Chest Hair

Yosemite Sam · Post by **Yosemite Sam** » Sat Jan 14, 2012 11:10 am

Hey guys,

Working on this character that has a lot of body hair. Been doing each one as a vector (1000s), but the program is becoming unstable while creating it so I can only imagine how bad it will be when it comes time to animate.

Is there an easy way to create an image of the body hair and attach that to the character without having to use photoshop or tvpaint?

Thanks

slowtiger · Post by **slowtiger** » Sat Jan 14, 2012 12:00 pm

Sometimes less is more. The common solution for a stubbly face would be just a darker colour, but that would look funny on the chest. I'd recommend to place just a handful of clearly visible hairs strategically, like this character (from "Werner - Beinhart!", 1990, and as assistant animator I drew a lot of stubbles on him.)

Yosemite Sam · Post by **Yosemite Sam** » Sat Jan 14, 2012 12:15 pm

Hey Tiger,

Yeah, I'll consider that if no other options are presented. Really wanted to try and accomplish this look, however.

Also, I'll be in touch with you soon.

Imago · Post by **Imago** » Sat Jan 14, 2012 12:36 pm

Try to create the chest hair separately, then render them on PNG file.
Cut it in the right way to fit the body and paste it in a image layer, if you need to "distort" it use a bone layer.

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Sat Jan 14, 2012 2:36 pm

You can render your haired texture on a squared png, then use it as an image texture for a simple vector.

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Sat Jan 14, 2012 3:00 pm

It works very well. You can add soft edge for the shape to get a better effect.
check this file:
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/54411/AS8/haired%20texture.rar

jahnocli · Post by **jahnocli** » Sat Jan 14, 2012 3:11 pm

You could also use another technique recently posted by selgin to draw multiple hairs with one stroke. As he said, good for animating: Noisy outlines are fantastic

Yosemite Sam · Post by **Yosemite Sam** » Sat Jan 14, 2012 3:36 pm

Thank you so much everyone!

I'm going to look these all over and report back with my results and/or any questions.

Yosemite Sam · Post by **Yosemite Sam** » Sun Jan 15, 2012 12:20 pm

selgin,

I downloaded your file, but it won't open. It says its from a newer version of AS, yet I have AS 8. Is it because I didn't update to AS 8.1?

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Sun Jan 15, 2012 3:16 pm

Yosemite Sam wrote:selgin,

I downloaded your file, but it won't open. It says its from a newer version of AS, yet I have AS 8. Is it because I didn't update to AS 8.1?

Probably. I recommend you to download 8.1, it's more stable and even have a couple more features.

funksmaname · Post by **funksmaname** » Sun Jan 15, 2012 10:14 pm

i was going to suggest the same thing as selgin - although personally, i would make a curl shape and draw the chest hair with the scatter brush rather than 'dots' where you can vary the colours slightly - then export that as a texture

gl! very nice looking character.

Post by **Víctor Paredes** » Mon Jan 16, 2012 12:51 pm

funksmaname wrote:i was going to suggest the same thing as selgin - although personally, i would make a curl shape and draw the chest hair with the scatter brush rather than 'dots' where you can vary the colours slightly - then export that as a texture

That's a good idea, hehehe, I always forget the scatter brush

funksmaname · Post by **funksmaname** » Mon Jan 16, 2012 9:49 pm

i only ever used it once - but it was quite recently

I used it to scatter paint across this character - the result was so slow it couldn't be animated, but I exported it as a texture and put it back across the character parts:

I think once I exported it i smudged the bit around the waist to make it look like he wiped his hands.

You could take your image into photoshop and create a photoshop brush to do the same thing, and probably with more control

Yosemite Sam · Post by **Yosemite Sam** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 3:07 pm

Thanks Funks,

Yeah, as of now I just saved the chest hair layer as a PNG then imported it as an image layer and attached it to the main torso bone. But the problem is the character has TWO torso bones.

So I separated the the hair into 2 more PNGs then attached one to the upper torso bone and the other to the bottom torso bone. But now there's a clear break in the hair's movement when the character bends.

Since I can't use the bind points with an image texture...

It looks like Selgin has points on his sample above, however I just can't seem to get his file to open in my copy of AS8. Even after the update.

I understand you can add bones to an image but I'm not sure if that would solve my problem, or make it more complicated while animating.

Again, thanks for all your guys input, I'm constantly learning.

funksmaname · Post by **funksmaname** » Tue Jan 17, 2012 8:12 pm

selgin will know better than me, but I think in order for bones to warp textures they need to have influence. If the chest is 1 shape, regardless of how many bones, you can give it the 1 texture, then the texture should warp as long as the bones have influence...

also, you dont need to split the PNG, you can just apply the same PNG and move the texture handles to make it follow (that's what I did on the painter, it only uses one texture, but I could tweak the direction of things in each shape with the handles.