<<<back<<<

5. Hair

I find the hair the most tricky part. It's not easy to make good looking hair, but practing and experimenting with different techniques helps a lot I think...
You can just use the easy solution and cut and paste some hair from a Maxis head (Maxis ONLY, don't steal hair from other sim artists heads!), and maybe change the color if you want to. But hey, this is a tutorial, so we're doing it the hard way. That way you'll get a more unique look too, allthough cutting and pasting from Maxis can work just fine as well. It's up to you really...

Before I start on the hair I find a head in SimShow that looks good on my mesh. I do this because different meshes have different texture mapping, i.e. uses the same bitmap differently. So one kind of hair shading may look good on one mesh and crappy on another. It doesn't have to be a Maxis head that I find to fit the mesh, because I'm just gonna look at it, I'm not gonna use parts of the bitmap.
For this mesh, C1k2fa_battie by FrillySims, I find one of my own heads look ok.

I then open that head texture in PSP, to check out how the hair is done. (Just to make it clear I've drawn lines to show you the direction of the hair, you don't have to actually do this.) Now I know how to draw the lines on my hair to make it look good on the mesh.

Now I start with my own hair. I make a new hair layer. I pick a color, draw the outlines of the hair and fill out the rest with the same color. (At this point it might be a good idea to check out the head in SimShow to make sure the hair is right).
When the outlines of the hair is right I select the hair only. This way I won't have to worry about drawing outside the hair. One way to do this is by using the Magic Wand selection tool and clicking where there is no hair. This should select everything but the hair. Then choose Selections -> invert. (This method works even when the hair is in different colors and the shading is done.)
Then I pick a darker color and draw on some lines. (The lines can be thick or thin, one straight line or lots of small strands or even curly, and the drakness may vary. This is entirely up to you.)
I now pick a color a bit lighter but still dark and make more thin lines. At this point I use the Retouch - Soften tool on the thick lines.

Keeping the selection on I use Effects -> blur -> gaussian blur... on the hair.

For the rest I use only the Retouch tool darken RGB and lighten RGB, using different brush sizes and opacities. Soften and smudge may come in handy as well depending on the look you want, but I'm not gonna use them for this tutorial.
First I use lighten with a big brush and a low opacity and draw some highlight across the hair lines. The position of the highlights depends on the mesh.
Then I use the darken tool with a small brush and a high opacity along the hair lines.
I lower the opacity and use a larger brush and make some areas slightly darker; I do this both along the lines and across the lines in some areas.
I finish by going back to the lighten tool and making light streaks along the hair lines. I may switch even more back and forth between the lighten and darken untill I'm satisfied.

Now I check out the hair in SimShow.

If I don't like the hair at this point I have some options besides starting all over again... Changing the brightness/contrast can make a lot of difference (choose Colors -> adjust -> brightness/contrast). Here I've decreased the contrast:

Here I've increased the contrast:

For this head I won't change the contrast though, I like it as it is.
This is the tool that I use most, It's a great way to get the hair (or mouth or anything else for that matter) just right: Choose Color -> adjust -> hue/saturation/lightness. I make some changes to this hair:

And this is what she looks like now:

>>> next page>>>