Where can i find low poly hairstyles?

Most humans have hair, its a pretty darned common thing. It's also one of the hardest things to make as an artist. Most humans also have roughly the same size and shape of head, so i'd say this sort of thing is fairly interchangeable

I'm struggling to find any though.

As far as i'm aware there's two main methods for this. One involves using partial alpha textures and lots of mesh faces, to achieve a fairly realistic hair look, and the other is carefully sculpted meshwork for a more stylised appearance. Here's a good example of the latter



I especially like the ones on the bottom, and lower right.

These are all taken from Dota 2. No alpha textures are involved, this is pure modelling, most likely done in Zbrush, and then with the polycount and textures heavily reduced to fit into reasonable limits.

I want this, and i don't have the talent to make it (without investing a lot of time). I'm certain i'm not the first.

So is anyone aware of some sample assets i could use for prototyping and modifying, or somewhere which sells this kind of thing? Premade models are a huge business, there's got to be a big market for this.

 

any advice?

there seems to be very little of this stuff on the asset store.

 

bump!

come on someone's got to have some. there's a huge market niche here

 

I don't think the market is really that big for hair models. Developers seem to be more interested in complete models.

I could see this being a thing for UMA which has build in support for swapping out body parts, but the hair has be set up for that system.

 

Yeah, UMA is probably your best bet. Do a thread search for UMA, which should give you all the relevant info on what's available and upcoming.

 

In fact it is not - at least not without manual edits to fit the target geometry and possibly textures - not to mention rig/skeleton setups.

Think of it like different shoe sizes for different people. One does not fit all

 

Nothing is really 1:1 interchangeable, every character has a different head shape and you'll need to tweak each hair model according to the character, so there aren't a lot of "hair only" assets for this reason. The same reason that there aren't any "boots only" assets that would work on any character.

You could certainly do this with UMA, but your whole character would have to be an UMA and you would skin it to the base UMA mesh so that deformations would scale perfectly. It's not adopted widely enough to really have assets at that level, but it's pretty easy to do that sort of thing with it and the studios using it in production are getting the results you would expect.

 

I was just considering trying to make hair for the first time a couple days ago, but didn't find time yet. I thought I'd try by making it with particles in Blender, converting it to a mesh, then making a low poly retopo of it, and baking the texture onto it. I want to do it that way because I i noticed how easy it is to "comb" the particle hair.

 

Yeah, this sort of thing is generally not generic, or created separately from an individual model. If you wanted to create a set of models that had interchangeable hair, you could. But you would have to have a standardized head size and shape in order to make that happen.

A task like this is going to be a custom job, one way or the other.

 

Use this as a guideline Ms. Nanako's.

 

That's one talented hair artist.

 

I have a developer license from DAZ which means I can use any of their official DAZ hair styles in games. I use their decimator tool to bring down the poly count, export it and bring it into 3DSMax for skinning to my character's skeleton, and bring it into my games. Low poly, good looking hair. There's a ton of styles there that are covered under the license. I sometimes take parts from different styles and blend them together for a totally new one.

I used to model all of my character's hair from scratch, which was super time consuming, boring, and... yeah, screw that.

 

Please follow Nanako thread.

 

You do know there is a "Watch Thread" link at the upper-right corner of the top-most post, right?

 

Manual editing beyond general XYZ scaling is unnecessary.
Textures are irrelevant, skin is not hair.
And unity provides a generic humanoid rig for this very reason

unless you're doing something particularly stylised or cartoonish, humanoid head shapes are pretty interchangeable. it's an egg,.

no

I feel like both of you are theorycrafting. I have actual experience with this, via second life. I've seen avatars with millions of different head shapes, and all kinds of hair fitting near perfectly. That platform doesn't even have axis-specific scaling! In the vast majority of cases people made things fit by generic scaling, position tweaking, and proper design of the hair itself to begin with

 

can you go into more detail about this?

i see a content marketplacfe on the daz 3D site, but it seems to be for purchasing individual assets and i don't see license terms specified anywhere, what are you generally allowed to do with them?

 

This is the way to go for hair and generic models. For $500 developer you need only learn to texture and you can do that in GIMP & Blender. Oh, & you'll also have to pay $100 for the Decimator. Does not include non-DAZ models or non-DAZ add-ons to models bought in the DAZ Store.

