Rigged hair blues

[GoSpeed Racer]

Recently I upgraded my ALT Kona Falconer to a mesh head and found an irritating problem. Her primary hair piece from Truth cuts through her ears:

The hair (Yelena) is rigged and cannot be modified at all. To remove the offending section I could either slide the head size to 100% or shrink the ears to 18%. Neither option is desirable. Looking like a Talosian or a Minbari is not an option either. Is there some other trick I can try? If not, can anyone recommend a similar hairpiece from another vendor?

Edited February 22, 2020 by GoSpeed Racer
added word

[Orwar]

   This is a common issue with rigged hairs, as they seldom say which head they're rigged for. I use Genus Strong on my alt, and the head shape of that around the brow and crown makes it so that almost all rigged hairs either clip with the forehead or is too wide so that the hair floats over the temples. Playing around with various sliders may improve the fit, but it's severely limiting to what you can do with your shape and which heads are 'viable' for different hair brands.

   The fact that the hairs do move with the sliders is in this case not always a good thing either, since that means that even if you try to widen the head to make it fit into the hair, the hair will get wider as well. It's extremely annoying sometimes, and before I managed to change my shape to work with my favourite hair brand's rigging I had to turn off the meshed 'hairbase' bit and use an applied hairbase (and suffer the alpha cuts that tends to come with those). Unfortunately there's not much you can do about it, but find an unrigged hair, or a rigged hair that works with the base shape of your head and plays nicely with the sliders.

   ... Or you could wear headphones or ear muffs. 

[GoSpeed Racer]

If Kona was a senior citizen I'd make her wear a hearing aid, but alas she's a 20-something in prime condition.

A fellow Flickr user pointed me to a few haistores and I found his hairstyle from Wasabi:

Wasabi - Madison

 

It's fairly close to the original style, so success!

[Orion Pastorelli]

@GoSpeed Racer

Another solution is to use 3rd Party Mesh ears. Most mesh heads give you the option to "Turn Off" the default ear so you can use others in their place. These 3rd party ears are usually better looking and their position can be adjusted to accommodate almost any rigged hair.

L'Etre has a great selection that are textured in such a way that makes them easy to color match.

 

[Maitimo]

1 hour ago, Orion Pastorelli said:

@GoSpeed Racer

Another solution is to use 3rd Party Mesh ears. Most mesh heads give you the option to "Turn Off" the default ear so you can use others in their place. These 3rd party ears are usually better looking and their position can be adjusted to accommodate almost any rigged hair.

I use mesh ears because the built in ones look kind of ugly when stretced to a point.

However, I find two disadvantages to them; first, its impossible to get a perfect match - what may be perfect today wil not be perfect tomorrow, or even in ten minutes time, under different lighting conditions. Perfect matching won't happen until someone makes BoM or applier ears.

Second, they can add a lot to avatar complexity. My pair of Mandala ears is more than 5 times the complexity of my whole head. So I have another pair of much simpler ones for wearing in busy places.

[Orion Pastorelli]

20 hours ago, Matty Luminos said:

I use mesh ears because the built in ones look kind of ugly when stretced to a point.

However, I find two disadvantages to them; first, its impossible to get a perfect match - what may be perfect today wil not be perfect tomorrow, or even in ten minutes time, under different lighting conditions. Perfect matching won't happen until someone makes BoM or applier ears.

Second, they can add a lot to avatar complexity. My pair of Mandala ears is more than 5 times the complexity of my whole head. So I have another pair of much simpler ones for wearing in busy places.

I have had similar experiences with mesh ears and have gone through several brands; including Mandala and Swallow. I recommend the L'Etre ears because they address the two points you bring up. 

First, because of the way they are textured, darker and shadowed at the base, they are by far the easiest ears to color match in my experience.

Second, while I don't remember the exact numbers off the top of my head, their complexity score was within reason.

[Orwar]

37 minutes ago, Orion Pastorelli said:

I have had similar experiences with mesh ears and have gone through several brands; including Mandala and Swallow. I recommend the L'Etre ears because they address the two points you bring up. 

First, because of the way they are textured, darker and shadowed at the base, they are by far the easiest ears to color match in my experience.

Second, while I don't remember the exact numbers off the top of my head, their complexity score was within reason.

   I seem to recall trying to try them, but never finding any demo. It might just be that the store is confusing (the product even tells you to try a demo), but there is none? It's been a while now though, so I might be mistaken.

[LittleMe Jewell]

23 hours ago, Matty Luminos said:

I use mesh ears because the built in ones look kind of ugly when stretced to a point.

Mesh heads do NOT include the ears?   I've not yet tried mesh heads so I did not know that.  Having to add mesh ears just means adding another color tone match issue.  Total bummer.

[Cindy Evanier]

22 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Mesh heads do NOT include the ears?   I've not yet tried mesh heads so I did not know that.  Having to add mesh ears just means adding another color tone match issue.  Total bummer.

My lelutka includes attached ears. Thank god.   I can turn them off for certain hair styles or using different ears (I don't)  

[Beth Macbain]

32 minutes ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Mesh heads do NOT include the ears?   I've not yet tried mesh heads so I did not know that.  Having to add mesh ears just means adding another color tone match issue.  Total bummer.

All the mesh heads that I've worn have ears. CATWA has an add on HUD that can adjust ears closer or further away from the head, and Lelutka has that option built into their HUD. I think Genus does, too, but I don't remember without looking and I'm at work right now.

Some people hide the ears included on the head and go with other mesh ears. This is something I absolutely cannot be buggered with, so I don't. There are a couple different hairs by one certain creator that I just can't wear because no matter what I do to the ears, they just don't fit. With I'd say 98% of the hair I own (and I'm a total hair ho) it's not an issue. 

[LittleMe Jewell]

30 minutes ago, Cindy Evanier said:

My lelutka includes attached ears. Thank god.   I can turn them off for certain hair styles or using different ears (I don't)  

 

17 minutes ago, Beth Macbain said:

All the mesh heads that I've worn have ears. CATWA has an add on HUD that can adjust ears closer or further away from the head, and Lelutka has that option built into their HUD. I think Genus does, too, but I don't remember without looking and I'm at work right now.

Some people hide the ears included on the head and go with other mesh ears. This is something I absolutely cannot be buggered with, so I don't. There are a couple different hairs by one certain creator that I just can't wear because no matter what I do to the ears, they just don't fit. With I'd say 98% of the hair I own (and I'm a total hair ho) it's not an issue. 

 

Okay, good to know.  I just need to remember to try on many of my favorite hairstyles, checking the ears, when I do finally start to demo mesh heads.  

[Maitimo]

5 hours ago, LittleMe Jewell said:

Mesh heads do NOT include the ears?   I've not yet tried mesh heads so I did not know that.  Having to add mesh ears just means adding another color tone match issue.  Total bummer.

They do, but you can turn them off if you want to use third-party ears instead. You don't have to get separate ears if you don't want to.

[GoSpeed Racer]

I randomly came across a hair store I've never heard of before, Navy & Copper. This hair looks very nice on Kona!