I have been have a lot of trouble modeling hair, long hair at that. I’ve search everywhere online just about, but still know luck. Blenderartists.org maybe my last hope. I have been working on 2 different models, but I I cannot modeling, not make, the hair? I’ll ask a few question that may help me out.
Is polygonal hair made up of planes (2d) or rectangle (3d)?
1a. If so, how exactly do you control it when adding it to the head?
This little boost may help me out. If you have any other suggestion or even tutorials, go ahead and post them. This will help me out greatly. I just don’t quite understand the process of MODELING HAIR.
To give you more of an idea of why I’m choosing this approach over particles, check out the “Real Hair in Blender” tutorial in goggle search. It’s good but doesn’t quite help out much in my current state.
Without checking out that “real hair tutorial” (it annoyed me that there was not direct link… it’s bad enough when people answer “use google” to someone’s question, let alone when people make you do the same for their own question… make it easy to give you an answer!) I would say that you’d use flat planes with hair clusters Photoshoped (or Gimped) onto them transparency enabled. You need a fair number of them and just parent them to the head, with rotational axis at their roots for action movement.
…I’ve seen people use this in Maya and it pulls off surprisingly well. They often have colour map, alpha (transparency) and specmap on the plane, but can repeat that plane several times over.
Thanks. I’m not sure what patch modeling is, but I may be thinking about edge-looping. Also, Lancer sorry bout the direct link. It’s kinda hard to do, on a screwed up internet connection. I can only access certain sites, but that’s my problem to fix. Keep in mind. I give out the best info I can, but if it makes it easier on you. This is as far as my PC let’s me go, now without saying “Connection Reset”. I use to be able to access, but the PC is acting Weird, so here you go…
Kay_Eva this is polygonal Hair! (Below). Why, cause as I heard from great source it render faster, and tends to act more realistic in animation that particle hair! Though I’m not a huge final fantasy fan, the hair seen to done quite well, and it is made out of polygons.
Yes… that’s the look a lot of my Maya friends get. It takes a long time to get results as in your images. The hair is a polygon model just like your main figure is, but has an alpha (transparency) mask along with specular maps, bump maps etc to create a very realistic texture of hair. The fringe down the front is like images stuck on to hanging cards. Can require remodeling & retexturing to suit a variety of camera angles. The trick is in the alpha (transparency): the cards themselves look largely invisible except where hair has been painted on in Photoshop.
So let me get this. The hair would look like something, in the images below with an some of the right texturing! Is the hair a plane or does it have 3D dimensional volume with alpha map and stuff. I’ve seen some, that looks like a plane, but I’ve seen other that have 3D volume, polygon. I’m saying that cause it just doesn’t appear to have volume (with my GRAY model in the images below) . It seem more like something for a game character, or maybe I just need to add more to give it volume? What’d you think?
-In the images of CD Artwork Flies, provided by Flamander of blenderartist.org of the creation of FF& Advent Children character. Notice how the hair is like polygons, not planes, or is it planes?
But yes… like that, although ones I’ve seen are very roughed out; you don’t generally need all those strand lines (although if animated those could make good crossing over effects)
They are essentially planar as opposed to box. Having them flat is better for movement.
Once again thanks so much for your help. I’ll continue to give it a shot. One more question. Do you know if when texturing. Do I just add material, or UV unwrap,then UV map?
Thanks again, oh and I did not know that planes where polygons, duh all closed objects are polygons. I feel Real dumb for that one.
If it’s just a single plain, you don’t need to unwrap to apply a texture. Anything beyond that you may as well unwrap. Eliminating the unwrap mission is another reason you’re using flat planes as opposed to boxes.
Good. Before you get too involved with the number of planes you’re using, get into Photoshop / gimp etc and draw some hair strands onto the surface those polys. If you texture it right, you should be able to use transparency to get the effect you want, making it look as though it’s not stuck to cards. You should be able to share textures on some surfaces without it looking too repetitive.
I tried texturing it but a you can see I came across some issue. I was trying to capture a transparency between the hair, but all I receive was a mirror of the background. I had “Use Alpha one” and also when I “Map to” I mapped to “Alpha” with “Multiply” and this is the result. Somethings terribly round, cause it’s showing almost like a reflection, but know mirror is on.
Below is the awful result and to the right of that is the Transparency enabled PNG simple texture I used.
Thanks lot, that was the problem, the Z transparency wasn’t on! Now I just need to figure out how to get the material to flow where I want it to. Thanks everyone for your corporation and patients, especially Lancer! Thanks bro
You can do the same thing with particles. Just use all the particle tools and then at the end when you have the hair the way you want it. just turn the particles into a mesh and use the mesh tools to fine tune thing. Of coure you have to seperate out the parts of the scalp as a seperate object first and then apply particles to that. When you get the particles looking how you want them. Turn them in to a mesh then reattach they emitter and the “hair mesh” to your whole character.