If you buy a product in the DAZ Store and have the DAZ dev license and the product you bought was made and sold by the DAZ company and not a 3rd party, you may use that product in a game. You may not use that product or a derivative to resale in the Unity Asset Store or in the DAZ Store or the Poser Content Paradise store or any other resale. Only in a game, an 2D image, or a sequence of 2D images. You may however create original textures and geometries for these models and resale your original work in the DAZ, Poser, Unity, and other places.

Poser Pro Game Dev 2014 is also excellent option and cost $350 usually but they have sales and a decimator is included. The price includes all models that come with Poser and should you buy any models that in Content Paradise that Smith Micro makes then those are allowed in games as well. Does not include non-Smith Micro models bought at Content Paradise.

So for game dev, DAZ is close to $300 more but the Genesis models generally have so much flexibility that you can create more unique characters easier with DAZ models than with Poser models.

I am using Poser models that I licensed from a 3rd party now. Find a style you like in DAZ store and make changes to what you've licensed to get something unique. Easiest, cheapest, and most flexible is the Genesis base and you need buy the $600 in licenses. Check out Smay's male & female Chibis to see what Genesis can do. You can try do a new style yourself or see if Smay is amenable to licensing his Chibis. If he is, it's generally the retail price in the DAZ store + 1* the retail price to use a product in one game or 5 * the retail price to use products in multiple games. Some vendors refuse to license. Although they'll be recognized as Poser/DAZ style by those familiar with those communities for the rest of the gaming world and players these models are a huge improvement to current state of the art in my opinion. By the time I finish collecting the models I need to have a rounded library I will have spent about $2000 in multi-game licensing fees with 3rd party Poser/DAZ vendor.

Before you spend so much money you should learn Blender & GIMP but also DAZ Studio 4.7 and how to manipulate the Genesis characters uniquely and texture them too and export them to Unity. The only expense you should have to pay up front is $100 for the Decimator license in DAZ. Only buy the $500 license when you are satisfied that is the style and methodology you want to use.

Blender (mostly via BlendSwap.org) and MakeHuman offer many CC0 models that are also better than current typical state of the art models in games. Blender includes it's own Decimator function.

For learning tutorials by far the best is the Blender community. Not so much for the DAZ & Poser communities. You are forced to experiment but then the UI on those products are very advanced.

Lastly the Unity Asset store has many free and inexpensive models but it is very hard to gather a cohesive still in the Unity Asset Store. UMA is a free asset in the asset store that has more clothing and hair style assets being added all the time. UMA is a very flexible system but has a steeper learning curve. You can create a cohesive style or male and female adults but younger ages are not represented in UMA.

Good luck.

 

I did some experimenting after posting here, and I found two ways to make hair that work for me. There's a third one too, which the maker of Maiko used. But I didn't get around that one yet, hes been helpful with suggestions so I'll try that method too asap.

Anyway the first method I tried is with particles in Blender, converted to curves, then mesh. Its fun and easy, but the hair combing can get messy at times. Here's a simple realistic hair I ended up with quite fast. (ignore the mess in the bg, its clothing experiments)



Now you can retopo it in a few mins and bake that high res mesh onto a low poly one.

The second method I tried is similar to that tutorial BrandyStarbrite posted, I think (which I only skimmed through so not sure), I made a bunch of different hair strands, and fit them to the head, getting an anime style. Its less fun but easier, and no need to retopo or bake anything as its already low poly. Ofc you need to texture it if you don't want it looking plain like in my pics. The model is Daz Genesis female model I was messing with while testing out Daz, so I used it as my guinea pig.

First try.

Second try.

To summarize. Both are quite fun and easy, even tho I haven't yet got around to the baking part on the first one. The third method is a bit more complex if I understood him right, but not much. Also please don't judge the methods based on my crappy results as much, I haven't used any references and it was all a first try with barely any undo or looking back, as it often is for me when prototyping.

Doesn't the decimator mess up the topology? I tried Daz but I can't afford to purchase so many add-ons, and its not really my thing, but to each their own.

 

Theorycrafting has nothing to do with this. Second life and this scenario are like apples and oranges.

 

Yay!
Nice poly hair dude!
Especially on the 2nd one.

 

http://www.daz3d.com/indie-game-developer-license (or http://www.daz3d.com/commercial-game-developer-license for over $100k) - It lets you use DAZ items in your games, with some conditions.

 

Thank you!

 

Good job on the low poly hair @ChrisSch

 

What about animating...? Blendshapes? Rigging? "Rubber" modifier...?

