Hair and texture WIP

[H. Ikeda]

Here is a side view.
Shave settings now: Hair count 9000 (others are of default in the render page of material), Fizz 1-8, Kink 1-1, medium antialias.

[H. Ikeda]

No comments? Anyway a result of an experiment about hyper NURBS, bone and Shave (Shave & a Haircut). As below, the effect of bone deformation on the Shave hair seems to depend on the object hierarchy.
So first reconstructing the hierarchy, then I'll make eyelashes anyhow.:wip:

[flingster]

H. Ikeda: nice stuff bud....i had shave installed when i first got c4d a few months back...but pc has been rebuilt since then and i didn't put it back on since....so i might just give it another whirl since i'm feeling slightly more confident with my c4d understanding (that doesn't mean i know what i'm doing, just i know what i want to do!)

.....anyway a quick question around what you did here why didn't you use shave for the eyebrows?
....are we saying if you rigged the face and moved say the skin at the eyebrow point that the shave eyebrow hair wouldn't move?
not sure i understand the eyebrow bit....and its not a language barrier more a flingster understanding flaw....:thumbsup:

[flingster]

dooh....ok i get it now took another look at your image ....sorry bud....:rolleyes:

[H. Ikeda]

12/2-12/8(missing posts, sorry for no images)

H. Ikeda:
Thanks a lot for taking your time.
I think no problem about eyelashes if I'd pay attention to the object hierarchy.
As for the eyebrows, I'm wondering how to make hair of such a narrow area on the relatively large cage polygons. Subdivisions or other polygons or...? (In relation to this, the reason why the head hair is grown on another polygons is to avoid further subdivisions of the cage and to make up a detailed edge shape of the hair.)

flingster:
can't advise you there bud...pos other polys as this is the way you went with the head? would also like to see the density change....i think its a vertex map or something like that which would be interesting to have a go at....dunno, can you do me a favour and post how you got on just out of curiosity....cheers.

H. Ikeda:
Ok, I'll try explanation of hair on the head.
The cage polygon looks like the upper-left part of the figure below. It has a low number of polygons, as it should do. So if hair is grown on some selected polygons, shape of the edge is very rough, so that smooth and detailed curves of the fringe is impossible as in the upper-right of the figure. For long hair, this may be all right, because we don't see the fringe of hair part. But for general-purpose hair, e.g. for any style or for animation, we need dense polygon mesh. A way is subdividing the cage, but this will cause unnecessary subdivisions too.
So, to avoid further subdivision for the cage, another way is making another polygon object, which can be made such that, after making editable the head hyperNURBS, split its top part and reduce the number of polygons with Polygon Reduction, and finally Untriangulate it. As in the lower-left of the figure, another polygon skin is made (not neat though). If hair is grown on this skin, more natural fringe of hair is formed as the lower right.
Of course we can tweak vertices of the cage for better fringe but maybe need some workaround to get good modeling.

There may be alternatives on this point, and anyway the next will be eyelashes if no questions and suggestions.

AdamT:
Could you use a cut map to get the clean edge? I've used it for grass, but not yet for hair. Basically you put a B&W image in the density channel (under hair material's Style tab) to define the hair edge instead of using poly/vertex selection.

Looking good so far, but you need to increase the hair count a lot.

H. Ikeda:
Thanks a lot for the suggestions.
I'll try density map using a gray-scale image and compare it with the above results.
I also think much more hair count is better, but I didn't increase it few from the default to save time. But I have to experiment on the hair count and the hair thickness soon.

flingster:
H. Ikeda i got the bit about the polys...thanks anyway for posting the pic cos its a really good representation of your problem

but hold on a minute i thought a vertex map was the same as density channel(b&W) only red and yellow? Did i loose the plot...or am i stupid today?
thanks guys.

