okay so a new update..been researching hair a bit more too......

Took out the old hair system and broke the skull cap into two sections now - sides and top. Decided it would be easier this way and also added extra nurbs curves all over.

Ive added a new hair system to the sides as you can see in the image below. The control is better. I am using curves as guides although I could have just generated the hair on the caps. Im just tweaking the clump settings and the multi streaks for the in between additional hair as its a little wavy right now, but Im happy with the progression. You can see in the insert image the curves for the top of the hair. So she wont be looking like a bald dude with a skull cap lol.

cheers
Jay

Dam that's what happens when you go down the pub and fall asleep.

Hair is starting to shape up nice mate :)
Dave

ha ha Dave.

Jay. Ive only used hair a couple of times and it was really rudimentary stuff. Are you using the curves as just a visual guide, or have you attached the hair to them so that they control the direction of the hair? If not the curves...how are you shaping the hair. I remember there is like a 'comb' ability, to manually direct it, but it seemed a bit crude from what I remember. Or you can control hair through maps too can't you...are you using any for this? The hair I used was in Maya 2008, but I think I'm right in saying that's an area that autodesk have made improvements in recent versions?

Hi Jay

it's getting there :P
I could be mistaken ( happens quite often actually) but every time I look at the model I have a feeling that the head should be a bit more elongated.

With regards to the hair system I have seen a guy make the general shape with 1 hairsystem and then add 2 more systems :
one for the short hairs and another for some random hairs to break it up ( make it more organic..

Thanks guys.

Dave: Ahhh it happened to you too LOL, thanks mate, speak on skype in a bit.

Ben: Yeah Im using curves to control the hair, you can generate follicles from the hair cap itself but this is my preferred method on this one for now, I can control the direction and its style easier this way. The hair tool is more suitable for shorter hairs like beards etc. So Ive found anyway. Ive only ever brushed Maya fur in the past, its not too bad but to coin a phrase: Its like brushing your hair with the lights out.

Mastone: Cool. Yes Im going to do the same as well, so this will probably have 3-4 hair systems on it by the end but I need to get the main bulk of it done first you know the strokes.... This is actually my first real proper go with Maya Hair, Ive tinkered with it but nothing too serious, as Ive only used fur before, but its becoming clearer as I go with what I need to do, its nice to learn something new now, as Ive been supervising the model build on a film thats coming out in February next year, now I have a bit of time to learn new stuff. Im lucky to say I made friends with a brilliant FX td from Italy and he really knows his stuff with Hair and cloth so if I run into probs I just give hime a shout LOL

cheers
J

New Update....its almost there, just tweaking the crown at the back. Theres a bit of crowding of curves so need to sort that out. Added a few loose strands to start the finer hair areas too now

cheers
Jay

Looks very nice already, there is something strange going on where the 2 hairsystems meet however;
- the top hairsystem needs to bulge a bit more
- the tesselation on the top hairsystem is a bit rough ( around the pony at the edge-silhoutte-), I mean the curve has a bit of a hard angle to it, you can resolve this by adding a third hairsystem ( or adding more cv's to the curve-rebuilding it-)

Just by viewing your progress I get a bit of a stomache ache remembering my first hair doodles ( styling hair with a newtonfield got the better of me in the end LOL), your first attempt looks much better , keep it up :P

thanks for your 10 cents mastone. Of course my attempt is better LOL

curves dont need a rebuild. plenty of cvs already. More than 8 would just take the piss a bit and would end up with kinks.

As ever Im using reference I dont leave home without it:) . The reference I have theres not really much flesh in the 'parting'. So the meeting of the two systems is correct, I just need to move the curves here and there to still gain some extra baldness there. If anything the front needs to come down more and the side nearest camera needs to come up toward the hair crown.

Im not using newtons at all as I mentioned in a previous post, its all curved based. this is Maya hair - even with the clump system it uses you dont need fields. Just use the brush hair tool. I already tried that but it doesnt suit this piece .You could create the dynamic hair but Im using static.......

Its all tweaks.....as ever.......


onwards
Jay

Ugh. Hair. I was doing this for about a month and a half straight for a project at work. Long hair is the worst. How come you're not using shave anymore?

Hey John

I couldnt be assed to get it for 2011

What is this fear of all things hard that everyone has - with CG hair. We all had a hard time when we first opened up maya - remember those days?? ...sss looks too waxy, dis maps dont work......mental ray is as queer as a bottle of crisps!!! And when it was ahhh holy crap look at Zbrush interface......muuuummm!!!

Come on guys, a man was put on the moon ffs!!

If that can be done back in the 60's on less than cell phone technology, Im sure us as individual artists in the 21st can find a way to do CG hair. I'm sure this attempt wont be the best out there but it wont be my last thats for sure.

I think once this is done to a good enough standard then I'll do a bit of a write up and share my findings.

