Clumping hair particles when there's no clumping active?

Question

I'm new to Blender and have been watching some tutorials on how to make a felt surface that looks good using the hair particles. There weren't many helpful videos that explained what each setting did but I got it to a good spot after a lot of fiddling and experimenting.

My issue now is that I don't want to change much about it because it looks just right but I am getting weird clumps of particles clashing and forming upright groups around the edges. It's emitting from a solidified plane so there's no reason for the geometry to affect it I don't think. They're not sprouting from along the edge either but in spots along the edge.

Scaling up to frame the edges out doesn't help either as the hair textures then look too large and it doesn't look right anymore. You can see it on the bottom left of the image and top left, along the edges of the plane.

Answer 1

It could be that there's something weird going on between your normals and how the solidified plain has... well, solidified.

One way to check is to hide the particles and then enable your face normal visualisation in the following menu:

It may help display the problem.

You could use the tools in Particle Edit mode to flatten your felt fibres:

Here, I've combed some of my hair flat:

There also exists the possibility to shrink or even entirely trim off the offending hairs.

However, as it looks like you're making a poker/gaming table, you could also simply hide the edges with a frame at the table edge potentially.