[Oliver_th]

Here's a new head I started.

[Oliver_th]

Here's a quick test I did with hair just to make sure it's heading the right way (it always look more feminin with hair )

[Oliver_th]

That book is so GREAT!!!

[Oliver_th]

[gaboherrera]

Looks great!..... the ear need more modeling work.

[Oliver_th]

Thanks gaboherrera ! after looking at your comment I worked on it... but man its hard!!! Anyways... I'll work on it later if I realy need to (cause there's gonna be hair on it)

By the way.. . I started exp?rimenting a bit more with the hair thing.. wow! It's fun to work with when you want to do some crasy hair style! (but I'm thinking of doing more of a traditional hair style later)

Here's the tests I did:

[Oliver_th]

[Oliver_th]

[Oliver_th]

Started the body.

[Oliver_th]

[Skinny]

Great renders the hair looks particaually sweet may i ask what software you are using ?

Cheers,
Skinny

[Oliver_th]

Thanks Skinny! I'm using the Hair plugin that comes with 3dsmax 8. And to make the hair pose I used the real time physic in the hair editor and just froze the hair in the air... anyways that's about it.

[Skinny]

Cool thanks for the info looks like its a time for an upgrade i was thinking of migrating to maya because of its hair dynamics system but no it looks like i could stay with max.
by the way did u make the eyelashes and brows with tis tool ?

Keep up the good work.

Cheers,
Skinny

[Oliver_th]

Yep! I did the eyelashes and brows with the hair system. Oh and once you get max 8 take a good look at the new cloth system! It's so great!!!!

[Skinny]

ok i just got max 8 do u know of any decent tutorials sites for its new hair feature
also in ur head renders with hair what type of lighting are you using ?

[Oliver_th]

Well there isn't much tutorials on it.. in fact I just found one!! But it's a great one!

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/item?siteID=123112&id=5903856

(it's the video called Hair)

It comes from Discreet so they explain a lot.

And for the lighting I just placed a spot light infront and at the back of the head. The front one emiting yellowish light, and the back one blue.

But here are some tips I've got for you if you want to get to a good result:

-put a least one light with shadow maps (you'll probably have to make the shadow map size bigger)
-change the "Root Thick" to about 5 or less (at 12 it looks a bit cartoony)
-the "Hue Variation" should go low... like 5 or just a plane 0
-put the tip color briter than the root color
-"Value Variation" can go at about 25 but it's not all that important...
-And also in the "Multi Strand Parameters" put the "Count" at around 4 and make the root spray at more than 0 and the tip spray should stay at 0 (Real hair tends to clump at the tip)

That's pretty much the most important settings.

And in the video it says to take the head as the hair emitor. Personaly I prefere to use the trick of Fransisco A. Cortina (he worked on Final Fantasy : Spirits within). The trick is to shape a mesh around the head where you want your hair to grow. This way you can still go back to modeling your head without having to redo the hair again. I did the same thing for the eyebrows.

Also, if you want to make line in the middle of the hair (don't know how it's called) like in the picture below, make sure that your mesh is devided along this line or you praticly want be able to make it. That's what I found out today.

[Oliver_th]

Also, if you want to do a simple hair style just go into "Style Hair...". But if you know exacly how you want your hair to look like, model splines instead.

The real way to do it would be to start shaping your hair in the "Style Hair..." and to convert those into Spline with the "Guides -> Splines" button but after that you're stuck with 14 vertices per spline... and that's way too hard to work with (I'm trying to figure a way to reduce the vertices amount...)

[Oliver_th]

Here's where I am with the body. (don't mind the hair.. . it's just made up of splines)

[Oliver_th]

Hand's done!

[Oliver_th]

Only thing left are the arm details, knees, and... and... oh! the feets! ahw.... I don't like to model feets!!