Make hair particles different colors on the same mesh?

Question

Hello all I am wondering if there is a way to have a my hair/fur show up as 2 different colors on the same mesh? Im not looking for anything fancy just a hard split in the colors.The only guides i can find are about root to tip gradients or natural coloration using the nodes.

Basically I just want the pink assigned faces to have pink hair while the green has green hair. Thanks!

check out https://blog.michelanders.nl/2015/02/using-vertex-colors-to-color-hair-in_14.html — james_t, Mar 09 '22 at 18:20

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Oct 23 '22 at 15:33

Having more fun with Materials, here's the "Moonboots" technique that uses a single Particle System that relies on Texture Paint on the UV mapping of the object.

I create two material slots, one for the mesh surface faces (named "Yellow") and one for the Particle System (named "RBG Texture Paint"). I could have used the same "RBG Texture Paint" on both the mesh and hair, if I wanted the mesh surface and hair strand colors to align.

Here I choose the Hair PS material slot "RBG Texture Paint":

In the Texture Paint editor (left hand panel), I created an image (internal to the blend file) and painted areas using the UV Map (displayed) as a guide to the faces. I had divided the cylinder edges in half; is why there are two "column" rows, and then the two circular areas for the end faces.

Then in the right hand panel, in the Material editor, I referenced the "red grn blu" image from the Texture editor creation.

Here is my example:

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 09 '22 at 17:52

0

I don't know if it's possible to do it in another way than with 2 particle systems, that said you can do it in Cycles if your emitter has an Image Texture:

Once you've created your emitter material with an Image Texture, give a material to your particle with this setup: Use the UV output of the Texture Coordinate, on the bottom of the Texture Coordinate select the emitter object as Object and enable From Instancer so that the particles inherit the emitter colors:

answered Mar 09 '22 at 17:52

moonboots

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I used your Texture Paint technique and herein posted a "single PS" solution. I call it the "Moonboots" technique – james_t Oct 23 '22 at 15:34

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Mar 09 '22 at 19:34

There is some pertinent discussion here and here.

I would divide the Hair into two different Particle Systems that can each have their own Material assigned to the render:

The downside is that you aren't sharing all the parameters, and have to set up your hair Emission counts for each with some trial and error.

I cannot find any Shader input that can make use of a vertex group boolean into a color chooser, which is a sad deficiency IMHO.

and oh my the blender-exchange is actually working today. here is my 3.0 example file

Make hair particles different colors on the same mesh?

3 Answers3