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Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Dec 26, 2021 21:30:24 GMT -5
Hello. I really, really, really want to learn to make alpha hair. I've been wanting to for years but was too intimidated. Lately, I've been watching a lot of YouTube videos on modeling hair and a lot of them involve modeling stylized hair using curves—a style that would match how EA's hairs are made in TS4—and then rendering the results. Some involve making hair cards, which is what I want to learn. None, however, cover UV unwrapping the hair and this is frustrating to me. I need to find a tutorial that covers UV unwrapping in addition to one that teaches modeling hair cards. I've been looking into the hair tool addon. It's not cheap, however. Has anyone used it? Is it worth it? If not, does anyone know of any tutorials that cover modeling hair cards and UV unwrapping them? Examples below. Hair Tool: "Stylized" hair modeling: |
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Post by mauvemorn on Dec 27, 2021 8:01:09 GMT -5
Hi. For what you need it, it does not do anything the vanilla blender cannot When you model hair with curves, you can simply click on this button and get perfectly straight uvs that can later be adjusted  Alternately, you can model with no regards for uvs, then split the mesh like you’d want the mesh to be split into uv islands, then either do a light pack unwrap + Stitch or uv unwrap + follow active quads. While we are on the subject, I do not recommend you to model alpha hair like this: - common method #1: create planes, project hair texture on it, duplicate one of these planes, and start reshaping it to fit the head. This is masochism. And you will not get anything better than if you were to model it differently, just waste your time; - common method #2: create a hair system with the full scalp populated with hair randomly, groom them, convert to curves, extrude them, convert to mesh. This will result in a very high poly mesh with a lot of overlapping strands Recommend ways: method #1: create an overall shape either from a primitive, or primitive + roughly reshaped in the sculpt mode(faster), retopologized with bsurface addon(desired edge flow), choose some edge loops, duplicate, turn to curves ( these will be your extra strands); method #2: creates curves (using Path option) and make hair this way; method #3: using the hair system, create a few guides manually, then either simulate them or groom them into place. Then you can turn them into curves and so on |
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Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Dec 28, 2021 5:27:03 GMT -5
This is what I'm seeing everywhere: "common method #1: create planes, project hair texture on it, duplicate one of these planes, and start reshaping it to fit the head." Seems like every video I look at teaches the same thing. It's really hard to find anything that teaches how to model hair. Do you know of any good ones I can watch? "method #1: create an overall shape either from a primitive, or primitive + roughly reshaped in the sculpt mode(faster), retopologized with bsurface addon(desired edge flow), choose some edge loops, duplicate, turn to curves ( these will be your extra strands)" This will result in a hair that is not made up of hair cards but that is more like EA hairs, correct? Also, thank you, thank you for your help!  |
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Post by mauvemorn on Dec 28, 2021 12:22:13 GMT -5
I think this one is best but it probably does not teach anything that the video you linked doesnt. Like, remember that these people are not making hair for games, those are for renders
Also, I forgot to mention that there is an addon that makes the process of creating mesh hair easier
No, maxis hair is manifold (no holes, no intersections, one whole object). That method will give you hair that is made of planes, but you will model it in a way that is reasonable. If you will look at the hair made by people who actually make hair for games instead of people who make tutorial about how to make hair for games, you will see that there is one overall shape split into individual strand-like uv islands and a few extra strands here and there
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Post by Fwecka (Lolabellesims) on Dec 29, 2021 2:29:54 GMT -5
Thanks for the links. I do find that most videos are geared toward rendering and not toward making game assets. This is frustrating to me.
Edit: I watched this video and it didn't cover UV unwrapping, which is something I will need to research more. It also seems to be more appropriate to Maxis hair and not so much alpha hair. Am I understanding that correctly?
In addition to learning to make Maxis hair, I'd like to learn to make alpha hair. I understand how layering works, how to add new cuts, and how to change the shaders. What I don't know is how to model the actual hair cards and UV unwrap them in a way that isn't a ton of painstaking work.
What do you think of this method?
P.S. That addon looks like so much fun!
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Post by mauvemorn on Dec 29, 2021 5:41:24 GMT -5
You just click on that button and the uvs are created. When you will convert curves to mesh, you will have perfectly straight uvs, there is nothing else you need to do other than resize and lay them out in a way that you need
And again, maxis and alpha hair are modeled the same way. With maxis hair, the strands are just thicker, with alpha, they are one-sided
the method you linked is the method#1 that I said not to do. You will spend hours if not days on it
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