[Class] Make Mesh hair from Sculpted hair

Thread Started By ZeroThe10th

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#1
Lets make unrigged custom hair!


For this tutorial you'll need the following.

-A viewer that extracts mesh and textures at the same time
a. Old Skool
b.Darkstorm

-Blender 2.70+

-Avastar plugin

-Sculpted hair

-Beta Grid access with mesh upload rights.

-Optional: Inpaint



---------


Okay for this tutorial I'll show you how to bring sculpted hair into blender and turn it into custom mesh hair. I'll also show how to edit it on

your avatar's head for the ideal fit and how to export it so you can wear it in world.

I won't be explaining how to turn the hair into rigged hair... I never got the swing of rigging hair so I can't show you even if I wanted to ...

sorry..

Now another warning, uploading the hair can be a little expensive but, you'll have custom hair to your liking and it's fullperm so if you're bold

enough you can sell it and make your money back.

Okay Enough chatter lets get into the Tutorial.

====



Step 1. Exporting your hair

Take your time and decide which hair you want to mod,
I'll be using short hairs for this tutorial since they don't need rigging.

Once you figure out which hair you want extract it.

Old Skool: Right click on the hair and select More then Export the DAE So
More>Export>DAE
and save your hair file.


Darkstorm: Right click on the hair> save as> Collada
SAve the hair

=WARNING==
It is very very very important that you remove special characters from the file name before saving, failing to do so will cause the export to fail.



Characters to watch out for
[ ] : ; *

This goes for both Darkstorm and Old Skool so keep that in mind.
========


Step 2 - Exporting your shape.

Thanks to the magical Science of Avastar you can import your shape into blender and use it for all kinds of things.
Like.. what we're doing now.

In order to do that you'll need your avatar's XML file.
You get that by doing the following


V1 style viewers:
Press Ctrl+Alt+D to activate the Advance menu.

From the advance menu
Character>Character tests> Appearance to Xml


Save your XMl to your desktop for easy access.

You'll get an error but don't worry about it, your file extracted properly.


V2.
New viewers v2.x
Menu - Advanced - Enable Develop Menu
Menu - Develop - Avatar - Character Test - Apperance to XML
for Win7 - SL need to be Run as Admin

Get from the game SL folder [your path]/SecondLifeViewer2/character/new_archetype.xml
Rename new_archetype.xml

-




Step 3- Avatar in blender.
Now I'm assuming you have blender and Avastar installed.
I'm using 2.70 during this tutorial as well as the Avastar plug in

You can get the Avastar plugin from here.

[To see links please register here]


Okay with everything installed and ready lets import our avatar.


First things first click on the default cube and press Delete. we don't need it in the space.

After the cube is deleted we have a clean space to import the shape,

You do that by going to File> Import>Shape as Avastar.

Navigate to the XMl you exported and select it.

And now your avatar is imported into blender.


=Side note=
Actually I forgot before we continue make sure your blender is in CYCLES RENDER instead of the default BLENDER RENDER.
It's very important in the long run.
Just go to the top of the screen and click the drop menu. Change it from Blender render to Cycles. If it already says Cycles then your good

don't touch it.



Step 4- Importing your hair.

Now we're going to import the hair, for the sake of organization we're going to import the hair on new layer.

To select a layor look at the bottom bar you'll see a small orange dot and then a bunch of empty boxes. The empty boxes are layers

=Helpful hint=
If the box is empty it means the layer is empty, if the box has a orange dot it means something is in that layer
===


Select a empty layer
Don't panic when your avatar goes away it's still there.

Okay on the new layer we're going to import the hair

Go back to the top and select
File >Import> Collada ( default) (.Dae)

Navigate to the place where you exported the hair and then select it

The hair is now in blender!



Step 5- Playing in blender


Okay here comes the fun/frustrating part manipulating the hair in blender to suit your needs.
===
Welcome to part 2
===

Before we jump in to this lets take a small second to learn the basic controls

OBJECT MODE:
Select all= A
Rotate=
R- On Axis rotate
R twice (RR) Orbit/Free Rotate
Press R then X, Y, Or Z will rotate on the desired axis

Example of Y

Example of X

Example of Z

Grab-G

Undo- CTRL+Z

B-Box select

C- Circle Select
With the Circle select you can't rotate or move the model. If you want to undo while in this mode you press the middle mouse key and deselect
when you selected everything you press the ESC key to leave Circle mode.

Shift+D= Duplicate

Delete- Delete key or X key
----

Okay now that you know the basic controls lets dive in


first thing we're going to do is delete the DEMO items, in my case it's this cube so we're going to click on it and press delete and ta da it's gone.

==
-Hold it-
====

Now if you just want the hair to be converted to mesh
without doing any manipulation to it you can just press A to select all



Then go To File>Export>Collada ( default)

On the side panel you'll see
Export COLLADA
Then a drop down menu that has Operator Presets.

