by Bruno Tornisielo
Intermediate
3h 05m
11 Lessons
Grooming Lighting & Rendering Look Development Texturing & Shading Visual Effects
Arnold icon Arnold Maya icon Maya Photoshop icon Photoshop
Creature Grooming Techniques in Houdini thumbnail
08

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.

Luis Cadavid headshot by Luis Cadavid
Intermediate
3h 05m
18 Lessons
Compositing Creature Art Grooming HDR Images Lighting & Rendering Look Development Texturing & Shading Visual Effects
Nuke icon Nuke Arnold icon Arnold Houdini icon Houdini Maya icon Maya
Creating a Stylized Groom in Maya & XGen thumbnail
09

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.

Bhavika Bajpai headshot by Bhavika Bajpai
Advanced
3h 22m
12 Lessons
Grooming Lighting & Rendering Look Development Modeling Scripting Visual Effects
Arnold icon Arnold Maya icon Maya
Grooming in Yeti thumbnail
10

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.

Victor Javier Garza headshot by Victor Javier Garza
Advanced
2h 21m
21 Lessons
Effects Animation Game Engines Grooming Lighting & Rendering Look Development Scripting Texturing & Shading Visual Effects
Yeti icon Yeti Mudbox icon Mudbox Maya icon Maya V-Ray icon V-Ray
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything you need to know about the Learning Path.
Learning Paths have been organized to help both aspiring and professional artists, who are looking for training based on the fundamental categories of creative work in the visual effects, animation and games industries. Each Learning Path has been curated to contain a collection of workshops that guide artists through a series of topics relevant to that path, but they are not necessarily sequential. When appropriate, however, we have organized the workshops in a path to be in a logical order. All workshops are tagged with their level (beginner, intermediate, advanced) so that you can browse the path and choose a title that matches both the subject matter and level that you are looking for.
All Gnomon Workshop instructors are professional artists from the entertainment industry, who have worked with us to structure their time, experience and knowledge into practical and inspiring training. We believe that it is important to learn from masters of the craft, who have honed those skills via years of experience working in production, collaboratively with their peers. Through time and experience, artists develop not just their creative and technical ability, but also their communication skills. These become critical aspects to being an effective lead artist, supervisor or, in our case, instructor.
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While many workshops include Project Files, these are at the instructors’ discretion. You will find details of any project files provided on each workshop page, along with the software/tools required to tackle the workshop. If you have any questions, you can contact us via our Live Chat or email the team at support@thegnomonworkshop.com.

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