In the April 2005 Curious Lab's newsletter, they printed my
tutorial on Making Beards. It goes through the step-by-step
process. See Making a Beard on the Curious Labs' site.
The tutorial can also be found on my website, Perpetual Visions. All the steps that are
necessary are contained in that tutorial. This tutorial will show
how to create a handlebar mustache on James [The James figure is
included in Poser 5 and 6]. Since the concept and basic steps are
the same, I will outline them here until I start styling the
mustache at which point I will go into greater detail. If any of
the steps are confusing, refer back to the Beard Tutorial.
1 - Select James's face in Lt. Wireframe mode. 2 - Choose the face
camera and magnify it as much as possible.
3 - With the Group Editor open, select the head of the
person.
4 - Then select New Group and name it Mustache.
5 - You will now delineate the Mustache. Here is where it
gets a little hard because as you try to delineate the polygons,
the teeth and tongue polygons will appear and seem to cover the
exterior ones you want to select. Just try to ignore them. Once you
select the first mustache polygon, the rest are easy to choose.
After you finish selecting the polygons for the mustache, if you
select hide in the Group Editor the mustache will
look like this.
6 - After you have selected the polygons, save them as a prop and
call it "mustache" again or anything else.
7 - Move to the Hair Room. 8 - Click on New Group and call
it Hair_1 which is the default. 9 - Click on Edit
Growth Group if the Group Editor is closed. It should
still be open, however. 10 - With Hair_1 selected,
marquee over the polygons that form the mustache.
11 - Go to Growth Controls and set up the Grow Guide
Hairs for 0.0250.
12 - When you set the Grow Guide Hairs to a new length, they
should appear on the face. If they don't, click Grow Guide
Hairs. It is easier to see and work on the face now if you
switch from Lt. Wireframe to Smooth Shaded
13 - Open the Hair Style Tools. Click on the head shaped
icon.
Now comes the fun part - Styling the Mustache. How I style it is
just a guide. These are the tools I have used in this tutorial.
The little square under Falloff is very important. It
determines how the hair bends when bent using the Translate
Tool. It bends on a continuum. At the two extremities, it
either bends from the root of the guide hair strand or from the
tip. I have included a small screen capture with many of the
illustrations to show what I found was most effective for my
styling of the mustache. The Constrain length is also
important. When checked it keeps a strand from growing and, thus,
changing as it is manipulated. Make sure that you always remember
to Clear Selections when you are finished with one step and
are going to start another using different strands of hair. The
Lengthen dial moves toward the right to lengthen and toward the
left to shorten. This is just an aside: You have to be able to
select hair to work with it. Sometimes when you bring a figure into
the Hair Room, it will show that a hair group has not been
selected.
To rectify the situation if you know that the figure does have
hair, find the Arrow Head icon in the upper left hand corner
of the stage.
Then, click on it and another menu will open that lists body, body
parts, lights, props, etc. Click on Props to open another
menu. Here choose Hair_1 since we left the default
name intact. The hair has been activated so you can use the Hair
Style Tools.
For the rest of the tutorial, you can work with your figure best, I
believe, in either Smooth Shaded or Texture Shaded
mode. Display>Document Style>
14 - Select the bottom hairs using the Select Hairs Tool
leaving three on each side not selected. If they were selected
inadvertently, remove them with the Deselect Hairs Tool. Now
Shorten the selected hairs by turning the Dial to the
left.
15 - Turn the side hairs up in the order shown. Do this on each
side.
Keep the setting for the Falloff the same as the screen
capture below.
16 - Line up the bottom hairs according to the picture to get the
same effect as the tutorial or another way if you choose.
17 - Select the outside top hair on both sides of the upper lip and
make them as long as in the picture
18 - Take the Translate Hair Tool and with the Falloff set as in
the picture pull the tool up and a little toward the utside.
The best way to see how the mustache will eventually look is to
make a random decisions as to population density and check the box
from time to time. Don't leave Show Populated checked when
you go back to work. It can lead to confusion although I toggle
Show Populated on and off frequently.
19 - Spread the upper hairs toward the outside and lengthen them a
little if necessary. You are almost finished.
20 - Go to the Material Room and click on
Object>Props>Hair_1.
21 - Set the colors as follows for a dark mustache without specular
highlights. Also check Opaque_in_Shadow to give the hair
roots more density.
22 - The last choice one has to make is how to populate the
mustache. In Poser 5, you choose the number of hairs. In Poser 6,
you choose a density and that determines the number of hairs.
Also, the density does not just determine how full the hair looks,
it also determines where some of the strands are placed. Look at
the samples below.
And finally the completed face using a medium default Firefly
render.
All images are copyright, and cannot be
copied, printed, or reproduced in any manner without written
permission from the artist.
- The Paula Sander's Report is a regular
Renderosity Front Page featured column, where Paula investigates
and comments on graphic software, techniques, and other relevant
material through her reviews, tutorials, and general articles.
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