J

I used maya hair and curves for the avater contest, a lot of playing around with the setting but I must say your results are looking a lot better then mine, it would be nice if you do a wright up.........dave

will do Dave

J

Not complaining. It's just difficult to get hair that looks good. A lot of tedious tweaking and redesigns, especially with clients.

I know mate, I just meant it as a general observation, people are very reluctant with that sort of thing

J

Last one for today

Jay

Hey Jay. Some little things I see. I'm sure you've caught them as well.

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c3...n/Persp029.jpg

Red arrow: There seems to be a divet at the back.
Green lines: You can see the patches that you've created, especially near the part in the hair.
Blue arrow: Hair seems to be flowing in the wrong direction.

Looking good mate!

of course Im aware mate LOL. My main concern was prior to this fix, this is working now, in terms of the broadstrokes

Blue Arrow is correct, if anything the nearest left edge needs to come forward and bulge a bit more, otherwise its near as damn it to the photo. As I said in the previous post, I have reference.

the other bits at the back aren't troublesome just small fixes that I expected anyway. Nothing serious just curve aligning. Im pretty tempted to just give them some spread and leave them random as real hair is anyway.

If anything my eyes jump to the loose strands at the front, they are too far forward and down

J

To me, it looks like it just needs a bit more density at the root.

Indeed................................

J

Update....

moving onto lashes next......

done a test on the textures already but you can wait to see that.......

Jay

Your just teasing now..........LOL.......dave

LOL hey Dave

no mate Im not LOL. I have tested a rexture already and the whole thing looks great but I'll wait until the lashes are done before I move onto showing it.

J

Fantastic job so far J, I have no doubt that this is going to look epic once finished. Keep up the great work and look forward to seeing the final output.

Hey Leonlabyk

thank you for the kind words. I hope it works out too. Ill be doing the zbrush stuff as well as lashes today.

I like that word 'epic' - as long as its not an Epic Fail lol....

cheers
Jay

*play inception sound here* :D

http://inception.davepedu.com/

deep base lol

Update on the texture (just for DaveRave LOL)

This is the first pass, theres a fair bit of tidying up to do, (brows for starters) so no need to point them out thanks.....

Jay

Nice and thanks Jay, are you going to use fast skin..................dave

Hey thanks Dave

Yes, Im actually testing a SSS version now, its looking 100times better already without the other maps.

For the record, I did the texture projections in Mari. The reason was because I have an issue with the spotlight plugin in Zbrush which Im looking into sorting out. The problem in ZB is that when you 'bake the face texture to the mesh/map one half completely disappears as if the normals or uvs are flipped on the model (they aren't for the record) so if anyone has encountered this and solved please let me know as I' rather use Zbrus as I know it better.

cheers
Jay

I found mudbox 2012 a lot better for this fine texturing.....dave

Looks nice, very subtle ...although the brows LOL...

I've been wondering what you mean by this, Jay...as in, the disappearing half in Zbrush. Do you mean like, when you convert the polypaint to texturemap? I've used spotlight a few days ago, and exported the colour map from the result with little problem. My main bug bear was that, having applied the face texture from a photo to the front of the head mesh, it was a pain to match the textures on the side views so that there was no noticeable borders between the two. But I don't think this is what you mean.

Those test renders look lovely. Both the colour, and black and white versions.

No mate.

The problem was my uvs were sitting exactly on the outer edge of the 0 - 1 space in the uv editor. I found out that zbrush doesnt like it. So I moved the uv's in a bit and it is all fine now.

Yeah with the projections do them a bit at a time and then save out separate maps and then correct the colors etc in ps and put them all together there.

cheers
J

Ah. Hmm...ok. Never thought of that. I'll be using Spotlight again maybe at the weekend or next week....I'll give that a try.

Thinking ahead: Letting Uv master lay out my uvs for me might not be too helpful in that case... unless I bring my obj back to Maya to make sure I snapshot the uvs so i can see where the 'boundaries of my puzzle' are in Photoshop???Hmm...that's a bridge to be crossed once/if, I can get happy with my model.

Cheers Jay

Nice & clean! Cool buddy :)

Nice to see some more work on this! The likeness is great. Are there some disp or normal issues on the end of the nose in the latest renders?

Thanks guys

@Mayaniac: No mate, no dis maps or normals on it at all.... its just the version of the color map projection straight out of mari. It was a wip but has since been redone in Zbrush as I prefer its workflow for creating the maps. Its looking much nicer now. Will try and post up later.


I also want to tweak the earlobes and the eyelid thickness. Seeing all the stuff rendered in color now I can see what the big prob areas are.....

Jay

Update....

still a few corrections to do and mesh tweaks as well.........

until then - enjoy

Jay

Thant texture is comming along nicely, lips look great. Eye braws look a little strong but that might change when you texture the eyes...........dave

PS: is there going to be a tutorial in the future

Dave it might if I can get him drunk enough he agrees while under the influence :D

Dave :)