[WIP] Realtime hair practice

HazelTheHobbit

Hi! Making a thread to keep track of my realtime hair practice. Its always been something I've struggled with so I want to do a few studies in an effort to get better!

First up is a straightforward french plait. Still a WIP but I've made pretty good progress- next up is polishing the head to hair transition. I'd like to work on some more flyaways and irregularity as well. Crit is very welcome!

dGreenberg

This sounds like it'll be an awesome thread to see, @HazelTheHobbit! The french plait is looking really nice. What's your usual process with hair if you don't mind me asking? I still haven't taken the dive to try hair cards and I've only dabbled with XGen so it'd be great to hear your process if you have the time.

slosh

This hair looks fantastic!

HazelTheHobbit

@dGreenberg Thankyou! I don't mind at all- my method is kinda a combo of different people's haha, my main way of placing the cards is pretty much the same as Georgian Avasilcutei's here: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/dmR1K which is using splines in 3DSMax to place the cards and just gradually building it up in layers of cards. Usually I use XGen to make the card textures but I've tried Robert Ramsay's hair strand generator for this one which I really recommend espesh for standard straight hair   https://www.artstation.com/robertramsay/store/j7PY/hair-strand-designer-v1-256  Hope that helps! 



@slosh Thankyou!

almighty_gir

Hey this looks really good!

It's similar to how i do it (loft objects), time consuming, but good results with lots of flexibility over the card twists and width etc.

HazelTheHobbit

@almighty_gir Thankyou! Yeah if there's one thing I've learned about doing hair is that whatever you do its gonna be time consuming! 

HazelTheHobbit

Okay I'm calling this one done! Was pleasantly surprised with how it turned out! I've decided to upload it on artstation cause I'm pretty proud of it so check it out if you wanna! https://www.artstation.com/artwork/A9XP8y

Also the tri count ended up being 28k but there's definitely some optimising I could do in there if I really had to! If you have any questions or anything let me know and I'll try my best to help!

Any crit is of course v welcome and suggestions of what hair to tackle next! I have some in mind but gonna do some digging for good reference

OlivierLau

@HazelTheHobbit Awesome results! I've also made a hair clump tool that can help create hair/fur textures, it has many features. If you want to try it out feel free to contact me in PM.
 

RobertRamsay

Hey, thanks for using the Hair Strand Designer tool. If you also need a way to render in realtime. I have shaders for Unreal and Unity. https://gumroad.com/l/CgsNr

I'll keep developing it for more features. (It's only been out 3 weeks or so)

Amazing work on the hair! You'd make for a nice Lara Croft Hair stylist!

HazelTheHobbit

@OlivierLau Thankyou! That looks like a really powerful tool I'll see if I can take a look  

@RobertRamsay Thankyou! I'm really looking forward to the new features! 

HazelTheHobbit

Okay so I've picked a new style to tackle and its already proving more difficult than the last so this will be a good challenge  
The short style is still quite controlled but has a bit more freedom than the french plait did





Very early days! 

HazelTheHobbit

A little update! Switched to Xgen for the cards for this but still not completely happy with them! Definitely struggling with this, harder to feel motivated whenyou're not as happy with how its going. Still chugging along though