How to make quick Poly Hair/Techniques in poly hair

Just the title says I am trying to make poly hair but I am having trouble making something quick and pretty hair. I am making poly hair using plane and will just extrude and tweak it until I find it satisfying. I saw some video before making something from splines I tried replicating it but I failed, now I reach out to you people, also can you please attach pictures so that I could understand it better and faster.

Thank you.

Can you possibly upload an image of the model you're trying to apply hair to?

Personally if it's fairly low poly, I stick to just tweaking the polygons as you mentioned but if you need much more detail those spline routes are much easier to manage!

Also, it might help if you present some kind of reference as to what type of hair you're trying to create, perhaps a similar hair style or even just letting us know whether or not you want that realistic type look or cartoony stuff...


Kind Regards
Patrick

Well, I really want to know on what your techniques are so that I could create my own or copy yours, I make variety of characters so I need realistic and cartoony. So please give what you can or show, and I will just take it from there. If you really need some sample of what I want its this ->>> http://www.allcgtutorials.com/2013/tips-tricks-facial-modeling-for-animated-productions/ after I watched this I wanted to replicate on what he has done in NVil to achieve this ->>> http://cghub.com/images/view/648131/

Thanks.

Sorry, I was in the process of typing up my reply but I need to go and make food, then eat it... If you don't mind waiting I have a reply with images and such for you to look over and I believe it will help you a great deal... I will be back to finish my proper reply as soon as I am done eating and cleaning up after!


Kind Regards
Patrick

There are a variety of methods I use depending on the actual model and such, I was only asking to try and better understand...

As of right now I am using the free version "VoidWorld 2.4" so I'm a little out dated with some things, I would probably just stick to using a plane or box and modelling it out, the reason I was asking about the model you're trying it with now is because I was going to take any image(s) you sent here, and sketch over them and try to show you with a little more interactivity, I have no head models laying around right now, but I can try to give you some pointers...

**Actually Let me go and model a head real quick**

OK, so I gave up with using VoidWorld to quickly make this model for the example as I am still not as comfortable with it as I am Maya, I am trying to get a grip on using VoidWorld (Nvil free version) but the free version is a little finicky to me and for this is was quicker for me to use my native application, anyways... So, here is my head model, and you want to add hair to it... [See image below]

As you can see, nothing special, I kind of rushed it to get my point across, also, just ignore the seam going through the center of the mesh that is where I simply mirrored it over... Now typically I would probably just use my sculpting application when I am working something on the higher resolution scale like the video you lined me to and this model here, but ultimately most of my models go into game engines and I end up retopologizing anyway, so poly modelling the hair can save time in some cases, usually I only really use this method when I am working with low to medium res meshes (low poly or medium poly)

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OK, so the idea is to grab a plane (or cube) and model it into almost a strand of hair and then take this strand and duplicate it around whilst tweaking it to fit the hair you need, now with some types of hairstyles you might not do this exact thing and sometimes you may use a mix of techniques but this will be a good start for you, the splines in that video just make it easier to tweak the geometry and such that is why I mention that I would usually only do with with lower poly models...

Here is an image of what the flat plane should look like before you start placing it on your mesh:

Nice and simple still, you don't want to have too much detail there as you will be pushing and pulling this around a fair bit, once you have the strands in the right location for the style you're looking for, then you should add more detail and such until you feel it is about right... Again depending on what you will want to use the final mesh for.

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Now we have the strand we can start placing it after duplicating one, as yu can see in this next image, I have gone ahead and placed on covering some of the characters face, sadly I do not have a current design in mind I am just trying to briefly explain the method to you with use use of poly modelling and planes...

You can see how it's not so flat there in the image, well I have simply rotated it a little and pulled up the center edge loop to give it that slight curve over the top of the strand... You can easily add more detail to this, but as I said earlier it will be best to wait until you have all of the strands complete and you're happy with the design you're going for before you start doing that.

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I will place a few more just to show you...

As you can see it really starts to take form and it's not so hard, but my image doesn't look too great as I haven't had a design or character to go off of, I kinda just winged it here, but you can see the method and hopefully the images accompanied by my text will help you a little with attempting to do it yourself here with Nvil, it's really just simple polygon modelling so if you're comfortable navigating around the application then you should be fine!

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If you have any other questions then just post them here, I have put notifications on for this thread so I should be able to find out when you reply... I am often at the computer lately too so I should be able to reply without a huge delay if I am not too busy that is

Good Luck on modelling your character's hair, I hope that this helps somewhat!


Kind Regards
Patrick




.::NOTE::.
My apologies for using Maya here but the modelling process is fairly similar across all the applications, as soon as I am more able with Nvil I will more then likely make a bunch of video tutorials and help out a little more but this should suffice for now... I'll try not to make it a habit to post my Maya screenshots to help out, and try to stick within VoidWorld.

wow, thanks for the info, if you don't mind me asking, do you know how to make hair using splines in NVil and if possible if you know can you post on how to make it.

Thanks.

Right now, I don't have much experience with splines in Nvil, I could in Maya but I am pressing to transfer my knowledge of Maya to Nvil for my modelling needs...

Sadly though I do not own Nvil I am using the older version before they changed the name and such, hence my mentioning VoidWorld.

Maybe once I get the software (the paid version) and I have played around with it some more and familiarized myself with the features and naming conventions of the tools then I will be able to, but until then I am sorry to say that you will have to wait or find someone here on the forum who has experience with such a feature!

Eventually I am planning on making some video tutorials with this software though!


Kind Regards
Patrick

Anyway, thanks for the reply