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- Dear Pete,
- Here's how I once made an artist's-type paintbrush, and it
- worked OK. I modeled the brush hairs on the y-axis using a truncated
- cone of ten-or-so segments, and then tapered it using ease-out, and gave
- it a surface name, then saved it as an object.
-
- In layout, parent this object to the brush handle, and give its surface a
- fractal noise bump map with a texture size bigger in the Y-direction
- than in the X and Z directions, like 0.1,10,0.1 or something like that.
- This makes individual hairs seem to stand out. Lastly, put two parented
- bones in the brush hairs object to make an articulation, (like a knee),
- so that the hairs can bend where they touch whatever it is that they are
- painting.
-
- If you want, you can also give the portion of the hairs that
- are dipped in paint a distinct surface name so that in addition to
- the bump map, you can assign them the color of the paint.
-
- That's one way to do it, anyhow.
-
- Tom Desmond
-
-