Looking for a modeling tip (WIP girl model)

[Mr. Killjoy]

I've not made any new thread for a while

Well, I've made this mode... no I'm not a roxor, it's made from a very ugly and low-poly prefab (thol the prefab is so ugly by itself that you wouldn't even see the link between it and the current model)

Click to see the current model


Well, as you can see, I almost finished the texturing part, but here is a problem
This model will be for an HL2 mod, mods are made from games, games are made with low-poly models...
I explain it quickly, I want to make low-poly mid-long hair, and using a realistic looking plugin would result in incompatibility with the HL2 engine, that's why it needs to be done with polys and not kickass visual effects.

Anyone knows how to make good looking female low-poly hair?
I've been looking for tutorials, but most of them us transparence layers (which , I think, won't be usable in HL2 :s)

[moomoomoo]

Resize that image, or upload it the normal way. Far too big.

[Mr. Killjoy]

Done. A please wouldn't hurt tho, I'm not a dog

[moomoomoo]

Fair enough :P

Although I can't help you with the hair, from where I'm sitting it's a nice looking model. Nice one.

[Mr. Killjoy]

Thx ...
I hope there's a modeler around

[Tori-Yama]

Dunno if its any use, but I tried something on the hair, how it may would look like

[Mr. Killjoy]

Well, at first, thx for adding some details on the arms, I'll update the texture with this kind of stuff as soon as I4ll finish the hair

Now, the hair... at least you knew what kind of method I nt to use but ...
1/ I want them midlong (so they wont get in the body when she will turn the head)
2/ I have hard time doing such a hair with polys
pretty weird huh, I can model details on body, or on make kickass guns, but can't do somthing as easy as an hair

[Tori-Yama]

I may sound lame but why don't you try to use the same method of creating hair like in FFX? You woudln't need to model them in a single piece, just lay texture above texture. See attachments.

[Mr. Killjoy]

Yeah, that's the method I wanted to use, but somehow I suck at it
Maybe there's a special way to do this

[Tori-Yama]

I made a little step by step tutorial, in case you stuck at some point. Hope that helps.

[Mr. Killjoy]

Oh yeah I see, but there's a problem, if I make them single faced like you did, polys will disappear when the camera goes behind if backface culling is enabled

And the extremity of the hair is very polygon consuming no?

(my model is currently about 10k polys, the best characters models in HL2 are about 9000)

[Tori-Yama]

Well, you don't want her bold, do you? You need them double faced only at the parts which are actually curling and at the front of the face ... Also, if you use only 3 types of hair wisps and place them at different positions on the head, the loading time won't be too long IIRC.

What is this mod all about anyway?

[Ker]

modeller here

overall it's a good model,
I think her skin looks abit pale, and the face looks abit broad, it should look abit more refined (so it looks even more like a girl), and the belt could use some more betail, mostly depth and mostly in the buckle

since you're using the HL2 engine I guess you could use a fair amount of poly's for hair (and even use normal maps afaik)

here I show you some hair I did (main character of my game )
you can see I even wasted poly's to make the spikes poly's (did this so self-shadowing can be cast into the face, as alpha hair wouldn't cause shadowing along the alpha spikes). in your case, you can do it as I did but with alpha spikes instead of poly spikes
The whole hair is 754 poly's, counting the poly's I had to flip so it could be 2-sided where needed

here's the pic

[Mr. Killjoy]

Nice work dude That's exactly the kind of stuff I want. If it's not to much, can you show me how you get this result step by step?

I'm using 3DS max but I think that low poly tools are similar in yours

Btw, I'm as noob in texture making as in character modeling... so if you have any tips for this part too ...

Thx

[Strider]

hmm.. im more than a few tutorials away from doing that stuff, i just started (and am midway through) my first tutorial of a space scene with planets

[Mr. Killjoy]

Believe me, it wouldn't be so hard if I didn't have to keep in mind that it's for the HL2 engine :s

If the game had support for the Shag Hair plugin it would be done a while ago

[upwardexhalebwn]

I just got 3ds max and was wondering does anyone know where some good tutorials and plugins are for it , thanks for replies .I am going to try to make some fantasy stuff like dragons and such , thanks .

[Mr. Killjoy]

Tutorials, plenty on google, the only links I know are french sites...
Plugins = shareware = you must pay or try P2P (P2P is the illegal way and I don't take the responsability for what you'll do with it)

[upwardexhalebwn]

cool thanks .

[Ker]

heh, shag hair is not only like cheating (at least for me), but also not supported in any game at all

I also use 3DSMax, however I can't really show a step by step process, mainly because I'm not doing it again for now (I should be modelling/texturing new characters but not only I'm lazy, but also I need ATi's normal mapper to work on 3DSMax6), sorry, but actually it's easy by just watching what I provided you with

about plugins, I only use the ones that are useful for games, like texporter or ATi's normal mapper, but nothing like those things for effects or shag hair, etc

about tutorials, I've learned little from them in relation to making hair. making hair can be tricky, and mostly everything I either learned by myself or watching other artists or games, but barely anything from tutorials

however, the process is not really hard, just take a look at how the polygons are there and try to copy it for a first try (you can see it's just a flat layer, and then another layer that goes from the middle to the back, coming from one edge up from where the bottom ones come from).
It's just flat poly's, when the modelling is done you need to copy the poly's you need to be double-sided and flip the normals (so they point in the other direction, where you need them to).
however I recommend that you lay out the UWV's first and then fill the double-sided poly's (so you don't have to make UWV's for poly's that are in the same place)

tips... what can I say?
I guess, try using the alpha technique, that way you can have more poly's, and therefore, more layers of hair.
I usually extrude edges to make the layers of hair, not place them as separate models, that way the layers seem to come out of the same hair "base" instead of coming out of nowhere

for texturing (photoshop) I made a custom brush made up of dots, so I just paint with it and you end up with lines of hair. you just need to make them according to your UWV's so the hair lines flow in the correct direction (depending on the hairstyle), and then add some highlights and shadows
that's just me though, and I've always done straight hair and never textured any curly hair

anyway, here I show you some other (more complex) example of hair I did for the character, just so you can see