drawing hair, above or beside head?

[furrymaster]

hi, ya ya, i know, i ask too many things so fast, sorry about that, maybe when i learn more things i'll can post for bring ideas and examples to the forum, and not to ask my doubts...

Now i'm creating my own character, and drawing he, i discovered that i can't draw correctly the hair. he is a long haired guy so... anyone have any tip about that? ^^U please help

[heyvern]

I create hair for characters in "layers'. I might have up to 3 hair layers, for example one on top of the whole head face, one behind the ears, and one hair layer behind the head/body. Using bone offset to control the hair separately can also help. For example create or move the hair layers away from the head, use separate bones just for the hair but make these bones children of the head bone. Then use the bone offset tool to move those hair bones back to line the hair up with the head again.

The hair bones now will move when the head is rotated but you can use the hair bones individually to animate the hair without effect the face or visa versa. Because the bones are "offset" they won't effect the vectors they aren't suppose to.

As far as what the hair "looks" like or how to draw the vectors that depends on what you want; "cartoon" hair or "realistic" hair.

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This is an example of 3 layer hair. There is a layer over the face, one behind the ears and a final one behind the head and body. This file is a very very very complex 2.5D head bone rig but the idea of using hair layers can be used in simple rigs as well.

The look of the hair is actually pretty simple using soft edge effect fills with overlapping shapes to create the shading and highlighting. Basically I drew the "spikey" outer shape of the hair and created small inset copies with lighter colors to create the "gradations" of lighting. I then just duplicated that layer 3 times and stretched and distorted the points to make each layer longer or shorter as needed.



-vern

[furrymaster]

ok! thanks for the answer!
and, i'm trying manga style, but is look like more cartoon than other thing

[knowall]

can you please upload the source file of this video

Code: Select all

woman-head-rig2.mov

Thanks

[heyvern]

can you please upload the source file of this video

Code: Select all

woman-head-rig2.mov

Thanks

I would but... I plan to sell this character. I am still finishing up the body rig.

-vern

[knowall]

Thanks for replying so fast.

Regards

[heyvern]

Here's a screen grab of the hair layers. I moved the layers apart to show how they are arranged in the head bone layer.



You can see the top hair over the whole head. The second hair layer is over the ears and "back" of the head. The head is "split" into two main layers for ease of rigging. The back part of the head has different point binding than the rest of the entire face so I put it on a separate layer to make points selection easier.

There is one more hair layer not seen in the layer palette. that layer is waaaaay down at the bottom under all the layers of the head and body.

Basically the top two layers of hair are controlled by the exact same bones as the face in my rig. The bottom hair layer is completely bound to one bone and shifts side to side slightly creating a pseudo 3d effect. I may add more bones to control that part of the hair to create some dynamics. For now it is "static" and bound to a single bone.

Hope this helps explain the technique. Like I said... it doesn't require the complex rig to make this work. The basic "trick" is layering the hair.

-vern

[knowall]

Thanks its very helpful though it will take sometime for me to understand.

Regards knowall

[Vagabond]

Heyvern. I like how there is hair in front and behind the ear. It made me rethink how to build my characters. But, the hair layering is not as impressive as talking while the head turns. Did you use scripts to each the smoothness? I don't have much success with scripts. Can that be achieved just using actions?

thanks for being a helpful genius.

[TheMinahBird]

are the photos still available...Or is it top secret still?

[heyvern]

are the photos still available...Or is it top secret still?

I updated the broken image link and the video. This is a really old project but the concept of the hair shifting in 3D space is still sound although there could be better ways to do it.

In response to the very very old question above about the lip sync, this is a version of my horrifically complex 2.5d head rig. The current version of Anime Studio makes that project almost obsolete now as there are much easier ways to accomplish the same effect.

[TheMinahBird]

So would this be a bad rig for hair?