Hair updates: Ready? (Patreon)

Hey guys! Some quick updates regarding hairy hair from Aeris.

As I mentioned, I was worried about her hair because I wasn’t sure if it was going to be able to compile it. Turns out I got confused with models and it wasn’t her hair, her hair was in a more complex situation.

I did an ultra quick and experimental fix for her hair in order to compile it as soon as possible. The fix was able to compile it, and still, it caught me out of guard the amount of hair bones this model has. They are not many, but for that particular hairstyle, I think her hair is going to be pretty poseable.

So I also quickly prepared the textures and I got a nasty surprise.

When I saw how the hair looks like, I decided to look other model’s complex hair I’ve compiled in the fast… which weren’t many because of the hard drive, but I had enough to compare. The only model that can look like this, is Mary Jane’s hair.

Sometime ago, I got an exchange with a patron regarding Mary Jane’s hair. It was a matter of tastes, but still, there was a conversation needed to be talked. I decided to check back my Mary Jane files and see if I tried to do this fix as well since her hair looks pretty similar, and the surprise was no: I did a straight port of her hair.

So I turn off my computer, I kinda want to get a smoke but I can’t, so I just make some coffee, sit down, and ask myself why?

Why does these models have such similar looking hairs? And more importantly, why does Aeris’ hair look like this after this fix, when Mary Jane’s looked like that from a straight port?

I was thinking about the normals, the faces, maybe a mistake… But no, after I messed with one of the values of the VMTs, I realized why it looks like this: this is super high quality hair.

I came to that conclusion because when I messed with one of the VMTs, I messed up the transparency, but I was able to see the hair form. Even though the transparency was turned off, I was able to see it. I messed with the transparencies and I noticed something very important: it looks like this because it doesn’t have solid surface beneath.

Now I’m giving you guys the final screenshot, the original screenshot was just the hair without Aeris’ head. I decided to also do a quick compile of Aeris’ head, so now the hair can be sitting on something solid. And then, the hair looked very different. After I remembered the exchange I had with that patron, I then took a bet:

If this hair looks nice with a basic light setup, it should look nice with a complex light setup.

So I launched SFM and did a very basic light setup. I messed a bit with the camera’s AO and used 128 samples (no changes on the animated samples because there’s no reason to mess with those) which I think they are pretty standard.

I did a simple frame render (less quality than a Poster render) and I got impressed.

I think the hair looks pretty good, my main concern is people thinking what the hell is this hair because they are not used to see hair like this, you can be sure I’m not used to see hair like this in SFM at least, but honestly? I think the hair looks pretty good.

I think this clears the hair about Aeris (sorry) I think all she needs is just a face rig redux since she has a lot of lip and eyelid bones (I think her eyelashes are assigned to an eyelash-specific bone) and we can begin to build her!

Also, I’m not going canon for her. I’m taking freedom, because Aeris doesn’t deserve true canon because it’s terrible.

Anyway, what do you guys think? I think the hair looks pretty nice!