AdamT:
quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Originally posted by flingster
but hold on a minute i thought a vertex map was the same as density channel(b&W) only red and yellow? Did i loose the plot...or am i stupid today?
thanks guys.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
You can use either a vertex map or a bitmap in the density channel, but a bitmap is more flexible because, theoretically, it's not limited to the number of vertices in your selection. I did find that it worked better in my grass tests.

H. Ikeda:
Thanks AdamT.
Ok, more info about that. An example is a polygon cube that has only 8 vertices. For a vertex map, only 4 vertices of the right hand plane are set to 100% (others 0%). For an image map, a bhodiNUT tile pattern is applied to density, and for clarity the same texture is mapped to the cube itself.

flingster:
ok guys thanks for clearing it up for me a bit better.
btw.
doesn't hair look so wierd on an object thats not an organic shape! really freaky....

[H. Ikeda]

Well, I tried a density map for hair on the head. But first, density mapping onto hyper NURBS seems to have serious problem as below. Second, unfortunately it's a post effect, which means it doesn't affect hair guide (or hair) in a preview. So even a pretty girl becomes a yeti in a preview. Of course if you don't mind it, no problem about this. :hmm:

[H. Ikeda]

So, as written about before, plus eyelashes. The hair count on the head has been increased up to 12000 (bonus!). The thick is 0.1-0.6. Also, color of the cheek is changed to somewhat pink side.
If no suggestions, I'd like to think about eyebrows without density map. :)

[That Adrian Guy]

instead of having the hair come straight down, you should try to have it flow backwards or something.

The hair is kind of chaotic, you should "comb it" and make it fuller

Otherwise, it's lookin good :p

[flingster]

H. Ikeda : just out of interest how did you get the tips/ends of the hair to be a lighter colour than the rest...does shave do this auto for ya...or did you sort it someway?

ps. v cool you managed to retrieve all the old posts bud...:thumbsup: ...was annoying as there were some very interesting stuff on cgtalk at time....never mind.

pps. did you plan on any animation at all...cos a quick gust of wind would look v cool....and its not like youre not up to it bud.....so come on....lets see some animation.:applause:

[H. Ikeda]

Thanks "This Adrian Guy." I agree. If I were her stylist, I may be fired. Although I'm not a pro stylist, I'll try further hair styling.

flingster: the lighter hair color near lower edges is by accident maybe because specular colors are gathered there by somewhat straight line of hair and direction of the auto light.
I always keep in mind that the modeling and texturing are valid for animation, e.g. morphing, bone deformation, forces like wind as you said. I'll also try animations for head motion or wind before long.;)

[H. Ikeda]

So, a new hairstyle, by tweaking some hair guides and separating hairs with split commands...not quite good? Also, some details are added to the skin.

While modifying the hairstyle, I'm thinking about how to make eyebrows without using density map. Separate polygon objects might be used, but with what way the objects are created and deformed easily on morphing...maybe spline projection and expression.:rolleyes:

[creart]

Looks good!

Something that I want to try myself (since I dont have shave..) is making lots of rectangles using soft IK to hang from the head with normal textures with alpha to see if that might come up with convincing hair too, that would take much less vertices..

Apart from that I'm starting to get just a bit more familiar with Thinking Particles and think that eyebrows would really be something for TP, only problem that I haven't figured out yet how I can objects 'follow the flow' of an object or use the normal of a face it's on..

[H. Ikeda]

Thanks creart. Well, I think alpha plates with soft IK are promising rather than TP, 'cause particle systems are basically good at flowing things (of course, static things can also be expressed with PSurfacePosition or PVolumePosition).:)

[AdamT]

It would look a lot better if the bangs were curved --didn't drop straight down towards the eyebrows. Hair always forms a bend as it recedes from a part. Here's a pretty good reference:
http://www.vssassoon.com/vidal/index.asp

[creart]

Sure,

but what I meant was; if you make a polygon to be the shape of an eyebrow and fit hairlike particles to that surface, I'm still not sure how to let each of those particles rotate on the face so they would 'follow' the shape of that eyebrow, instead of just filling it up... I hope you understand what I mean...

