Anyone know a good place to get tutorials on creating realistic hair for your figures? Thanks.

Most of the hair tutorials I've seen involve post production work.....I've been thing of trying something with 3dsMAX and Clothreyes....Slender strips of cloth attached to a scalp at one end and run through clothreyes would make awesome hair....Loooong time to create though....If I work out the tech, I'll post a tut - Kendo2112

What's Clothreyes? And about how much does it cost? Forgive my lack of knowledge.

Clothreyes is a 3D Studio Max R3 plug-in. The current verion is offered free from www.Reyes-infographica.com This plug-in allows you to add real world physics and cloth dynamics to a mesh. - Kendo that sounds similar to something I was playing with, Transmapping some hexmesh strips parented to a dummy head then using the Clothreyes modifier on them. It's just one of those things that needs patience to get the right look for. Maybe it works better on certain hairstyles. I got the idea from seeing recent videogame cutscenes where the hair seems to use cloth dynamics and is transparency mapped. (Check out Final Fantasy 9) I also tried using the Poser treemaker in conjuntion with Furfur to do hairy transmapped objects, then importing to max and adding the Clothreyes modifier. I got rather poor results but it can be done.

Would it not be easier to use one of he many hair plugins out there like shag for max or shave and haircut for lightwave? or is cost an issue?

For me it's not really expense as it is rendering time and character stylization. It's way quicker to do some hairstyles that are transmapped rather than using a hair plug-in for a long elaborate render time. Especially with animated sequences. Besides the results of Max and LW hair plug-ins aren't going to work in poser. And we don't want to exclude the poser community from more hair. ;)

ahhh I c more clearly now

I don't have LightWave, but I do have Max... what plugins are available? How much do they cost? I would definitely prefer to do everything in Poser, though. The most realistic possible is what I'm looking for. Even if that means days of non-stop rendering.

you can get shag hair and fur for max at www.digimation.com

While there download a limited trial of Shag Hair.

Downloading as I type this. You guys are the best! Just a quick question... how long have you been doing this?

I'm under the impression that most/all of the Max plugins work with the rendering in Max, they are an effect, there is nothing that could be exported to Poser as a object file. Also, bewear of any "brute force" scheme, there is no way you are going to have a model with each hair as a mesh item, except for the thinest crewcut. There just isn't enough horsepower to do that on a PC yet, but there probably will be in a couple of years, when we all have machines with a terabyte of memory.

Hey thx I never thought of using Clothreyes fer hair. What I've been doing is laying out splines around the head, and then applying crosssection, and surface modifiers ... uhm ... May as well try Clothreyes!

Yah I tried Clothreyes fer hair, and it works well, I recommend it. U get the Candyfloss style of hair, by Confusius, if u know it, that style, which personally I find appealing. U don't depend so much on textures. In case ne1 wants more info about what I'm using (unlikely cuz I'm so bad at it!) I'm using box strips on planes, strips r 10 x 3 x 1 segments ... it may b better with box strips on thin boxes tho. We shall see. Only did four so far. If ne1 has ne suggestions plz feel free! Thx ...

That image looks like you can get the hair to look pretty realistic. I like the smaller individual segments in the front... it gives a more realistic appearance. I downloaded Clothreyes, but have yet to play with it. I think I will try it soon, looking at your creation.

I'd map and make the transmaps for the strips before putting the modifiers on them but hey it's looking good.

The way I've been doing Poser hair isn't a secret or anything, I do cylinders and cylinders inside cylinders, all overlap so most places you have about 4 or 6 layers of mesh. The cylinders are all mapped (cylinder mapping, oddly enough!) before they are bent around the head. The banding is the hard part, of course, and this isn't something that I compleatein one sitting. I've tried other methods, the strip hair in Freestuff uses layers, but this works best for me. The problem with anything like layers is from the side there is no thickness, but with a cylinder you always have something. I also think it approaches how hair really is closer than most methods. The pic is my new Mermaid hair, which should be up for sale pretty soon, the Hollywood hair and SMV hair use the same system.

I've always thought of buying Hollywood hair, but it looks too stringy. I purchased Total Hair. unfortunately, I have difficulty with that package as far as long hair and having it fall AROUND the shoulders and not THROUGH it. The mermaid hair is beautiful and almost exactly what I'm looking for (from the looks of it) but it almost looks like straw. Do you happen to know if there's a way to make it appear softer? If so, and I figure out how to use this cylinder technique... I'd buy both of your hair packages (hollywood hair and the furute mermaid one) just because you rock. So far Clothreyes is looking like the best bet in hair creation.

Hey great, I must remember 2 map 'em first! Definitely.

Amazing! Cylinders. A natural choice come 2 think of it. And I guess u could bend the cylinders using Clothreyes, as well, if u were so inclined. Very impressive lookin! Definitely'll experiment with that. Dunno what is about hair that mystifies me so much, but there ya go .......

Yeah, I think I can get a somewhat softer look, I'm also going to put this out with several MAT poses that will load thicker or thinner hair, so you can vary the see-through amount. Blonde hair seems to be the toughest, incidently, you don't see that much good blonde hair that isn't post-production. I finally played around with a conforming hair CR2 and got it to actually work pretty good, the SMV hair is made like that but can't handle a tough pose like this, but this only need minor adjustments and it's a pretty tough pose for hair.

Uhm yes as I drop more and more strips, and I began 2 allow strips 2 pass into each other ... and that got me wondering, Poser warns against overlapping geometries ... I note u mention cylinders in cylinders ... I mean I could b careful and not allow geometries 2 pass into others of course, or better, afterwards it's all laid out, just drag the geometries back out of each other, kinda nudge em out, so they don't overlap ... I suppose when trying 2 make conforming hair, breaking the mesh up, strips passing into other strips would cuz serious problems!!

By the way Jessica, once u drop enuff strips, u can remove the underlying planes, if u want, and just leave the strips. I'm gettin 2 that point now. If u drop em on planes. I suppose u could just drop them directly on the head. I dropped planes on the head first, and then strips on the planes.

Actually, I don't know what the Poser warning means, but I do try and keep one cylinder (actually, it is better to think of it a curl) from passing through another, but in reality, they often do.

Oh ... yah I should clarify that, I went back 2 the manual and what it says is it's 'a good idea' not 2 imbed pieces of geometry, it doesn't say it's, like, really serious, or anything. Have a great day everybody! See ya

Here's my latest effort using Clothreyes ... I gave up adding strips fer now, cuz I realized by manipulating the plane I can create waves in the hair. So anyhow, I'd say Clothreyes is gr8! Er, great! If only I'd remember 2 UV map BEFORE ... I'm very inexperienced with textures, and maps, etc.