Good hair tutorial?

[billysson]

Can someone recommend a good and thorough tutorial for modeling hair for use in UDK? the UDN entry on the subject was not very in depth.

[Jade-Phoenix]

Same Hair Tutorial I gave Kel'tar (http://www.cgarena.com/freestuff/tutorials/maya/lowpolyHair/index.html) and it should work for you as well I'd imagine.

[billysson]

Perfect! Thank you very much for this.

One question though. It's the part that had me confused on the UDN entry:

http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/CreatingHairUsingAlpha.html

The beginning says to render out hair strands, with what I assume is something similar to the hair and fur modifier in 3DS Max. I didn't see anything like this in your linked tut, and no clarification in the UDN article. Can someone explain the point of that step?

[Jade-Phoenix]

hard for me to explain it since I am new to the scene as well. Slaugther may know, he'd done a number of characters include Malcome for UT3. he might be an ear to whisper in.

[JohNLA]

I think tutorial just means render out some hairs to use for textures.
Obviously, you can not use a hair and fur plug-in in real time but you can use it to render out some textures for use on planes.

[billysson]

Just curious,

can you treat the hair planes as cloth? If I weight the verticies of the hair planes to a bone, can i apply a cloth modifier in UDK and get hair that will blow in the wind? Or is there another way to achieve dynamic hair?

[Denny]

Yes you can, but if the results look good is another topic.

[billysson]

Yes you can, but if the results look good is another topic.

So, not recommended then?

[Denny]

So, not recommended then?
I'm just saying that cloth can be tricky to work with, just play around with it and good luck. :)

[Rmele09]

When do you place the hair sheets, in Maya (3d app of choice) and combine to character as one mesh, or do you place these sheets within UDK? I am confused because I have my mesh with its own texture map, then the hair with its own texture map, if you export as one mesh how do you apply both of these texture maps in UDK if they are now one mesh? I am assuming you place the sheets on the character's head in UDK? If so do you import every sheet as its own mesh and duplicate within UDK?

[AlbinoWarrior]

no, not at all. Meshes can use more than one material, just like in the 3d app.

[Rmele09]

I don't understand how to do it, do you have to make two separate UV sets? Can I make a UV set for the head and body and then another for the hair sheets? If you can do that, can you export both of those uv sets with the combined mesh in one .ase file? I know how to apply more than one material in Maya, but how do you apply two materials to one mesh in UDK? Can you work on the two UV sets in UDK separately? Sorry if this is a noob question, any help would be appreciated.

[Legend286]

When do you place the hair sheets, in Maya (3d app of choice) and combine to character as one mesh, or do you place these sheets within UDK? I am confused because I have my mesh with its own texture map, then the hair with its own texture map, if you export as one mesh how do you apply both of these texture maps in UDK if they are now one mesh? I am assuming you place the sheets on the character's head in UDK? If so do you import every sheet as its own mesh and duplicate within UDK?

You just use a seperate UV for the hair, UDK will recognise the second UV channel and allow you to specify a texture for it.

[Rmele09]

That is awesome thanks for the info. Do you know how many uv sets UDK supports? I heard it is 2, but it would be awesome if it would take 3, 1 for body and head, 2 for hair, and 3 for eyeballs.

[Kelt'ar]

Making a tut...part1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_i0wIuetWec

[Legend286]

That is awesome thanks for the info. Do you know how many uv sets UDK supports? I heard it is 2, but it would be awesome if it would take 3, 1 for body and head, 2 for hair, and 3 for eyeballs.

Loads, but the more you use one a single model, the more intensive it is on draw calls.

[micronox]

Hey guys, I followed the tutorial here on how to use cloth for hair. http://udn.epicgames.com/Three/PhysXClothReference.html

the initial setup works great, however I can't get the phat actor to block the hair. It wouldn't be so bad, except my character is on a swing so the reference penetration is pretty significant.

Anyone had luck with this approach?

Thanks!