first attempt at a haired head

Artwork Works in Progress
1

hey blenders

i’m new here, so hello everyone! :slight_smile:
i’ve been learning blender for the last months, doing a lot of tutorials and watching a lot of workshop-dvd’s. now i finally have something to show.

it would be great if you could give me some feedback about the materials (especially the hair). the skin material is based on one from this thread, which was kindly provided there! i did some modifications and started to add a colormap to the whole skin “calculation”. i’m not very much satisfied with it, because it still looks a lot like plastic to me.

anyway. if someone has any tips on optimizing the hair material, it would be great.
at the moment, a single hair doesn’t really look like a volume and i can’t get the shadows to work on them. --> i would like the hairs to cast light shadows on the skin, so you don’t see the bright parts on top of the head where no hairs “grow”.

also, any other feedback is welcome. the blend file is provided below. it is a piece made to learn blender, so please feel free to rip it apart :wink:

http://img338.imageshack.us/img338/9343/head13hairs5small.jpg

sorry for nudity :cool:

higher resolution: head13hairs5.jpg
blend file: head13_hairs5.blend

2

i think the hair needs some more Volume and it looks a little too light even if its supposed to be a older man, i would say darken up and increase the hard on the spec

3

Your hair doesn’t cast shadows because it’s set to strand render. Also, the way you have your lamps set up, any shadows that would be cast would be off the face, and too soft to make out.

4

thanks guys for the replies. i agree, the hair needs more volume and maybe some more variety. i’ll give it another shot and also try out different lighting / spec values. haven’t tried out disabling strand render yet, but i will :slight_smile: