[MonkeyBoy]

Hellow all:

I would like to start a discusion on rendering hair... say in photoshop or the like.

I currently use the painbrush sketch in some lines, then use the smudge tool to sculpt the sketchwork into tendrils and individual hairs... I then do a good deal of dodging and burning, followed by more smudging.

A good deal of my rendering in general is done by creating some local values, then smudging to taste, using the brush and erraser as tonal tuners.

I have seen hair rendered by airbrushing individual strands, then preserving transparancey and adding local colour and value.

What say you?


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MonekyBoy

(my muse is back)

[nova]

(roughly)

1. sketchy sketchy - helps me think of where the hair should flow, something very important. it lets me try different directions and placements, as well as figg'ring how it would flow in real life.

2. streaky streaky - i start adding streaks of colour, following the guides i made in the last step. these are then used as the midtones for the rest of the hair.

3. shadow - more streakies with shadow. if it is black or brown hair, though, i skip to making highlights rather than shadow first, because it's what is most noticeable. here i work on emphasizing the light source.

4. highlight - whatever looks good, further bringing to attention the light source.

5. and repeat. i never have much of a system of doing this stuff, it changes every time. i think so too because i'm not too consistent with colouring styles.. i'm still experienting a lot, so it's very different every time.

things to consider, though - custom brushes are quite helpful. if you're aiming at doing a more realistic mane, experiment with scattering pixels in a small space, selecting the area and in the brushes pull-down menu, hit 'define brush'. make sure the spacing is set at 1% or it won't work. this brush you just created is very useful when striving for creating single-hair detail and the like.

I usually don't use dodge/burn except for sometimes adding an extra highlight ot two at the end when i'm tweaking the image to my last-minute liking. i never use smudge, and if i want a similar effect, i take a big airbrush to it.

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* * * ** Nova
!

[This message has been edited by Nova (edited September 21, 2000).]

[dEATH.Tool]

You use the painbrush?

No seriously though, there was a topic about this a whileback....I wasn't active then but all the like already post. Hey who know it may fire up again....we'll see...