Jordan Soler begins this workshop by providing artists with a framework for creature grooming. By understanding the mindset and methods behind professional grooming workflows, artists will be equipped to create their own unique groomed assets for animals and creatures in their projects.

Duration: 1m 20s

This lesson explores how to set up the project correctly when creating fur in XGen, and how to gather references successfully. Jordan’s workflow prioritizes flexibility and production-friendly practices, acknowledging that fur grooming is a process requiring constant adjustments. By understanding natural fur flow patterns, artists can avoid problems later, create more believable results, and maintain the ability to make changes throughout production.

Duration: 11m 55s

This lesson covers guide curve placement: a foundational step that determines the entire groom's flow and appearance, requiring patience and careful attention. Taking time on this crucial process is important, especially for non-production work.

Duration: 12m 23s

Jordan shares a timelapse of his guide creation process.

Duration: 17m 6s

Jordan shares a timelapse of his guide creation process.

Duration: 17m 6s

Jordan shares a timelapse of his guide creation process.

Duration: 17m 6s

This lesson emphasizes that fur grooming is an iterative process requiring patience and multiple refinement passes. Clumping maps are arguably the most critical element in achieving realistic fur. Artists should focus on establishing a strong foundational before moving on to fine details, as base elements will significantly affect the final result.

Duration: 47m 19s

This lesson explains why creating realistic fur is about mastering guide curves and clump systems, which comprise about 75 to 80% of the work. Artists should understand how to use painted maps, how different maps interact, and how to maintain artistic control while adding natural variation. Once the guides and clumps are established, the remaining work involves refining the result through noise, flyaways, and color maps.

Duration: 44m 7s

This lesson demonstrates how setting up custom color maps provides artists with important visual feedback during the creative process. The ability to preview how the groom interacts with color textures helps artists to make better decisions in real time. The setup requires creating proper file structures, and potentially, adjusting color values.

Duration: 7m 32s

This lesson focuses on a layered approach to refining a groom, strategically layering clumps while increasing density. The key takeaway is to balance proper density ratios and resolution settings with artistic judgment, constantly referencing real-world examples.

Duration: 11m 23s

This lesson demonstrates that combining procedural methods with painted maps provides both efficiency and precision, enabling artists to achieve natural-looking hair variation while maintaining control over specific areas of the groom. This workflow balances automation with artistic intent.

Duration: 4m 35s

This lesson emphasizes that adding controlled randomness to a groom is essential for creating realistic-looking fur or hair. By using either percentage-based settings or custom expressions combined with mask maps, artists can break up uniform patterns and achieve natural-looking variation. This technique is fundamental to making groomed fur appear less artificial.

Duration: 7m 28s

This lesson emphasizes that realistic grooming relies on layering multiple modifiers with carefully adjusted parameters. By combining low and high-frequency noise, randomizing values, and strategically ordering modifiers, artists can break up the uniformity of CG grooms and achieve natural-looking variation.

Duration: 10m 33s

The final lesson looks back over the workflow set out in the workshop, which enables artists to create realistic animal fur without having to use overly complex techniques. Professional-looking results are achievable by mastering fundamental concepts like density mapping, noise layering, and proper guide placement. Artists are encouraged to practice these techniques while understanding that additional time spent on asymmetry and curve refinement would further enhance the realism of the result.

Duration: 8m 31s