[H. Ikeda]

Thanks a lot,

creart: probably you mean directions of particles. This may be done with XPresso, by using the Polygon node, of which polygon normal port we can use for deciding direction of each particle. But it's possibly somewhat complicated (with PGetData & PSetData). ...or, I miss your point.

AdamT: vi, vidal sassoon...too good for me to follow...pedal so soon! no, just kidding.
Actually I've already tried to do, but it seems not enough. Ok, here is an image after a little effort.:)

[creart]

Originally posted by H. Ikeda
Thanks a lot,

creart: probably you mean directions of particles. This may be done with XPresso, by using the Polygon node, of which polygon normal port we can use for deciding direction of each particle. But it's possibly somewhat complicated (with PGetData & PSetData). ...or, I miss your point.

AdamT: vi, vidal sassoon...too good for me to follow...pedal so soon! no, just kidding.
Actually I've already tried to do, but it seems not enough. Ok, here is an image after a little effort.:)

I haven't looked at it yet, but yes the direction of the particle is what I mean. That probably won't br too complicated, but I simply haven't seen it yet - the point is there are so many nodes that without a manual they're easily overlooked and apart from that I often don't know where to begin.....

[H. Ikeda]

Anyway, making eyebrows with poly plates and Shave.
First draw a spline in front of the face as simple as possible (only 15 points here), and next project it on the face (hyperNURBS) and copy its all points into a poly object via ASCII file. Create polygons in the poly object with Bridge and align normals. After symmetrical copy (copy and -1 scale), two poly objects are for eyebrows. Then create hair (eyebrow) on them using Shave.

As below, Shave eyebrows are shown in an image, where as special features 4 lights are added and 3 of them illuminate hair and only one of them causes shadows including hair. Any suggestions?
Now there remains a problem of how to control separate eyebrows with ease on morphing. Maybe expression (XPresso in R8) is useful, such that points of eyebrow polys are stuck on the hyperNURBS surface. Also bones?:rolleyes:

[Anadin]

I've just been doing eyebrows on a face. I have used a neck, head and jaw bone to move the face and the splinedeformers and posemixers to animate the features.

I made the seperate eyebrows a child of the face and then the splinedeformers deformed the eyebrows and the face together.

[That Adrian Guy]

It's looking good but you really need to do something with the lighting! YOu can't really even see the model correctly because the "autolight" doesn't give any shadows.

You should experiment with the lighting next

[H. Ikeda]

Thanks a lot for the comments.:)
Anadin: in R8, spline deformer might be a nice idea for eyebrow and face control. I'll also experiment on it. Will you post or have you posted about it in a separate thread?
Adrian: the latest one is of several lights without the auto light, but you're right, shadows and details are not clear in the image. I'll experiment with positions of lights and shadow settings. Thanks.

[Anadin]

I think I will post the head and see what you all think - I did not model the head, I am just animating it. I'll post tomorrow.

[H. Ikeda]

Well, next are some experiments on lighting. One of the trials is as below, where there are 4 lights as before (different positions though) and area shadow (time consuming but nice) is used for normal objects. But hair shadow is always soft one, so it's not very clear compared with object shadow.:shrug:

[H. Ikeda]

Thanks for comments and suggestions, the hairstyle and texture seem to get better (in a better land, maybe vidal sasoon says "still not good":D)

Ok, a trial of controlling eyebrow and face with spline deformer. First a spline deformer is inserted into the object hierarchy so that both an eyebrow and face around it can be deformed. Next draw a spline that looks like an eyebrow, and copy it for modifying spline. We have 2 splines as the left of the image below. Then move points of the modifying spline to morph the eyebrow and the skin around. It's simple and very intuitive.

By extending this way, muscles of face may be simulated just drawing outline of face with splines (something like this -> :)). It's a thought, though.

p.s. Anadin, have you posted about head and spline deformer somewhere?

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