1 Tutorials LightWave 3D Saslite Long Hair Guide Modeling Qui Jan 27, 2011 8:43 pm
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by Mike Green, Team17 | |
RIGHT THEN! Listen up you 'orrible lot! We're going to get you a decent haircut. None of this 'ard nut all-over shaves you GI's and artists like 'coz they're easy to do, but one of yer complex thick mane of hair types that is a nightmare to build an rendar! Git yourself dahn the barber shop Toot suite, and we'll get you growin' hair like those jessies from the sixties in no time at all! DisssssssMISSED! 1.Take yer head object, and select the areas on it that you want the hair to be. 2.Copy and paste those polys into a new layer. Use Smooth Scale to decrease the size by 3mm or so. Take care that the new skull cap fits inside your head. You want the hair to grow through your head, not outside it ) 3. Depending on the resolution of your mesh, set Options>Patchdivisons to 4 or 5, or maybe more. Then freeze it (ctrl-d, assuming that your head is a nurbs object!) 4.Kill the polys(k) and you are left with the points, which you then convert to polys (Create>Elements>points to polys). These will be the roots of your hair. We're going to give this hair cut a parting, so select the left half the polys, roughly down the middle, and give them the surface Left_root. Select the rest using the Statistics window (w) and surface them 'Right_root'. Copy this lot to an empty layer as a backup, just in case ) 5. Do a merge (m) to remove points that are really close together. Hide the right half of your root polys, (select them using the stats window, and press '-'), then go into a new layer, and make the root layer a background layer. 6. Now we start to make the extrude splines along which we're going to grow the hair guides, using the very useful Multi-rail extrude function. First using Create>Elements>Spline draw, draw out a spline from the back/base of your root polys. We're going to make 24 of these, working from bottom, around the side and up till we reach the top. 7. Copy and paste this guide spline to make a couple more, and array these around the bottom of your root object. Ensure that the splines start at the closest point to the root object. Flip them (f) if they are the wrong way around. 8. Add more splines, forming a basis for your hair style. Again, the first point of the splines should be close to the the root shell points. When you get to the top, remember that at the parting, the hair tends to stick up from the scalp a bit, unless your hair is reallllly greased ) 9. Bring your root object to the fore again, and place your guide splines in the background. We're going to use the lesser used tool, Multiply>extend>Rail extrude (multiple). First though, copy (c) your left Root polys into LW's buffer, we'll need these in a sec. 10. Use the settings below. An interesting effect of saslite is the more segments you have towards the tip of the hair guide, the less it fades towards the end. Try to use as few segments as possible as this affects the hair's thickness too. Look at this figure, which shows the way hair guide segments affects thickness. (to 'push' more line segments to the end of the spline extrusion, add another point near the end of your splines. If you have a lot of splines you want to do this to, download path editor from Dstorm http//www.dstorm.co.jp/dslib/plg70e.html as this allows you to insert points in a whole load of splines at the same time!) 11. We only make 24 hair growth splines, because rail extrude can only use up to 24. 24 should be sufficient to cover half of the head though, if you keep them evenly spaced. 12. Once you've rail extruded, select all 2 point polygons using the statistics window, and give them a new surface, 'hair'. Paste (p) the root polygons you copied earlier, deselect the 2 point polys, then merge (m) the root polys with the hair polys, leaving 'Keep 1 point polys' on. This makes the final hair guides, a 2 point poly chain, around which the hair will flow, with a one point poly to indicate to saslite where the root is for the hairs. 13. Now you have the basic idea, it's fairly quick and simple to go back and adjust your hair, should it not look quite right in the render. 14. Repeat steps 5 to 12 for the right side this time, till you end up with a lovely thick set of hair guides. 15. Now we're going to make the front look a bit better. We're going to make The front groups of guides a different surface. This means we can use a finer setting of hair for them, to blend in the fringe a little. Using a finer setting over the whole head would slow down the render, and shouldn't really be necessary. Grab a bunch of the hair segments, and press ']' to select all the connected polys. Using the stats window again, deselect the 1 point polys so you don't rename them! Give the remaining selected 2 point polys a different surface, 'Hair_thinner'. 16. Using the Layer window (Modeler>window>Layer browser) hide from layout any utility layers, like the spline layers. Do this by clicking the dots next to the layer, under the eye symbol, so that they disappear. Just leave the Head and hair guide layers 'visible'. 17. Save your object and export it to layout. 18. Bring up the object properties panel, and under the Displacement Plugins, add the saslite plugin. Open it and add these settings. I've only really changed the Density. Again, the denser the hair is, the longer to render, so find a minimum density for your head which still makes it look thick. 19. Add a second instance of saslite (possibly by copying and pasting the first instance, so you get the same colour), and lower the coarseness, this determines the thickness of each strand of hair. Up the clump size, this spreads the hair strands out to fill in between the hair guides. 20. Turn on 'unseen by camera' in the render tab of the Object properties. Note that if you use some shadowmapped lights, the guides will in fact cast shadows on any objects, so with a thick bundle as you've now created, you should get a decent shadow, even though saslite 'doesn't do shadows'! 21. Add the pixel filter for saslite in the Processing tab of the effects panel (ctrl-F8) Tick 'receive LW shadows'. You can use 'Self shadowing' as this does make the hair more realistic, but it boost the render times a lot. You can also leave it off, and adjust the hair colour/ diffuse to compensate instead. it doesn't look quite as nice, but does speed things up ) 22. Finally press F9 to render. If the shape of your hair is a bit off, you can go back and delete the 2 point polys, adjust your splines and grow it again. It doesn't take long at all to adjust. If your hair is a bit thin in places, copy nearby root polys/hair guides and move them into the bald spot. 23. Okay, so she's not someone you might wanna take home to mother, but with a but more time and practice, you can get a bit more of a coiffured look ) Right that's yer lot, you horrible er, lot. Get yerselfs dahn the parade ground, and next I'll show you all how to get your flouncy tresses all bouncy and shampoo commercial like! DissssssMISSED! |