Creating Hair

[abasolo_khristian]

I know there are different ways to create hair. I'm modeling a low poly game character and instead of using paint effects or the hair system in maya. What are the necessary steps in creating hair with textures and alpha channels.

[DjVoyager]

I do it by modeling the shape of the hair in poly, rather simple from a plane. Then duplicate it, and straighten out this duplicate for UV mapping. Afterwards, pull up this UV map in Photoshop, and paint the hair straight, no twists or turns. Make sure to leave the end of the hair a bit transparent like it's fading out at the tip. If you are using Maya then saving it to a tiff or targa would work to get the alpha, but if it is XSI then sometimes it needs a separate black and white alpha file of the original file to plug into the alpha.
Anyways, when you are done, just plug it in the color of a blinn or phong (depends on what kind of shine you want).
Now here is the important part: Select the duplicated plane (the one you took the UV map from) and select the original hair (the one all shaped up and set on the head). Go to Polygon > Transfer UVs. That is going to transfer the UVs to the that plane, and now you can apply the blinn with the hair texture.

Hope this helps!

[laxman]

A good idea would be to look around on the net for 'clay renders' or renders without any textures of models. That way you can see what people did yo make the hair. Check out this on on the top banner:

http://www.ballisticpublishing.com/books/dartiste_character_modeling/?PHPSESSID=f5c20409ba38211b784c566c7be1150e