Different Approaches to creating Hair?

travisdreams

i've always been confused on the different approaches to creating hair.

I know mainly 3 methods:

1. creating planes/cards with a flat UV and put a hair texture with an alpha as it'll stretch along the plane

2. zbrush fibermesh

3. max's hair and fur

and ive been told about having a low res mesh and with some hair details but planes coming out of it to give it the extra details of hair. But i get confused when i see work where there's a sculpted hair in the process and then in the end it becomes planes some how/ for some reason?

so like this model, there's an actual mesh:


though in the render there's actual strands:


so was a plane create and then the mesh was projeced? O_o i get quite lost when it comes to the process when creating hair. Any thread that gives multiple methods to creating hair?

here's another example from beginning:



to end:

Mark Dygert

There are a bunch of different ways to generate hair. Some methods generate strands based on geometry, so that might be what you're looking at? They could also be temp meshes that where place holders that where replaced by hair/fur. It could be opacity maps on planes but it doesn't really look like it on the first, could be on the second.

http://graphics.pixar.com/library/Hair/paper.pdf

travisdreams

Mark Dygert wrote: »

There are a bunch of different ways to generate hair. Some methods generate strands based on geometry, so that might be what you're looking at? They could also be temp meshes that where place holders that where replaced by hair/fur. It could be opacity maps on planes but it doesn't really look like it on the first, could be on the second.

http://graphics.pixar.com/library/Hair/paper.pdf

interesting, i like the results on either but i think getting efficient opacity maps on planes is better for me since im aiming towards game res models? though that pdf you sent aims more towards a strand my strand hair method, it's quite interesting.

i just get overwhelmed when seeing people work with a hair mesh then they have this beautiful looking hair that turns out to be planes somehow. im guessing the planes are something they do afterwards when getting a rough block out geometry of the hair?