This hair is not a texture or bump map it is a model with individual strands of hair created in cinema4DXL The .obj file is 2.3 megs and easily handled in poser by my MAC G3

the crude wig depicted here was quickly trimmed out
with the marquee selection tool in points mode in Cinema4DXL7 and the strand setting was at its lowest so forgive its look,
note how the blue rim lighting creates highlights on the left side just as it would on real hair
I think with a little more serious effort
with the model shaping tools of cinema4d,
i will be able to create a variety of " Multi-strand wigs for poser without the use of texture maps

this is fun!!!

Fascinating. It looks more like fur than hair at this point... but that isn't a bad thing, either. (We need real fur for clothing trims, raccoons and other critters, and special effects.) Please keep playing with this!

It looks promising. Maybe the strands are like 8-axial-segment pointy cylinders with 4 radial polygons - 32 polygons per strand. Then a 1,000-strand wig would have 32,000 polygons. If there are 100,000 hairs on a girl's head, you'd use some shortcuts to multiply the strand count.

Here is a Quick flat top for mike and a very rough test wig on stephanie

over the next week i wiil experiment with shaped patches in cinema with the hairs lay in the required direction to for various styles for men and women
i shall keep you posted

You might also try a "Russian" hat, or earwarmers, or I know! Mink belly button warmers. ;^) I'm thinking of fairly simple shapes where getting the hairs to lie in one direction aren't as critical, but you can still make something useful and ornamental, and then build on successes. Skrogg suggests a toy mouse, too. (When my cat learns how to type for herself, we'll all be in trouble.) Carolly

Looks like a cool idea. Keep us posted on progress please. Are you going to experiment with transmapping for the final wigs? That might work, but I haven't the slightest how hard it'd be to work up a trans for that... Anton [or one of the other gurus] once posted a thread on using "replicative uvmapped geometry" - a single uvmapped strand replicated over and over. If you could get a strand or group of strands to share a single uvmap and trans, that might do it. [Hopefully Anton will look in and rescue me from the "I haven't a clue what I'm talking about" syndrome ;)]

It looks like this really works. Aww, now I have to try this myself. ;P

Softimage XSI 2 has a very nice polygonal hair modelling tool as well. It's cost is the only downside of the program.

Ive worked out the fundemental techniques i wii use to make these Multistrand wigs for poser4 here is one i did for Mike2 im still working out the best balance between hair density and obj file size ( this one is 1.5 megs) this is a straight poser render with NO trans maps which is my goal. thre is much to work out but the theory is sound

: -)

Hey, looks pretty good! What is the polygon count? I don't know if anyone has actually done a workable hair modeled at the strand level for Poser. I do my hair at the curl level, the individual hairs made by the trans map, the multi-shell hair others do is a higher order yet. By way of comparision, this is the hair I'm currently working on, 110 curls or so, just under 20,000 polygons, about 4 1/2 Mb file size. Still has a way to go, it will probably be up to 25,000 polys and 125 curls when finished. Most of the curls are double layed, cylinders inside cylinders, to give them "body". ;-) I always assumed you would need 3 pilys around for each strand x 5 or so for length x 5,000 hairs at least or at least 75,000 polygons, which actually would be do-able, with Dina at 120,000 polys, but 10,000 hairs probably wouldn't. Plus the morphs would be killers, too!

Attached Link: http://66.70.166.29/motions/walkAE.mpg

HI Jim Thanks for the complements!! I pulled the mike wig into our lightwave modelor and its a little under 45,000 polygons.

being primarily an animator i rarely do any still renders
and this whole thing started as i was working out creating
a dynamic animated hair system( ala Final Fantasy) for my animated movie
project (See link 1.2 meg mpeg)

but when i realized these polygon based "wigs" might work in still renders
i exported a few as .obj files to see if poser could handle them
the wigs pictured adove do not use transmaps Transmaps
simulate the appearance of individual hairs in still renders
but during an animation in a true raytraced environment like Cinema 4DXL or Lightwave3D
via the propack plugin,
they dont look very convincing when the light and camera angles change
for example look at the wig on Dina at the top of this thread
note how the blue rim lighting on the right literally highlights onto her "hair"
and right shoulder.

and if i develop some wigs i consider worth distributing
they wil be releasd as static .ojb prop sets of various styles and lengths
for men and women with no morphs necessary.

That isn't too bad- and if Lightwave counts faces like Max (2 triangular faces = 1 polygon) it is even better!