Since I am on the Mixamo Fuse train I was thinking I should export their standard head and build a skullcap for it.... I like the look of the ribbon hair, but any tips on making it dynamic?

 

You also have to buy all the individual models on top of that. If you do this, get a "Platinum Club" membership so you can buy thousands of models for 1.99 each (it's been a while for me so it might have gone up but probably not). I think everything in the Platinum Club falls under the game license.

 

Thanks!

 

Can you tell me a hair that you are using? I wonder which one you have chosen because there is so much fiber hair on DAZ and so little geometric hair. Also, I really wonder what it looks like now that you have textured it.

 

I contacted the developer of this site: http://www.mankahoo.com/index.php?l=product_list&c=2

They told me I could use their models in game at no further charge. I'm sure you could obtain similar permission by email. Their hairstyles are much cheaper than those on DAZ, and some of them (the older ones) are already quite lowpoly.

 

You can use Sculptris , it's very easy to make such hair using draw and move tools, then you can export to obj format and retopo the model to a lower polycount mesh or use some polygon reduction tool (there is some in the asset store also).
Good luck.

 

*facepalm* I never thought of trying a sculpt method. I'll do that next time I experiment

 

There's a bunch of geometry hair on Daz. What section are you looking in? I don't have any screen shots at the moment to share but the hair looks good in my games.

 

I stumbled onto this thread and I wanted to point this out to at least forewarn other developers. A lot of these hairstyles have questionable origins. It seems like most of the hairstyles are copies of some 'iconic' styles of past games. I wouldn't take any chances especially if you plan to sell your game.

Examples:

http://www.mankahoo.com/index.php?l=product_detail&p=256
Ciri from Witcher 3: http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net...r_Sheet.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20141117154231

http://www.mankahoo.com/index.php?l=product_detail&p=251
Rikku from Final Fantasy X-2: http://vignette3.wikia.nocookie.net...ision/latest?cb=20100511153034&path-prefix=de

http://www.mankahoo.com/index.php?l=product_detail&p=193
Sephiroth from Final Fantasy VII:http://static.giantbomb.com/uploads/original/0/2639/209126-sephiroth_the_fallen_angel.jpg

http://www.mankahoo.com/index.php?l=product_detail&p=204
Chun Li from Street Fighter: http://maxlevel.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/chun-li.jpg

Many instances of characters from Virtua Fighter and others too.

While this may be fine in personal projects, I believe you will have issues in a sold game.

I post this in the hopes that I save some developers some heartache in the future and make people question and do their best due diligence in making sure the content they are using can be used without repercussions. A big time developer that failed to do this most recently is The Fun Pimps, creators of '7 Days to Die'. Their game for some time back in their earlier alphas was using ripped models from TripWire Interactive's 'Killing Floor'. It wasn't until TripWire sent a cease and desist to them that they realized this.

 

I've never heard of a lawsuit because of similar haircut in a game.

While you shouldn't RIP hair and models from games, as far as I know, using haircuts that are similar to existing ones is a fair game.

Good luck copyrighting something like Sephiroth's, Ciri's or Chun Lee's haircut. Those are not exactly unique, and it'll be something like trying to patent a shape of a cube.

 

As long as you don't give your character the Sephiroth hair and a super long katakana, you should be fine

(p.s Sephiroth is from FFVII, not FFXII)

 

Even in this case you could just add a beard and make him wear a kilt.
Good luck proving that this is Sephiroth after that

 

Yeah of course, all I meant is as long as the character design as a whole isn't a blatant rip off you'll be fine. Copying one aspect isn't something you can get done for

 

True, the laws that govern these things can be quite complicated and I am far from an expert in the field.

The likeliness of the hair styles to me is too uncanny though, for example Rikku, the beads and the double headband, braids, are unmistakable with only merely the color of the beads being changed. The Sephiroth has the elevated bangs in exactly the right places and the default coloring is the same. I don't know about others but I've never seen people walk around with these hairstyles before, except cosplayers. I also believe Ciri's hairstyle to be unique as the bun in the back and the cow lick in the right are in the same spots and positioning.

There was someone previously running a store that sold animations, and it came to light that he was actually ripping the animations from games and changing them slightly (most not at all) and reselling them to asset users here.

I was merely bringing attention to the matter as it can be easy to miss. Better to know than not to know.

(p.s thanks for the catch QFSW I got my numerals mixed up in my haste to type the post, I should have just used the actual numbers, doh!)