Captain Hook: Time to add some hair!

So as a character, he has been built, clothed and brought into the world of colour. The only thing missing now is his hair! To create hair I decided to stray away from modelling it as less detail in terms of hair flow can be added and produces a static look to the model. Instead, I transferred the model back to MAYA through exporting the maps in ZBRUSH to create nHair.

In terms of how the nHair system works I'm very aware that I am beginning to only scratch the surface on the software. Especially when taking into account the extra plug-ins that can be purchased on top of the extensive options already available through MAYA. Thankfully there are really good tutorials on youtube to help beginners like myself in explaining how to structure and compose the hair to give the most realistic results possible. However, I had to stray from these tutorials slightly, mainly because of the unrealistic volume in the pre-production design:

And also due to the tutorials creating healthy, well trimmed hair (not to mention for a female character) which as a homeless man, would not fit for this Captain Hook!

To try and achieve this result I added scraggly curls to the hair flow and tried to shape the original nurb planes into the closest shape of the design as possible.

Here are the rendered results of some of the steps taken:

So first was building the hair and fitting it around the character. This was followed by ensuring it wasnt protruding through the hat in anyway. Lastly was styling the hair around the pre-production with the previously mentioned ratty look.

The final render shows the scale of the hair but also the issue that followed exporting the maps from ZBRUSH into MAYA as the majority of the sculpting detail has been lost. Therefore, I need to re-export the maps or find an alternative method such as x-normals. However, as this is a working model at this stage I need to move back onto the Pursuit project to ensure it is completed by the end of Easter break to get the rendering started ASAP!