Surface Replicated Hair?

Dartanbeck

So you might find this strange, even a bit hard to believe. I've been have a really hard time trying to get the right hair going for my Rosie V4 character. I get close with this and that, but as you can tell by looking at the hair portion of some of my renders, well... you know why I need something different, right?
Well using the same conforming setup that you see in most of my renders of her, I modeled a small curl of hair. It's actually two curls in one object. UV Mapped them and gave the a shader and replicated around 20,000 of these things all over the conforming hair. It took some messing around to get the random angles set up, and getting the right numbers on the various domains. It get's a little trickier when it comes to using the morphs I've added to the strands of hair. I believe, however, that if this turns out in my favor, I'll likely make the whole thing more simplified and create all new morphs that work according to the curls.
Looking at this image, you can see where it still needs work, but I feel that I just might be on the right track here.

WendyLuvsCatz

lol! looks better than my replicated fur attempts using vertex grass!
and if I create real instances you do not want to know what happens using attach skeleton, forget weightpainting!!!

wetcircuit

So this is Carrara hair or this is a vertex model being replicated?

Dartanbeck

This is the conforming Angelina Hail, modified and morphed and multiplied times three - each getting larger and fuller - you've seen that in all of my Rosie Renders except for the dynamic hair tries.
Now I made a small curl vertex object, UV mapped it, and replicated it onto each of those three conformed hair products.

I still had the issue with transparent alpha maps making it really slow - so I don't hit it with shadow-casting lights.

So I just finished making a new vertex model of a single strand of hair in a curl and replicated that in an area of the instances tab that is allowed to be hit by shadow-casting lights - as is the lowest level of the conforming hair.

I didn't like not have hair shadows.

This is much better. It really looks good when it isn't standing up against such a light background, but I wanted to show what it was doing. So...

Dartanbeck

She's also sporting a brand spankin' new accent light enhancement rig - the one I'm planning to include with the EnviroKit,
and a new set of shaders for her Kunoichi Robe. It's about time I show Rosie some love!