Tutorial Creating lifelike hair

SECTION THREE: PROJECT

Creating lifelike hair

We show you how to model a head of realistic 3D hair in Cinema 4D and Shave and a Haircut
ealistic hair has always been hard for a computer to simulate and despite huge advances in software, its still a complicated business. Feature films like Monsters Inc. and Brother Bear demonstrate whats possible these days, but whos got two years to spend on perfecting the technique? Shave and a Haircut is a powerful 3D plug-in that has a cult-following among animators. Developed by Joe Alter, this rendering system for creating all types of fur and hair plugs right into Cinema 4D or Maya and has been used in films such as X-Men 2.

While a plug-in such as Shave and a Haircut makes the hair-creating process a lot easier, the styling and rendering of realistic hair still remains an involved task for you and your computer. Luckily, we have some handy guidelines to help you follow this process, but we have to assume a certain degree of experience with Cinema 4D's most basic tasks, as well as some basic knowledge of the Shave Editor. We're using Cinema 4D R8.5 and Shave 2.5, though most things work similarly in any version. So, load in your favourite character model, find the head mesh, and let's start grooming

To find out more about Shave and a Haircut or Cinema 4D, visit [w] www.maxon.net. The character used in this tutorial is Fred, who has been created by Dutch animation studio Happy Ship. Fred is not provided as a download due to copyright issues, but you can use the characters Meg and Otto which come with Cinema 4D. Expertise provided by Bastiaan Hooimeijer, also known as Naam. Naam is an animator and character designer at new animation studio Happy Ship, from the cold northern regions of Groningen, the Netherlands. [w] www.happyship.com

Part 1: Preparing the model

You need hair before you can style it...
Shave tags
In Step 3 on the right, you need to use the Compositing tag and not the object's small visibility dots, because you still want the hair itself to be visible. Since Shave is using its own renderer, itll ignore the Cinema 4D-specific settings of the Compositing tag.

Select the polygons of your character that should grow hair. Be generous with your selection because itll be easier to remove them than to create extra polygons later on.

polygon object will be created from your selection, which will be the scalp. Select it in the Object Manager and rename it.

2 or the [v] key), select Edit Surface>Split. A new

Using the Context menu (right mouse button,

options turned off to hide it from the renderer. Vertex Maps excepted, you can safely remove any other tag.

3 will ignore it. Give it a Compositing tag with all

Give the scalp a Stop tag so the HyperNurb

Normal Move tool in polygon mode) remodel the scalp slightly so it just about disappears below the skin. Dont bury it too deep.

4 Using your preferred modelling tools (try the

Hair function. Cinema 4D automatically creates a Texture tag with a Shave material named after the mesh, a Shave Hairstyle tag, and a Polygon Selection tag.

5 With all polygons selected, use Shaves Grow

object (with Shaves Add Gel Tag function), double-click it and turn on Collision Detection. Youre now ready to start styling.
Tutorial Creating lifelike hair

6 Collisions to Full. Add a Gel tag to the head

Double-click the Shave Hairstyle tag and set

Tutorial Creating lifelike hair

Part 2: Styling the hair

Its time to get involved with those tantalising blue lines
Head-on collisions
If you have other objects that you need to see inside the Shave Editor, like headgear, or a collar, simply add a Gel Tag to them as well. Youll probably want to leave collisions off for these reference objects they can be helpful for styling, but they can also be in the way. If your hairguides start jumping around, turn off Collision Detection in the Shave Editor.

Styling tools
Using the Puff Roots tool is very good for making the roots stick out, which is important to prevent rendering artefacts. The Clump tool can be used on any part of the hair, not just the tips. And in case you inadvertently lose' some hairs because you've scaled them down too much, use the Pop Zero button.

Thanks to the Collision Detection, you can style the hair without it intersecting with the head. With the Shave Style Tag selected, click on Shaves Edit Hair button. Cinema 4D will freeze, and the Shave Editor will come up.

click the right mouse button in the viewport and move your mouse straight up.

2 out of the way. Its already selected, so simply

The first thing you need to do is move all hair

case deselects all. Using the Shift and Ctrl keys, select the bottom-most row of hairguides.

3 Press [i] to invert the selection, which in this

Enable Brush Mode and Select Whole Strand.

Display options
You can use the [d] key to flick through display types possibly you need to look beneath the skin now and then. Also, if you want to concentrate on just the selected group of guides, press [i], [-], [i] to hide the other guides. Press [\] (backslash) to show all hidden hairs again.

and brush the hairguides downwards with the right mouse button. Switch to the Scale tool if you need to change their length.

4 selected, use the [b] key to define a brush size,

Once a decent row of hairguides has been

of the hairguides, and other tools like Clump, to make more refined adjustments. Once youre fairly satisfied, select the next row of hairguides.

