Recently I created a video tutorial series talking about Hair Particles and how I approach the Grooming process. If you're interested to learn, you can visit my YouTube channel. 

Some topics that I covered:

- General settings overview.

- Vertex Groups setup for use with Hair Particles.

- Material Setup for Eevee and Cycles.

- Process creation from "Short Buzzcut" to a "Man Bun."

Also, I created a "Hair Particles Reference Sheet" which will help you with understanding some of the settings, when creating various hair styles.

Cheers,
Alex

These hairstyles were created in Blender using the hair particle system.

After many years I decided to update the superhero basemesh set, which I used for many of my projects. In the update I added the fully modeled feet, fixed some anatomical issues and added placeholders for the hair, brows, eyelashes. Here you can see the before and after images.

If anyone is interested, this set has a 25% discount. https://www.artstation.com/a/118531

We recently release the update Version 2 of the Human Generator and I wanted to show some functionality of the FACS based rig that I worked on. It's very fun to use especially with the ARKit (the facial motion capture system from Apple). At the end of the post is a full video of the features in this release.

We have been in development of the "Human Generator" since October 2020. The first version has finally been released and we are quite happy with what this tool is capable of at this point. Together with Oliver J Post we are planning to continue polishing this add-on for Blender and developing new features. Over the last few months I learned so much about Blender and how powerful it actually is. I want to thank the Blender community for their support. Cheers!

Available now on BlenderMarket.com

We've been cooking something up with Oliver J Post. The following teaser is a glimpse of an add-on that will be available for Blender software. We are quite excited about the possibilities that this tool will be capable of. If you are interested in seeing more, please subscribe to the newsletter to stay updated on the release date and the upcoming features. 10% off for those who sign up before the release. Link below. Cheers! :)

https://www.humgen3d.com/

Testing the braids workflow with alpha cards. Rendered in Marmost Toolbag 3.08

Happy New Year!!!

Blender 2.8 has been released over a year ago, which had a a major overhaul in its design appeal, primarily in UI sector. Since then I've seen numerous artists switching from mainstream 3D Animation packages and experimenting with Blender. The results have been quite impressive. 

As everybody knows the key aspect of Blender is it's unbeatable price of a total zero, but lots of major companies are pouring sponsorship money in its development. There's still a ways to go and many features need to be implemented, but as far as I can tell it has a promising future. One of the more interesting upcoming features which I'm excited about in Blender is the node-based modeling (or procedural modeling), the ingredient which Houdini (software) has been known for quite some time. 

Learning new software can be quite a challenge for many people, since the workflow, navigation and tools location can drastically vary. Nevertheless I finally decided to dedicate some time to learn Blender a little more intimately and of course what better way to start the journey than the infamous "Donut" tutorial by Andrew Price (aka Blender Guru). It was certainly painful at first even to navigate the space, but by the time I finished the series, I was way more comfortable with it. There are lots of interesting tricks that I picked up from completing the lessons. One of the most interesting features I found was the  "Solidify" modifier, which I have not seen before in other packages, perhaps because of my ignorance (Maya user here). Below is the final render of my result followed by a geeky meme. :)

Cheers! 

These are real-time hair styles made with alpha card PBR workflow rendered in Marmoset Toolbag3. I've been trying to identify some patterns and similarities which are present in most “straight hair” medium length haircuts. Below you will find the breakdown of the texture map where I fit the most useful hair strand variations. The default color of the texture is blonde, because it's easy to tint it to any color or darken in the engine. All four hairstyle examples use the same texture map.

1. BASE LAYER. Serves as the scalp cover or as a “core” for other hair parts (i.e. hair bun).

       

2. BASE BREAKUP. Breaks up the base to cover the obvious repetitiveness and simplicity.

       

3. CLUMPY STRANDS. These are unique strands that normally clump up and can be isolated.

       

4. THIN CLUMPS. Serve same  purpose as the Clumpy Strands, only thinner.

       

5. FLYAWAY BASE. Covers large areas as flyaway hair.

       

6. FLYAWAY STRANDS. Strands of flyaway hair that clump up and a single piece of hair.

       

7. TRANSITIONAL HAIR. Serves as gradation between the skin and the main body of hair.

       

8. SHORT STRANDS. Smaller strands of hair to give variation in the hairline.

       

9. BABY HAIR. Thinner clumps of wispy hair that typically can be seen on the neck or hairline.

EXAMPLE OF A HAIRSTYLE BUILDUP (*GIF)

Some screenshots from Marmoset Toolbag of the new model.