trying to follow this technique for hair, but intructions are unclear for a beginner.

Travis C

trying to follow this; http://www.3dartistonline.com/news/2015/04/how-do-i-create-real-time-hair-for-games/

but im not clear on step 12 and step 14. It tells you the basic concept of how to do it, but requires knowledge of other things. is there a video tutorial of how to do this specific technique? would really appreciate some help or a link

LetyMoreno

For step 12, you have to bake your Diffuse (which includes the Alpha Channel) and Normal maps in order to use them as a base for your hair texture, that you will then apply to the planes. You can use Xnormals for that but personally, after having tried out in Zbrush and other programs, I'm more content with the workflow to bake in 3ds Max. That's just me though. If you are using 3ds Max I can teach you how.

For step 14, you have to transfer the vertex normals from a smooth mesh, like the one in the picture, to the vertex normals of the planes, so that the hard edges blend and the hair looks unified. If you use 3ds Max, there is a plugin called SlideNormalThief that does this in just a few clicks. You have to have both meshes with an EditNormals modifier.
Maya has an option to do this, and I had seen a video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4ziQFF2ZcY but I don't know if you have to do any steps before that.

Artoire

Hi Lety, I've been around this tutorial and step 12 is killing me. I have no idea how to bake the difuse for the alpha. Could you explain how? Because on Zbrush I can either have a plane or a plane with the hair strands, but I don't know how to paint them into the plane or difuse. Thanks!

musashidan

Artoire said:

Hi Lety, I've been around this tutorial and step 12 is killing me. I have no idea how to bake the difuse for the alpha. Could you explain how? Because on Zbrush I can either have a plane or a plane with the hair strands, but I don't know how to paint them into the plane or difuse. Thanks!

You polypaint the hair strand meshes by filling with white and bake the vertex colours to plane geo. It's the same as baking any high to low. The hair strand mesh is your high, the plane is your low.