Making and placing the haircards

 

Ever since the start of the project, I knew I wanted to give my character hair cards. The only problem was I did not know how to do it. There are so many different workflows online, and it's quite hard to figure out which is the best one, or which one is the most efficient.

After some research, I got to the conclusion that there are 2 steps that I need to go through for the hair cards process, which are: making the hair cards themselves, as in the textures, and then placing them onto the model.

There are various techniques for both of the steps, but essentially they have the same outcome. Most people tend to use XGen in Maya to generate the hair cards, but I find that process to be quite complicated. My tutor Will let me know that there is this software called Fibershop, that is very intuitive and easy to use. 

I ended up using it to generate the hair cards, and I confidently say that I love it. It is really pretty straightforward, and it has spared me a lot of working and learning time in Maya.

For the placing part, I chose to do it in 3DS Max, considering it is a software that I have quite some experience with. The workflow is basically having the cards with textures ready and placing them with the move path modifier onto splines.

This process took a lot of trial and error, having problems with the normals that were getting flipped while the path modifier was active, and also the bend modifier not working on the Y axis, which I solved by rotating the pivot of the modifier itself.

Placing the hair cards can be relatively easy, obviously subtracting the technical problems, but it can be quite time-consuming. 

For my Ork Project, I was planning on giving him hair and a moustache, that is the reason why I already generated the hair cards for that, but unfortunately, I will not have the time to do that in a proper way till the submission... So this is a sacrifice I need to make.