Hey guys i've had this idea in my head for a while and wanted to know if you guys think it would be usefull enough
after seeing some lowpoly hairmeshes and trying to create some myself i wondered if there wouldn't be a way to script a tool that would make peoples life a little easier
Basicly what the script should be able to do is have you determine the flow of hairgroups on a sculpted blockoutmesh with a few splines by drawing them ontop of it an then create proper planes that go with that flow and be able to put some intersection/variation in there.
Here's a good example of how the end result should look like taken from
Hazardous Rubi Malone topic
So the steps would be
1. Have your lowpoly bald model
2. Have a Blockout mesh that determines the flow and mass of the hair
3. Create a new hairgroup in the tool and determine your hairline for that group on the bald lowpoly mesh
4. Draw a few splines ontop of the blockout mesh (using a special brush fcourse with automatic surface snapping)
5. Set the amount of strands of hair you want + detail per strands (livepreview of result?)
it would be cool to also have extra features for different hairtypes.
Anyway do you guys think it would be useful ? If so do you have any suggestions/ideas and do you have reference of some of the better hairmeshes out there?
tnx
Replies
Request - A way to make splines 'bend' or 'contract' near the edges maybe? Sometimes hair (especially the front fringe part) will arc like a rainbow, but clump together near the extremities. If you could include a variable to control how tightly packed together hair is near the ends, that would be awesome.
Request - Maybe add the options of enabling the user to 'select' a mesh and use that as a mother-copy? Say instead of a flat plane, someone wants a twirled hairstyle, and they have the basic mesh ready, they could select that as the clone, and using the script have them be set out properly.
Naturally, you're free to shoot down any of my idea's, I'm just throwing them out there because you asked for them and because you're awesome ;P
That pic shows a lot of hair and animating it is gonna be work.
Hazardous: you'll be the first one to know when i got something working ^^
Ace-Angel: 3 good requests imo! tnx
I want to make it a fullfeature script that can handle any hairstyle ranging from short to long or curly or mohawk or afro so i'll have to think of a way to be able to fully control the entire mesh in an easy way.
It's going to be a fun challenge ^^
Also the Pixar paper on Volumetric Methods for Simulation and Rendering of Hair might be helpful.
I really like the idea of being able to generate higher poly geometry that can be rendered and baked down.
Being able to define strands or clumps that are instances would be great.
http://phungdinhdung.com/Studies_paper/GMH_index.shtm