Hair Texture Assistance

Hiyas everyone. Ok so I've seen the taunt.com tutorial and I have been through a rediculous amount of tutorials via google but I still cannot seem to get my hair textures right. I can make some passable/decent ones but nothing that I am truly proud of or willing to use on the hair I have created. I am using Photoshop....but there has got to be something I am missing. I have followed the taunt tutorial to a tee and they just don't look all that wonderful on the actual hair. I don't want to purchase anyone else's textures as we want everything in our shop to be made by us as much as possible. So...questions is....anyone have any suggestions or links to sites or what have you? I have got to be missing something simple I'm sure...but I just don't get it. Also I wasnt to make the textures with the frayed/transparant ends as well and can't even seem to get close. Any suggestions on that as well would be lovely. Thanks so much in advance.

Hi Zoey!

It would help if you could explain (or post a snapshot) of what exactly you don't like about your hair textures.

Taunt's tutorial is a great start, and it did take me awhile to tweak the textures so that I was happy with them. Here are some basic things I did to improve my textures (I am self taught on PS, so I may not be 'technically' accurate in my descriptions):

-Layer your highlights/lowlights on more than one layer. I have used up to 22 layers for one hair texture. This gives you more depth, and depending on the color of the hair I use the blending options on the layers like color burn, multiply, color dodge, saturation...etc to get different looks. So play around with it, and change the opaqueness of the layer as well to see what works for you.
- I usually start out making the first layer (the one with the texture base color) the lightest color. E.g. for brown I start with a very, very light brown and layer the darker tones on top of that. There is usually very little of the initial texture visible when I'm done, and that is normally the highlighted parts.
- If I'm online, feel free to IM me.

How I make my frayed ends:
-Make your hair texture
-Create an alpha channel which starts out black
-about 2/3 of the way down use a soft brush and draw a line in white which resembles a sawtooth: \/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
- fill the top of the channel with white
-Using the blending tool at about 50-70% and a size 9-17 brush make long up and down movements along the zig zagged line. Try to make the movements as verticle as possible and don't go over any one place too often. You should have some parts darker, others lighter.
-DO NOT take the white/gray lines to the bottom of the alpha because you will need "black space" at the bottom of the fringe texture when it is on the hair so that you won't get lines.
-The result should look like an X-ray of hair
-Save once as a 24bit TGA (hair texture with no fringe), save again as a 32bit TGA (hair texture with fringe).

Save the alpha channel so that you can use it over and over and over again each time you make a new hair texture.

If you have any specific questions, I'd be happy to help if I can.

Best,
~Ari

You have seriously been my hero today love!!! Thanks so very very much for your advice. I can see now that its just a matter of toying with colors and tools until you get the desired look. And the fringe tips are working magnificently!! I can't thank you enough!

I'm so thrilled I could help!

Yes, it is just playing with the different options and having fun with it.

Best wishes on your new venture and I can't wait to see your creations.

Best,
~Ari

I just managed to upload a texture for hair with a fringe edge. I just
1. made it on partially transparent layers in PSP7,
2. saved it as a .psd file,
3. opened it in Gimp and
4. exported it as a .tga file.
Gimp knew what to do even though I didn't.

"-Using the blending tool at about 50-70% and a size 9-17 brush make long up and down movements along the zig zagged line. Try to make the movements as verticle as possible and don't go over any one place too often. You should have some parts darker, others lighter."


This might be completely dumb, but I can't find a "blending tool". I have a blur tool..... I'm kinda stuck on this step. Can anyone help?

I apologize, I used the wrong term. I meant the smudge tool not the blending tool. It's the icon that looks like a hand with the index finger pointed down. It's an option in the same "box" as the blur tool.

Best,
~Ari