Select SL+Opensim Static.

The boxes ill automatically check.
but before you hit export look at the Texture opetions nox.

Check all of the boxes.
Only active UV layer
Include UV textures
Include material Texture
Copy

Go back up to the Drop meny and press the + button

Save this preset as Sculpt to mesh

This will save time later on when you want to convert Sculpt to mesh.

---


Okay back to the main tutorial

We have our hair and our avatar in blender

Hold down the Shift Key and select the first layer ( the one with avatar)

Now both the hair and the avatar are visable.

Now using the box select tool(B) select the hair and adjust it on the avatar's head .


-Using the manipulation tools

At the bottom of the bar you'll see four buttons
an arrow
a Curve
and a box on a stick

These are the manipulation tools these work more like the second life building tools

The arrow- Move tool
The curve-Rotate tool
The box stick= Scale tool

--

==
HOLD IT!- Go to the last part
===
=
Welcome to the final part!
==

Step 6- Adding more hair in



Now the fun part about this is that we can add more hair
Lets say you want the bangs from hair A and the back of hair B you can do that.

Like before we're going to select a new layer

Import the hair like you did the first time


With the new hair imported hold down shift and select the first layer bringing up the new hair and the avatar.


Adjust the hair onto the avatar


When the hair is adjusted to the avatar click on the parts you want to mix with the first hair.
when you have the parts you want selected press the M key and select an empty layer. Continue to do this until all the parts you want are

selected and are sent to the new layer.


We'll need to make room for the new parts on the first hair, since I'm only adding bangs I just need to remove the front part of the hair

So I'll select the Avatar Later and the first hair layer and remove the front part of the hair.

You can select and remove each peice one by one which is a pretty safe option
or you can like before select each peice and press M and send it to another layer( Not the one with the new bangs ) Or you can just delete the

extra parts.


I'm just gonna delete them, and I'll be using the Circle tool (C Key) to do a mass selection

Okay! Now that the front is all cleared out I'm going to Hold down shift and select the layer with the bangs and add it to the main layer.


So the Avatar, First hair and bangs layer should be selected/enabled.

Now It's just a matter of adjusting the hair to the avatar's head for a seamless look.






Final step-Export from blender and import inworld

Okay once the hair is arranged the way you like it.
It's time to export.
(The hair will have the same textures as it did inworld)

First make sure only the hair is selected no avatar here.
So Hair A and Bangs layer should be selected.
press the A key and select all

DO NOT JOIN THE HAIR!
NEVER JOIN THE HAIR!

The hair should have an orange outline if you have it all selected.


go To File>Export>Collada ( default)

On the side panel you'll see
Export COLLADA
Then a drop down menu that has Operator Presets.

Select SL+Opensim Static.

The boxes ill automatically check.
but before you hit export look at the Texture options box.

Check all of the boxes.
Only active UV layer
Include UV textures
Include material Texture
Copy

Go back up to the Drop meny and press the + button

Save this preset as Sculpt to mesh

This will save time later on when you want to convert Sculpt to mesh.

( Side note)

(In most cases Sculpt to mesh will be 1/2 the prim count as the original sculpt)


-------

To the beta grid

On the beta grid upload the mesh
The mesh will be pretty heavy so make sure the
LOWEST and LOW are set to 0
This will reduce it a bit

Go to the last tab and make sure INCLUDE texture is selected.

once that's all done hit the upload button
Gag at the upload cost ( This hair cost 283 to upload with textures XD)

Then accept and upload.

And there you have it your own custom mesh hair.

That wasn't so bad was it?



Zero notes:

You can use this technique with Mesh hair instead of sculpts.
It's just easier with sculpts because of
1 how much sculpt hair most people have and
2 how cheap sculpted hair kits are.

Hmm the only thing to do differently is you have to rezz the mesh hair on the ground to get a accurate extraction.
Wearing the hair while you extract it tends to give you a jumbled mess.


If you hair has demo on the textures fear not one of our lovely members @Falcons
Wrote a tutorial for and provided the software needed to get rid of that.

Program:

[To see links please register here]

Tutorial:

[To see links please register here]


Oh and just in case you want to practice with the hair I used here's the hair as well as the finished product.

[To see links please register here]


So that's it for this tutorial,I hope it helps you create new things and look at our selection of hair differently.

Good luck and enjoy!
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#2
one question. why would i want to change sculpt to mesh?
Reply


#3
Well you wouldn't because you know how to mesh XD

This is more of a shortcut method to making mesh hair for those who arent so skilled with 3d programs but want to make mesh hair.



Besides there are still some good sculpts out there that make good bases for mesh creations, If you bring it into your 3d program, You can use all the sculpts you want without having to deal with those pesky traceable sculpt maps.
Reply


#4
ok that makes sense, thanks!
Reply


#5
o  need to try this one awsome :)
Reply




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