Sculpting Hair

This has literally had me pulling my hair out. oh dear that's a bad pun and it's probably not going to get much better than that. But more on hair in a second. Today we had the last lecture/tutorial before the assessment for this module. I used the opportunity to demo the progress I had made on this model to the guys and gals at uni and was lucky to get a lot of positive feedback, which is always good for feeding the ego. When I showed the character to the class our lecturer had the class brainstorm the character/personality of this model. This was really good as the vast majority of things people were picking up on are aspects of the character I had designed, with one or two things I will be adding as they were good suggestions. This is really pleasing as it means my art is portraying its character well and is easy enough to read.

There were only a few feedback points that came out of the section, it was suggested the teeth were a bit too symmetrical still, so I've taken a moment to alter the shape of one and chip the end of the other, simple stuff but it helps to break up the symmetry in the face. The major area that definitely needs work is the hair, hence this post. I was having a really hard time polypainting the hair and the feedback today highlighted that more work just needs to be done.

The first thing I did was clone my original hair subtool, I didnt want to lose any of the previous work. I've then just smoothed everything else and started again basically and already I'm much happier with it. I'm going to keep sculpting into the hair and then use zpsheres to create some messy strands that will move aways from the head, particularly down the back, although I'm unlikely to be taking a lot of renders from the back I don't want one area of the sculpt to feel neglected. Once I've sculpted the hair to a level I'm satisfied with I'm going to re-topologise the mesh, as I've done with all the meshes I've made using dynamesh. Having an even topology makes a big difference when it comes to using polypaint. It is also quite likely that I will need to uv the hair and beard and use photoshop to get a really good result in the texturing. Polypaint works fantastically for skin but I've got a lot of options with texturing overlays in photoshop.