How to make Mesh Hair?

[princxsamileena]

I’ve been trying to teach myself how create mesh hair in SL but the struggle is real!

At this point, I’m willing to pay for someone to teach me. Does anyone have any links, thoughts or expertise to give to a mesh newbie?! And if your interested in being paid to teach me, slide me a message 😊

 

Thanks! 

Edited December 15, 2020 by princxsamileena

[arton Rotaru]

I have no expertise in creating hair, so personally I can't help. However, since there aren't any replies in this toopic as of yet, I'll just post what I would try to do. First I would search youtube for "creating hair for games", and "creating hair for second life".
In doing so, I just skipped through the first video that came up https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z58OQ9x0E68 and caught a sentence from the hair maker there, which was something like: "as you work on your model, you are working on something for quite a while, that doesn't necessarily look very good. It doesn't look and feel like hair for quite some time." To me that sounds kind of reliefing actually.

Personally I think making great looking hair is quite a challenge even for experienced mesh modelers. As a mesh newbie I would certainly start of with something much easier to create than hair styles. To get some satisfactory results more quickly. What will make me eager to learn more, and more advanced things later on.

That's just my 2cents. If it really has to be hair, you should keep banging on it. Could be a tough one though.

Edited December 16, 2020 by arton Rotaru

[Kyrah Abattoir]

https://3dtotal.com/tutorials/t/low-polygon-hair-texturing-ben-mathis

This seem more suitable to a highly dynamic environment like SL imho.

@arton Rotaru's video seem more suited for singleplayer games with limited numbers of characters on screen.

Edited December 17, 2020 by Kyrah Abattoir

[chaineduplezkittym]

you're gonna wanna learn how to create "hair cards" from "particle hair" with programs like blender, maya, even zbrush.


good vid for tutorials - 

vid can help point you in the direction you might be wanting to go.
if you are seeking more stylized hair like you see in overwatch and such, learn how to use "benzier curves" with meshes from "dannymac 3d here - 

they show a wonderful means on how to get great stylized hair.
just watch out for polycount and learn how to retopo and "decimate" properly to not suddenly send in piece's of hair reaching upwards of millions of poly's.

hope this helps point in a good direction.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

@chaineduplezkittym

First one seem interesting but doesn't address the alpha issues you will encounter by over-layering, unless alpha masking is used.

Second is not suitable for low polygon modeling unless the mode is remeshed after.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

I just found this hair creator, these are not really tutorials but it still show some of his process, and what I'm seeing is excellent.

• Scalp/hairbase/hairline (very important, not making a hairbase is what typically lead to creators over-layering as an attempt to cover the scalp)
• Low poly approach.
• Good understanding of what should be modeled as a hair mass and what should be strands.
• Good texturing.

Here is one of their videos but they have a couple more.

(they are overdoing it a bit on the flex stands, but that's the only issue i can see)

 

Edited January 5, 2021 by Kyrah Abattoir

[eiriesen]

Hi! Well, creating hair is kinda difficult for what i've seen, you need to work with all the alpha maps, look for a way to have a great hair without killing other's computer with an absurd amount of polygons. 

I have some tutorials I've seen that might help you. 

The basic of hair modelling (Not too in depth so it might not help very well.)

 There is an entire tutorial to create hair by Colores Urbanos (A Sims 4 Custom Content Creator) but it is in Spanish. If you need I can always translate it to you in any part you have a question abt if you don't understand the language. Here is the link:

You will see the first video to set up your workspace and after that you go to the last 6 videos that are the one's that talk about the hair making process.

(The hair is made in 3dsmax because of transparency issues being better to catch with this software but you can also use blender to make the hair.)

The easiest way to rig hair (Rigging is very trial and error tbh)

Different ways to make hair textures: 

And if you're interested in it, how to make flexi hair:

 

One thing you need to always have in mind when doing, for what i've seen: 

Avoid at all cost planes interceting each other. 

Alpha layers can't be one under the other, you also need to take a look into that to avoid transparency issues. I'm not sure how SL reads Alpha layers but in Sims 4 the engine of the game can't read the Alpha very well bcs they're supposed to be used only in glasses but people use them for clothing and for hair too.

I hope you're sucessful in creating hair! Have fun, bye.

 

PS: If you have questions, you can always ask, I can't promise I'll be able to answer because I don't create hair yet.

[Kyrah Abattoir]

On 2/3/2021 at 4:57 PM, eiriesen said:

Alpha layers can't be one under the other, you also need to take a look into that to avoid transparency issues. I'm not sure how SL reads Alpha layers but in Sims 4 the engine of the game can't read the Alpha very well bcs they're supposed to be used only in glasses but people use them for clothing and for hair too.

It is a problem that exist in pretty much every game under the sun, some are better at mitigating it, but alpha blended surfaces are rendered in reverse order to account for multi-layered surfaces.