Curves to Particles (or Curve Rigging) [duplicate]

Question

Does anyone know a method of turning many curves into exact hair particles?

Some background: I have a very dense eyelashes model, where every strand is modelled. Rigging them has proved impossible, as I need the eyelashes to move with eyelid shape keys and using particles seems to be the only way of achieving this. I tried using surface deform and that hasn’t worked well either.

I used a weld modifier to collapse all the lashes into curves and then added a taper object to make the curves look almost exactly the same as the original lashes model, but the next step of taking the curves and potentially turning them into particles has been very confusing.

Alternatively, if there is a way to rig curve lashes to eyelids, that could work as well (eg somehow hook a big collection of eyelash strand curves).

Also, I saw a video in Maya, where it was possible to hook bones to a particle so the particle moved the bones - yet another alternative, but not sure that’s possible in Blender.

Any insight would be greatly appreciated, thank you!

Answer 1

You're making things way overcomplicated :D

For the most optimized method:

Use a simple plane to create the area of your eyelashes, and apply a texture to it. With your current eyelashes curves, you could make a texture yourself. In the end, the skinning will be super easy.

A second method, which is the least optimized:

Add a bevel to your curves (don't add too many details), convert them to a mesh, and skin them to your rig bones.

You could also use hair particles, but you would have to groom them manually from 0. I've already tried porting fur from Maya to Blender, and there is no way to link the hair curves to a hair particle system. There is a plugin which does this, but it doesn't work with skinning for some reason.

Good luck!