5 into form. Also try brushing different parts

Use different brush sizes to model the guides

this, bottom to top, each time selecting a new cluster of hair and brushing them down and into shape. Make sure the roots stick out of the surface instead of following it.

6 Work your way through the hairguides like

separate from the main volume, press the [s] key to split it off. Conversely, you can use the [m] key to merge a group of guides back together.

7 If theres a lock of hair that needs to be

with the sliders to the right. The viewport will respond in real time with an illustration of the effect.

8 guides, tweak the style of the individual hairs

When youre satisfied with the shape of the

needs the Frizz and Kink parameters to be quite small. Use Shaves Preview function for a rudimentary preview of the overall effect.

9 Fred takes real good care of his hair, so he

View your style

While tweaking the hair settings inside Cinema 4D, you may want to see the hair instead of just the guides. Do this by selecting Hair inside the Shave Hairstyle tag. You can speed up editor feedback by setting the viewport LOD (Level of Detail) to Low, and speed up rendering by disabling Use Render LOD. But remember to turn it back on when you're defining the haircount.

though, that for very thin individual hairs, you're going to have to increase their overall count in Step 12 on the right.

10 overall appearance of the hair. Bear in mind,

The Thickness parameters play a big role in the

click the Hair Material to set the hair colours. Freds hair has a pinkish hue, with darker roots and yellowish Mutant Hairs.

11 tweaks. Click on Done and OK, and double-

Lets get back to Cinema for some more

the default is often enough. Keep Hair Depth set to at least 3, but increase it if you need softer, more transparent hair.

12 amount of hair you want. Just some more than

On the Render page, you need to define the

with the remaining settings. The parameters mostly speak for themselves. The Self-Shadow parameter can be used to make hair more solid.

13 last tweaks to the actual shading of the hair

Still on the Render page, you should make the

placement of the hairguides. You can use the Knife tool to add more polygons, and thus hairguides, for something like a parting.

14 object. This is a great way to fine-tune the

Dont forget you can still remodel the scalp

to further refine the hairstyle. The Preview function is now pretty close to the final rendering, so use it to your advantage.

15 between Cinema 4D and the Shave Editor

Youre probably going to want to switch

Part 3: Using a cut-length map

Or how to give Fred a bald spot...

Create a new standard material, and add a gradient shader to the colour channel. Were going to use this material as a proxy for where the model should have his bald spot.

the outside. That way the hair in the centre of the gradient will be the shortest.

2 it goes from black in the centre to white on

Set the gradient to 2D Circular, and make sure

to position the bald spot. Dont worry about it tiling over the rest of your mesh, because only the central gradient matters.
Tutorial Creating lifelike hair

3 mapping set to Flat, use the Texture Axis tool

Apply the material to the scalpel and, with

Tutorial Creating lifelike hair

Part 3: Using a cut-length map continued...

Readjusting the bald spot
Chance is, the bald spot isn't placed correctly at the first go. To readjust the gradient's placement, simply remove the UVW tag, and set the proxy Material tag's mapping back to Flat. Reposition the gradient with the Texture Axis tool, and just take it from Step 4 next. You can skip copying the gradient shader if you don't change it.

from the Texture menu in the Object Manager. A new UVW tag will be generated and placed on the scalp object.

4 call the Generate UV coordinates function

Once youre satisfied with the placement,

will reference the first UVW tag it finds to the right of itself, so make sure its the one you just created.

5 the Shave Material tag to UVW Mapping. It

If it isnt already selected, set the mapping of

the Shave Material, and place the gradient in the Cut Length Map channel with the Paste Shader function, and render the result.

6 Channel menu. Next, go to the Style page of

Use Copy Shader from the proxy Materials

Part 4: Lighting and rendering

Attractive lighting does half the job of creating great-looking hair...

Create a Target Light, set its Shadows to Soft, 1 and duplicate it twice by Cmd/Ctrl-dragging it in the Object Manager. You now have three spotlights all pointing at a target Null. Rename them Key, Fill and Rim.

and the target so the Key light is the main lightsource, the Fill light fills in remaining dark parts, and the Rim light creates a nice silver lining.

2 Colour the lights slightly. Position the lights

advantage of Shaves shadow map generation. You can scale up the lights to make this easier to see.

3 fitting the head and hair, so that you take full

Make sure that all three lightcones are neatly

actually illuminate the hair. Cmd/Ctrl-drag the tag this creates to the other two lights.

4 Shaves Add Light Tag function to make it

With one of the spotlights selected, use

object to the scene. Create a Shave Shadow Material (File>Shave>Shadow in the Material Manager) and drop it onto the Environment object.

5 shadows, you need to add an Environment

To make Shave actually calculate the hair

place and lit attractively. Undoubtedly, youll want to tweak the setup to make it really work, but thats up to you. Experiment all you like. cap

6 And finally, render the result. Your hair is in