how do you do hair?

[Levitateme]

What most Game developers do>
they make some planes and style them to the shape of the persons hair. on them planes they have textures that look like hair of course, with alpha channels. that way near the ends for example its see through. so there you go , there are lots of tutorials on how to do this btw as well.

i would try

www.boris3d.de/tutorials.html

[cgartists]

don't you forget that there is MayaFur! i think that is also good choice. movies professionals use it. anyway plane method is also good i've never tried it but i think that it is ok. good luck!

[adsky2]

Fur isnt for long hair I think.

[womanonfire]

and what would one do for braids?

[TiKiMoN]

A braid is something you would probably be better off modeling, then maybe applying fur to the model of the braid, instead of attempting to braid long fur (which is pretty much impossible). If you made the fur dense enough, you could hide the underlying mesh, if you feel it would help. You could animate it with a joint chain, or make it a softbody, or attach influence objects to it which would be affected by forces. There are many ways to do it, but go for the illusion of hair instead of thinking all hairs should be enumerable and independent of each other.

On a tangent, are there any better hair simulations out there, or other techniques besides planar alpha modeling or mayafur?

[tomb]

It really depends on the length, type and style of the hair and if you plan to animate it.

If it's for a still image you can model the hair to a high complexity, as it won't need to move. Modeling offers the most control.

As for moving hair:

If you want short fluffy hair try Maya Fur or Joe Alter's Shave and a Haircut plugin.

If you want long thick flowing hair use Joe Alter but be prepared for HUGE render times. There is also a tutorial for long hair using Cloth and PFX on the A|W site.

If you want a few strands of long flowing hair like Golem try using Paint FX strokes bound to softbody curves or cloth cylinders.

If you want tight curly hair use Joe Alter, PFX or Maya Fur.

And that's why we see so many 3D characters with hats or shaved heads. Hair is a challenge.

We need to know specifically what type of hair you want for your character.

[TiKiMoN]

Thanks tomb... when I get ready to make hair on my character, I will post my own thread about it, with character sketches so everyone can get some idea of what I want.

Monkeysweat, I hope you don't mind my asking more questions in your thread.. I hope the answers gave you more options though. :)

[tuna]

I've seen platted hair and braids made from actual hair plugins using actual vector hair (Taos's and S&H) but as maya default i'd go with the modeling planes and opac maps, and also solid modeling hair (for more cartoony style) or maya fur for something like a shaved head / facial hair.

whatever way you do it. Its gonna be a bitch ;)

[monkeysweat]

Hey guys, thanks for the tips.

to be a bit more specific, I'm looking for Final Fantasy hair.
I know thats asking alot, but I figured someone might know.

Anyway, I've had my best results using the Paint Effects on soft body curves. My biggest gripe is that the post process of adding the hair always looks fake. Maybe I should be asking how to render this stuff better.

Shave and a Haircut does take an enormous amount of time to render...is it worth it?

[alexx]

Originally posted by monkeysweat
I'm new to all this cg stuff, and I'm trying to do some hair on a character.

...

to be a bit more specific, I'm looking for Final Fantasy hair.



your learning curve must be hell steep :surprised

cheers

alexx

[Kabab]

Has anyone tried this new PFX stroke type in version 5 ?? it is ment to be much better for flowing type hair like in Final Fantasy.

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