Help with dreadlocks technique?

[ElizaW]

Hey guys!

I'm self taught and working on hair for a 5-6k poly character. Well... he has dreadlocks, which puts me in a bit of a bind. One, I'm not too good with hair in the first place, and two, I'm sortof winging it with nothing but my reference pics and my sketches.

So I brazenly decided to start a sculpt, and figured that the good people here might lend their expertise and tell me how off-base I am later.

Here's the rough, unsmoothed sculpt. I did two layers of dreads, the inner one to bulk up the empty space, and all together it comes up to 570 polys. (Good? Bad? I have no idea.)

http://i1235.photobucket.com/albums/ff432/ElizaWy/3d/DreadlocksRD.jpg

Here's the hair with the model (still a WIP) attached:
http://i1235.photobucket.com/albums/ff432/ElizaWy/3d/DreadlocksRD_Demo.jpg


So. Techniques.

Usually, I see hair feathered with alpha channels, but aside from wispy ends, I don't see that happening here. On my own novice judgment, I'm thinking normal maps and materials will have to do the work. I just noticed that the second layer of 'hair' is peeking out behind that ear-- I'll move that shortly.

Thoughts? Opinions?

[haikai]

I think what you have could work depending on how important it is for you to have separate dreads. If poly count becomes a concern I think even things like dreadlocks can bake down to a plane with alpha if the normal map is good. Or you could do the best of both worlds where you keep the bulk of it as simple planes where possible, and then model out dreads here and there where they will be more noticeable.

That said, spending 500 or so triangles on hair for a character with a 6k budget doesn't sound too unreasonable to me, but I guess it depends on how the rest of it is distributed (the back of his shoulder there looks particularly low poly).

[Farfarer]

It seems as good a method as any.

If you're throwing a normal map on it via bake from sculpt, I'd be tempted to model in the proper individual dreads for sculpting on. Or just be careful to sort out those areas each time you subdivide your mesh.

Otherwise you're going to get some odd looking things when you smooth that mesh you have (you'll start to get "webs" between each dread that comes off the main block and the dreads will appear to form out of loads of matted hair, rather than nearer the scalp). Throw a turbosmooth on your dreads mesh to see what I mean, it'll start to lose it's form easily without some more polygonal support.

Also.. 500 & 6000 sounds optimistic for what you've shown so far. Are you counting polys or triangles?

[Avanthera]

You could try to make a solid mass with a few stray dreads.

I've always liked how this was done:
http://www.gameartisans.org/forums/showthread.php?t=15794
really simple sculpting process too:
http://xmages.net/storage/10/1/0/e/2/upload/6c7aff6b.jpg

[ElizaW]

@Haikai - Poly count's more of a goal than a concern. I'd like to get Torque 3d's base package from Garage Games and use him there eventually, though. That said, these are polys, not triangles. The hair is at 1,110 triangles at present.

@Talon - Thank you for the advice!

I'm counting four-sided polys-- a few triangles in there, sure. At present the character is pretty blocked in, and is sitting at 5,120 polys. Perhaps I'm still being optimistic, though.

@Shew81 - Now that is beautiful... and just what I was looking for. Thank you!

[Farfarer]

Game models are traditionally counted in triangles, if you're after a polycount, you'll need to count in tris :)

Your model's probably more like 10,000 polys.