Creating Mesh Hair with Maya - Texturing Question

[Sanya Bilavio]

I've been struggling with figuring out how to texture my mesh rigged hair. Im using maya 2010. 

The last hair i made i had a friend help me and she said the only way to texture it would be by unwrapping the hair and putting it on the map like below 

http://gyazo.com/8685ebde7229d5aa455a978a068c8874.png?1338699475

Problem with this is it lowered the detail of the texture drastically, and there were issues with opac triangles being seen by certain people who wore it. I also couldnt use the textures id been using up to this point including the strand textures. 

http://gyazo.com/526f1ec0a4e65f7731a05b876e99150a.png?1338699722

Based off how other people are doing it, i've noticed that there is a way to texture hair without doing this, basically its like their texturing it just like they would a sculpt. Their textures dont look less detailed and their strands are exactly the same etc. 

Sooo, im wondering if anyone here knows how to do this? 

 

** At the moment im creating the hair with NURBS then converting it to polygons. 

[Cathy Foil]

Wow that is a lot of polygons in your example.  Hair always seems to be one of the biggest lag producing objects people wear.

Anyway to get to your question.   You can stack your uvs of the individual hairs on top of each other.  This way you are basically using the same pixel on all your hair strands.  This will allow you to make the UVs bigger using more of the hair texture image.  You could even try using an oblong texture instead of a square texture since your hair is longer than it is wider.  Say a texture that is 128 pixels wide by 1024 pixels tall.

Now of course in Maya an oblong texture will still show up as square in the UV Texture Editor.  So you would stretch the UVs wider to cover as much of the texture as you can.

Hope that helps.

Cathy

[Chosen Few]

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Cathy Foil wrote:

Now of course in Maya an oblong texture will still show up as square in the UV Texture Editor.

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You can very easily change the UV canvas aspect ratio to match the texture's native aspect ratio.  In your UV Texture Editor, just click Image -> Use Image Ratio.   The UV canvas will reporportion itself to match the image proportions.  Enjoy.

[Chosen Few]

I agree with Cathy; that is a heck of a lot of polygons.  You may want to retopologize.  Chances are you could lower it considerably, with little to no noticeable loss of detail.

As for increasing your texture resolution issue, Cathy's suggestion of allowing multiple sections of the hair to share the same UV space is good advice.  I would add to that by further suggesting that you divide the texture canvas into a three panels: one depicting the hair image at its base color, one showing it highlighted, and the third showing it in shadow.  You'll then be able to add nice lightiing effects simply by moving UV shells to appropriate areas of the canvas.

With clever UV'ing, a single light-weight texture can go a VERY long way.

[Cathy Foil]

Cool thanks Chosen!  I had forgotten about the "Use Image Ratio" option.

I have a question.  I know you can expand the image range in the UV Texture Editor so that it repeats the image file.  A lot of times instead of stacking UVs on top of each other I will use the other three quadrants of the UV Texture Editor and just change the image range from the default of Minimum U: and V: of 0.0000 to -1.0000..  This gives me the same texture image in all four quadrants.  I know I can expand the grid and the image range bigger if I want to.  I also know that you can change the image being displayed simply by clicking Image at the top and selecting a different file.

What I like to do is be able to show different image files in the different quadrants all at the same time. Do you know if that if possible?  I have searched and searched and haven't been able to crack it.  I know I could combine say four textures onto one photoshop file but that file would be huge then.

Anyway any advice would be great.
Thanks!  

[Chosen Few]

Interesting question, Cathy.  I don't know of any way to do that.  I could see it as pretty useful, for working with multiple materials.  It's a good idea.

[Sanya Bilavio]

Thanks so much Cathy & Chosen ill see if your suggestions work