Is there any kind of a "symmetry mirroring" mode possible in the hair room in P5? Im trying to do a womans hairstyle involving some pretty complex layering, and its hard to keep it symmetrical. Help!

um, short (and pretty much only) answer: nope.

Ack...sombody at curious screwed the pooch on that one. Oh well, Ill take notes on my settings then.

Real hair isn't symmetrical. I think it may have something to do with what side you sleep most on.

No, I think it's genetic. Hair grows in whorls, and which way they go seems to be inborn. Or at least determined in utero.

Still, a symmetry function would be a handy thing, methinks. You can always tweak it to look more natural later.

There are people who study which way snails curl... I wonder of anybody has looked at cowlicks systematically? You'd need a lot of class pictures from the rear to get a wide enough sample.

They have. Believe it or not, the gene that controls the direction hair grows in is the same in fruit flies, mice, and humans. (In the case of fruit flies, it's the hair on their legs, if you're wondering.) They've also found people whose hair is unusually unruly are prone to certain neurological problems, probably because one of the genes that control hair direction also lays out the pattern of nerves underneath it.

Human hair patterns are also linked to left and right handedness. Think of "mirror twins" - identical twins, except they are mirror images of each other. One has hair parted on the right, one has hair parted on the left. And one is right handed, the other left handed.

So... people who part their hair in the middle are ambidextrous? ;^) Dogs and rodents sometimes have funny little whorls. I just looked over at Skrogg and asked if I could search her hair and she gave me one of "those looks"... being a long-haired cat, any curliness would be hard to notice anyway. I've read something about the gene which determines stripes during development, but not about whorliness. Now I'm curious. Fruit fly legs are something else again. Those aren't really hairs, if hairs are something only mammals have. Carolly

Attached Link: http://edition.cnn.com/2004/HEALTH/05/24/bad.hair.gene.ap/

Fruit flies may not have mammalian hair, but I suspect the hairs on their legs serve some of the same purposes. They are probably linked to nerves that provide tactile feedback - like a cat's whiskers. Probably hair evolved as part of the sensory system before it began serving its better-known function as insulation and sexual attractant. If you think about it, when hair first evolved, there were probably only a few of them. So they had to be useful, even if sparse, to be passed on.