Feedback needed on hair

Hi. The hair looks great but it is not made in the maxis way( if that was the goal). I don't see a point in re-making the shape but there are a few things you need to fix and a few things to keep in mind when making hair for the sims 4 in the future

1). The polycount is certainly higher than reasonable. When working with curves, adjust their polycount instead of bodying the mesh with Decimate in the end (quoted text only);

2). If you were to study a similar maxis hair, you'd see that it is manifold. Instead of individual strands of hair, there is only one object with no holes or intersection. All parts of the strands that would not be visible simply do not exist. This is how newer maxis hairs stay low poly while being so detailed. They sculpt the hair first or use curves as well, then retopologize the mesh manually

3). If you were to put this hair on a sim and raise the breasts or make them bigger, the tips of the hair would follow along. If you were to look through maxis hair, youd notice that none of it reaches the breast to avoid this exact issues ( when it gets close, they move it away from the breasts, which looks awkward from the side)

4). When transferring weights in 2.76-2.79 version of blender, make sure to always use Clean with All groups. When it comes to hair, its best to actually rig it manually with the gradient tool, otherwise it can move in a jagged manner;

5). the hair has no proper uv_1 and wont morph correctly. I would not advise to transfer it from another hair, its best to join the head and the top, then transfer uv_1 from this item


6). the hair is not vertex painted at all, wont morph correctly. This is something that you can transfer from the reference with no problem


7). One more thing you'll notice when studying maxis hair, is that the uvs in uv_0 do not overlap. Each of them has a unique placement, which allows the developers to bake ambient occlusion and give the hair its signature maxis look. If you will project the same texture on many strands, you'll see that it does not really look maxis-y even though the texture is. It will be very difficult to recreate this process and get the right shades, so this is just hashtag the more you know