I took a stroll through the Hair room tonight... first thing I did was make a skullcap for Stephy. I hadn't used the Hair Room before, so I wasn't sure what I needed, so I made one cap with 6000+ polys and one with 1800+... the lower-res one seemed to be plenty ;). I was 'winging it' without referring to the manual or anything, but I did learn a bit in the process... - parent the skullcap to your character's head. - When making the hair, keep the skullcap visible and not transparent... you need to be able to see the polygons when you're setting up growth groups. - before you render, you (normally) want to hide the skullcap - Don't make your skullcap object Not Visible (object properties), make it transparent (using material settings)... if you make it not visible using the object properties, Poser can't seem to determine where it is anymore and it will fly off your character's head if you change poses (even if it's Locked). - Each 'growth group' will have it's own material settings.. which is nice, but can also be a pain if you have several dozen groups ;). All of mine were assigned a blond texture (see image above) by default - I'm not sure if there's a way to change/specify that as/before you create them. - My first stab at this was a little sloppy... you may need to plan a lot more depending on the hair style you want to create (positioning and size of growth groups). - just to be safe, save your prop every now and then and be sure to select subset and check all the hair growth groups (which appear to be seperate objects, parented to the prop). ...the result above has 14 growth groups with 500 hairs each (~7000 hairs). I didn't use any of the 'Styling Controls' buttons yet (except to reduce the number of hairs from 1000 to 500 per group)... I mostly just played with the 'Growth Controls' (length, variance, pull down, pull back and pull side). I made the decision to fill the whole head, but you might want to leave some areas sparse if they aren't seen to speed up renders. I started in the back and worked my way to the front, but that may or may not be the best way to do it. In the end it wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but I'm relatively pleased with the result ;). Cheers, - Keith

Here's the same hair with the Kink Strength turned up to 10 (instead of 3)... I think I like the straighter look better ;).

This looks just great and I will try your way...Sharen

I just ran into a(nother) bug... if you Rename Growth Group, you LOOSE the grouping on the skullcap! (grrrr) So if you're going to rename them, do it before you set up the group. I'm not sure if it's recoverable or not yet - it still saved to disk ok, but I'm too tired to try to load it back in right now... I'll find out after I sleep ;).

Stupid basic question #2: How do we make a skullcap ????

Keith nice job. Dave you can make a skullcap by using the grouping tool to define the cap then hitting the spawn prop button. If you would like I will show you a couple of screen shots. Its very easy. Then if you want it higher res export it and use an external program to add more polys. Ron

Dave Had a few minutes this morning so here is how to do it. Open the grouping tool. Above icon with the square see pic1. Then define the area you want to be the cap. Using the grouping tool. You have to have the head selected. At first it selects the whole head and it turns red. Hit the "remove all" button. Then with your left mouse button in a wireframe mode, select the areas you want to be the cap. They will turn red. If you select and area you dont want then deselected it by holding down your ctrl key and left mouse button. When your happy with it just hit the "spawn props" button. See pic below. Instant skullcap. I moved it up so you can see it. Hope this helps. Ron

You will now have a new prop called head.

Thanks Ron :) I'll be making skullcaps tonight... And Keith...I didn't mention how great this hair looks...

This is really helpful, guys. Thank you! Doc

Ya know I was just trying this a little bit ago. I haven't looked it up in the manual yet either. What I wanna know is how can I get my skullcap to look like the default ones, IE: with the nice texture, so that the scalp doesn't shine thru so much with fewer hairs. I tried simply cutting and pasting all the materials from the default skull cap to my new one (BTW the character is Judy based, but her head got reshaped by the faceroom so the defaul skullcaps won't fit.) But it was all screwed up. I think part of the problem is the figure I made the cap from had a faceroom skin. (Can you get rid of those?) Sorry if this isn't clear I just wanna know if you have been able to make a new skullcap with the Skullcap textures and transmaps applied that looks right. (Probably time to read the manual. :)) BTW the hair looks great very soft looking. the render time must be murder with 7000 hairs tho.

In the material room you can change the texture and other material settings. Ron

Yes, I made the cap as Ron describes above... then I loaded it into Wings3D and sub-divded the mesh... the above image shows the cap I used for that hair (in my little .obj viewer program). I'd forgotten about Stphy's tall, cylindrical forehead ;) ... the next cap I make will bring the hairline down some.

BTW, when you're creating growth groups, each polygon in the cap = one guide hair... the guide hairs are used for previewing, but can also be manipulated to style the hair. So, more polygons = more flexability for controlling clumps of hair, but you still control the total number of hairs on a per growth group basis, so unless you need a lot of specific control, you can probably get away with just using a spawned skullcap and not worry about adding resolution/polygons to the mesh.

Will you be offering these scull-caps in free stuff. I need some where the hair comes farther down on the forehead. This looks very good! Thanks Boni

Will you be offering these scull-caps in free stuff. I need some where the hair comes farther down on the forehead. This looks very good! Thanks Boni

Will you be offering these scull-caps in free stuff. I need some where the hair comes farther down on the forehead. This looks very good! Thanks Boni