I am working on modeling the head of an elf, and since their ears are quite characteristic. I want to accentuate them by having long hair being tucked behind the ear. But I have struggled to keep the interpolated children from protruding the ear. Is this something this course will help me with? If this is impossible to achieve with particle system should I use hair cards instead? Are hair cards a viable option in realistic portraits? Thank you very much for your suggestions.
Hi Jonatan,
The problem is, where the Guide Hairs are. The Interpolated Children get interpolated between the Guides and that can cause intersections with the Mesh:
You can use Simple Children to avoid that problem, or be careful where you place your Guide Hairs. For instance, use smaller patches (Hair Emitters) with separate Hair Systems. This is usually done for at least left side and right side and for eyebrows and so on. You can give the ears their own Particle Systems.
This course uses the old system, but for sure there are golden nuggets in it that are still super relevant when it comes to workflow and styling techniques that will help you. In the Basemesh course, Lucas uses the latest Hair system to stylize the hair of his character. Linking up:
https://cgcookie.com/courses/basemesh-create-stylized-characters-quickly-with-blender
There is an old course that deals with hair cards:
https://cgcookie.com/courses/creating-hair-cards-for-realtime-characters
I think it holds up nicely, even though it's an older Blender version it was recorded with. I don't think hair cards hold up for realistic portraits, since they are more of a hack for optimization for realtime characters and engines.