Using splines for hair planes

Mathieu

Hello !

I'm working on a character's hair but I need some advices to go further. There are a lot of way to create hair but it's never as good as I want it to be so I try a lot and a lot of differents methods...

I created a spline, copy/paste and move it 10 times more or less to test. Then in rendering, I "enable in viewport" in rectangular (length:0, width:8 ). It gave me good looking planes' shape. But bad surprise when I turn them to Edit Poly, it wasn't really planes but rectangle with no length... (screenshot) I tried to weld but normals seem to go completely wrong.
IMO it could have been a great way to create hair if it really created planes, I imagine that it could work too with Hair & Fur > convert to spline.

My question is : don't you know a way to create plane from spline?

Second question : is there a way to overlap all those hair meshes in UV Editor?

And the third question : do you think it's a good method or am I totally wrong? ^^'


Thanks in advance for your help !

monster

My question is : don't you know a way to create plane from spline?

Nope. But you could make the spline renderable and later remove the unused faces.
OR
You could try using patch quads. It will give you similar control and multiresolution as the spline does. But it won't work with Hair and Fur.

Second question : is there a way to overlap all those hair meshes in UV Editor?

If you check "Generate Mapping Coords" then the spline will automatically be mapped from top to bottom.

And the third question : do you think it's a good method or am I totally wrong? ^^'

Sounds good to me. I would try it and let us know how it works out.

Mark Dygert

Mathieu wrote: »

My question is : don't you know a way to create plane from spline?

You can create planes between two splines using the cross section tool, then apply a surface modifier.

Quickie tutorial:
Create a spline line.
In the spline menu, click "create line" and draw out another spline next to your first.
Activate the cross section tool, click on the first spline and then the second.
Apply the surface modifier to get polygons, convert to edit poly and you're done.

You can also draw separate spline line objects and join them together, using the attach feature. It is important to note that hair/fur is generated on a per spline basis and is generated in the order it was created or added to the spline. You can re-order the splines by detaching them all and reattaching them in the order you want.

You can also apply the Hair/Fur(WSM) to splines (preferably not with the cross sections). This will generate hair between the two splines which also matches your plane, which can be captured to textures (diffuse, spec, AO, normal) using Render To Texture (press 0).

One other cool thing you can do is:
Create a spline line.
Turn on "show end result" in the modifier panel. Go back down to the spline, click "Create Line" and draw out another line.
BAM hair!


You can then nudge and noodle around the verts however you want, I personally use this more for grass than I do hair but it can be a quick way to get some hair cards started, get you some normal maps.

Ruz

In my expereince using splines is a pain in the arse, easier to control poly planes.

Mark Dygert

Ruz wrote: »

In my expereince using splines is a pain in the arse, easier to control poly planes.

You can create poly planes, select edges, click "convert to shape" which makes splines out of those edges. Then you can use those splines to generate hair/fur.

Six of one, half dozen of another, whatever floats your boat

Personally I enjoy painting hair but it can be hard to get normal maps based on hand painted hair, which can make generating AO and spec maps harder too. Hair/fur can be a quick way to get pretty far and get some of the materials rolling. I wouldn't just take whatever it spits out and use it tho... it will be heavily worked over.

Mathieu

Thank you!

That's too bad we can't render plane from spline...
I did a quick test with Hair & Fur anyway :


Hair & Fur


Hair & Fur to Splines


Spline with Render in Viewport


Test with texutre




Now, I will try your tutorial Mark. It sounds really good and helpful!