I'm looking to learn how to create hair models, as I want to create a few male hairstyles for characters who are a bit older (35+).

Anyone have a set of tutorials to point to on the subject of creating conforming hair? I've not had any luck searching either on Google or via Renderosity search so far.

I should say conforming or PROP hair... as opposed to hair-room-based strand hair. For a short hairstyle, a prop hair is probably as good of choice as any, from my (I stress) limited knowledge.

Yes please! Trying to figure that one out myself. Does plus3D ever come to the forums?

Wait, I just remembered this thread:

www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php

Besides the app that PhilC is working on (progress report, please????), I noted there's a link to a tutorial:

www.3dtotal.com/ffa/tutorials/max/joanofarc/hair1.asp

Haven't read it yet - gonna do that right now.

Mm, not a whole lot to that tut (which I now remember seeing before). I don't have 3DS, either....

Heehee. Well, I haven't a clue what I'm doing at all, but this is what I've done in the last hour or so working back and forth between Argile and Poser Pro. (Just colour, no texture, obviously.)

No serious modeller would want to look at the way the polygons are constructed, but it sorta looks like hair....

i KNOW there is a great tutorial out there, but i cannot find it right now...
but i think the essence is something like that...
www.paultosca.com/varga_hair.html
maybe i can find it....
FOUND it.
www.art-collaborations.com/Valea_HexHair.pdf

hope that helps, only read it once to get a vague theory... and there are sure way more ways :)

well, you could conform it to go just a touch below the head, to make appropriate bald spots...;)

Yeah. I'm actually planning on working on several approaches, ultimately. This one just has a receding hairline.

Hi Believeable, and all

check this out

http://www.philc.net/HairDesigner.htm

I can't tell you much about it, because I just purchased it myself.

But might be worth looking at :)

Thanks. See the post from April 6 above - I knew Phil was working on it, but never got alerted that it was now available.

Yes I just got the alert in his newsletter yesterday. I been waiting for it too :)

I purchased it... just waiting for my download link now.

Believable3d, The most common method is to use splines. Here I have 3 splines attached and then cross stiched and made into a polygon (depending on your modeling program you will have different tool names but the process will be simular). Once it's a polygon then you can sub-divide, twist and manipulate it to your hearts content. Usually the hair will consist of several of these seperate poly pieces (15-30 lets say). Then you can make some of them morphable for a wind blown look.

Hope this helps

Since my know-how on modeling amounts to probably a Tablespoon, I've always wondered about making hair. Is 3dsMax is the only program used for hair? That program costs around what, $4k? That's a lot of money to shell out for practise makes perfect modeling. Can any modeling program do the same thing? Would using PhilCs program be kind of a get your feet wet in modeling hair? I was hoping to see more tests posted. What have you discovered so far, Believable3d? 

Honestly, I haven't had time to do any 3D work for at least a month.

Most programs should work with some kind of spline and/or line.
As in my example you would then stich these together and convert to a polygon. This is an oversimplified method, but that is essentially what's done.

Any modeller can create hair . I would suggest looking at the Poser prop hair for Poser 4 and at kozoboros hair models .

Th concept is a stack of overlapping planes that are bent to follow the flow of the hairstyle. Transparency mapping gives the impression of strands of hair and a depth . 

I wonder why there aren't any tutorials for hair, since there has been an explosion in hair products recently by a whole bunch of people, at least since I started using Poser, back in 2004. So it makes me think it's an easy process and therefore no need for any tuts? Or a super duper ultra secret that you need to be a member in the hair club for Poser in order to share? 

Thanks Dark for putting probably the most informative bit of info on hair modeling that I've come across. Hmm maybe you could do a tutorial? ;)

Putting together a tutorial takes a great deal of work...specially if you're trying to make it not be app specific, which makes it more difficult than just a normal tutorial for a given program.

Myself - I use a modified sphere for the skull cap, then build hair strands up with planes. (pretty similar to DarkEdge, just I skip the splines and go straight for the primitives). For toony hair, I use cylinders with the cap polys deleted. I set up the mapping on my primitives before I start constructing the hair which can save a lot of headache later on. Generally the only thing I have to fiddle with for mapping is the skull cap, and once I get one finished for a figure I simply reuse it for the next hair.

But even more important than how a hair is built is how it's mapped. If the mapping isn't easy to work with for making textures, doesn't matter how well it's built. Textures and transmaps can make or break a hair model....why I ended up with a texturing partner for some projects.

I basically just kinda taught myself, and just experimented. I pulled different hair models into Max, pulled them apart to inspect the different elements and then just fiddled around until I found a way that worked for me and got similar results.

Can't say exactly when, but I could probably whip some sort of intro type tutorial up for some basic hair modeling tips. Can see how I setup tutorials here, most recent batch are the Sailor Moon ones. (doesn't do me to waste time on a tutorial people can't learn from based on how I teach)

http://forums.realmofsavage.com/forums/24/ShowForum.aspx

Well done PhilC for taking the mystery out of making conforming hair. I have made two hairstyles myself, modelling and UV-mapping in Blender. Probably not the most efficient way, but they turned out usable and I learned a lot. For me the Hair Designer is great news. But even if you don't buy it, just going through the demonstrations on the product explains some basic principles very well, even if you are going to model the hair elements yourself.

Quote - IThanks Dark for putting probably the most informative bit of info on hair modeling that I've come across. Hmm maybe you could do a tutorial? ;)

Ask and you shall recieve.
Working with primitives is easy enough so I won't go into that but how about I show you how to create a long flowing mane from splines...will that work for you?

Thanks Realmling for your posting and it would be great to see some hair making tuts. I understand it's time consuming, I want to give it a try but at same time I'm thinking, maybe I should just stick to buying the hair... :) I don't know if I have the patience for it.

Nanette--did you buy the Hair Designer? I wish more people would post their hair designs. I would rather like to see what people have done who just bought the program when it went on sale than seeing the designs made by people who have had the program for a while. But come to think about it, the HD is the price of a hair item nowadays...so maybe it might be worth spending money on it, I wonder if the HD can be used to adjust or add onto exsisting hair that someone made? 

BTW Nanette, your avatar is just too darn cute! I think his/her breed is where they got the name Terror-iers from ;) I bet it is a rascal!