Ephere has updated Ornatrix, its hair, fur, and feather grooming software, to version 9. This release introduces adjustments across grooming tools, user interface design, and performance.
In the Edit Guides modifier, users can now paint textures directly onto hair using brush textures. The user interface has been reorganized with dedicated rollouts for mode selection and brushes, updated button icons, and a revised channel selector that incorporates tooltips, color indicators, and simplified terminology. A new system for managing paint channels includes a consolidated color box and value spinner handling both color and greyscale channels. Performance when editing control points has been improved, and a curved extensions option has been added to the grow/shrink brush. Clump management now supports interactive braiding, manipulators, color-based clump differentiation, and a UI slider for editing positions.
Other modifier updates include procedural texture generation and a new “Cap faces” feature in the Mesh from Strands modifier, mesh closing capabilities, and strand group meshing. The Merge modifier now handles blending and overlap resolution. The Surface Comb modifier introduces curved sinks and improved transform tools, which now align to the middle sink’s surface transformation and support rotation and scaling.
Export improvements include a new Qt-based Alembic dialog, strand rotation support, and the export of “groom\_color” attributes for Unreal Engine. The software now supports GPU-based viewport hair display, volumetric hair shadows with user controls, and improved grooming icons for visual identification.
To find out more, visit Ephere’s website.
