Curly Hair

beartraps

I'm a bit of a hair noob, any ideas or recommendations on how to make curly hair for a character?

renderhjs

with the help of Google I was able to find these:

not that long ago:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?p=1134469

http://wiki.polycount.com/Opacity%20Map
http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/CreatingHairUsingAlpha.html
http://www.paultosca.com/varga_hair.html#hairtex
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?t=085985

Mark Dygert

Depends on the hair...
Race?
Man or woman?
Short, Med or Long hair?
Tight curls or loose?

Have any particular hairstyles in mind? Images and more info always help.
Also what app? Zbrush, Max, Maya, 3DCoat?

Some general construction ideas:
Long curls.
- Create a coil, select and edge convert it to a shape/spline, turn the spline to rectangle, turn on generate mapping coordinates (which will give you an easy to paint on UV strip) delete the excess geometry, paint your hair and call it a day.

Short curls.
- Create a small loop, use an object painter script to scatter it over a scalp object.

beartraps

render hjs: thanks man, but I've already seen those

Vig: I'm using Maya and photoshop, Its for a white woman, shoulder length curly hair similar to this photo:

http://image3.examiner.com/images/blog/EXID9881/images/curly-hair.jpg

I tried using CV curves in maya but when I render it into a ribbon using MoP's script, the geo twists all over the place.

What I ended up doing with not such great results is painting curly strands in photoshop and then assigning them to planes with about 4-6 segments. I would post but I don't think I can since I signed an NDA.

Mark Dygert

Hummm I remember someone posting about that twisting.
Post #32
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=69325&page=2

I thought Maya had a helix or spring primitive shape/curve? Hopefully that won't twist on you...

Just to make sure we're on the same page, This is what I'm suggesting: