Hi all,
This is the second to last Blog for the AAA Roman character. Todays post will be about hair and fur. Mainly fur, since there are so many tutorials on hair out there that im sure can explain better than I.
I use Xgen in maya, with one plane, that I grow the strands from, when happy with a clump, I make it geo, and move it to the side before reworking the fur clump again, and following the same process. I aim for one very thick clump of hair, then thinner hair that is slightly see through, and then thin strands to very thin odd hairs.
After this I renamed the various clumps as fur_1_high, fur_2_high and build planes, that encapsulate the shape of the fur. These I keep as simply one poly for now per plane, that I add to one mat, and uv to one uv set.
I then duplicate and smooth these planes, and add a bend, which I bake out in xnormal as a bent normal map, that can be used in marmoset in the anisotropic direction map slots. Occasionally people paint these maps, but this method produces similar results and is much faster.
After baking (naming the planes fur_1_low, fur_2_low etc) i add a few edge loops to the planes, allowing me to ever so slightly bend the original planes, and twist them, to give it slightly more variety than a flat plane. It basically affects how the light will hit each plane, when slightly bent, this gives a much more dynamic look.
After exporting these planes, I use the alpha map and import the planes as the fbx, and the low poly geo of the Roman, to Zbrush, add the alpha of the hair as a texture, adjusting the transparency to suit, then create the most dense one as a IMM brush, and then Nanomesh. If the initial geo, the pants and arms, already have the texture applied, it is easy in Zbrush to visualise, and adjust the planes in the nano mesh settings to add a decent variety.
This basically gives you a base of planes of one plane, which you can import back into Maya, and populate by hand the rest of the planes to add more variety.
It’s a quick method, but effective. Reducing the time of populating by 3 quarters.
Finally, and testing in marmoset, the pants and arms are smoothed using a transfer attributes in maya, by selecting the bottom geo, and then the planes (combined into one) this allows the smoothness to follow the direction of the smoothing of the initial geo, and produces better results.
Again, I wont go into hair, since there are better tutorials out there. The Ploom for the helmet was created again with hair planes and xgen, but populated by hand and tested in marmoset throughout.
Apart from that, another cute trick I like to use when creating characters using marmoset, is fake Peach fuzz. I create this by either using xgen or zbrush fur, and sculpting small hair strands around all visible skin, such as face and arms, and in line with how the small hair would flow. I paint the hair white, and skin black, and then bake this in marmoset using again the low poly and this as a high.
Giving me a alpha map of hair around the body. This I add to substance when texturing, sometimes slightly in the skin layer, but mainly in my fuzz layer, that I can plug into marmoset later, as a slight edge highlight. In affect a similar way, but game ready peach fuzz.
I keep it subtle, but if the light hits it right, some of those edge hairs will be picked up, giving it that added realism.
Ok the final Blog I will post in a few days, with how I set up the lighting, pose and prepped the final assets to create the imagery below. This stage is not really needed when creating the model for a company, a tpose well lit and rendered will do (dependent on studio), but for portfolio I feel it’s a necessary to make the piece much more interesting and dynamic.
Anyway good luck with your own models and see you in a few days!
Adam