From: Elize Carlucci
Is it me and do I just need lots of more practice?
Yes, it all comes down to practice, practice, practice, no matter what program you're using. There's no magic "make it look like _______" button, and there's certainly no "make it look good" button.
Here are some basic tips (no particular order):
1. Sculpt just the general shapes of the locks, very simplistically. The medium and fine details are all in the texturing. Don't get carried away trying to sculpt every last piece of hair. You just want a handful of objects, to create the basic shape of the hair style. That's it.
2. On each piece, keep all the U or all the V isoparms flowing in the same direction, from what will be the roots to to what will be the tips of the hair.
3. A motion-blurred noise map applied as a fairly low amplitude bump map will quite quickly make a surface appear like brushed hair, as long as the surface itself is well constructed. For this to work, it's crucial that either the U's or the V's flow in the right direction.
4. For the coloring, again, start with a motion-blurred noise map, the same way you would for any other hair texture. For best effect, you'll want several slightly different layers, each with varying degrees of transparency. This should all sound familiar to you, since it's the same thing you'd do when creating textures for ordinary prim hair (or for any other geometrically modeled hair piece).
5. Use a Blinn material with reflecticitiy set to zero. Put a few point lights in the scene, set to emit specular only, and then adjust the material's specularity, to give the hair a nice sheen. Don't overdo it with the intensity of the lights, but don't be afraid to use a generous number of them. Use a standard 3-point light setup to start, and then bring in additional low-intensity lights in key positions, to get each section of hair shining the way you want it. Take a really good look at reference photos for any particular style, and try to envision what would all the light sources be on the set where the photo was taken in order for the hair to be lit the way it is.
6. You'll probably want to do two render passes, and then overlay them in Photoshop. Do one bake with global illumination and final gather, to create the basis of the texture. Then do a second pass to create an ambient occlusion map. Apply the latter as an overlay over the former, to give the texture more depth. Experiment with the different overlay modes (overlay, soft, light, hard light, pin light, linear light) to see which one looks best to you for the particular texture you're working with.
7. Don't get frustrated. This is going to take a while to get right.
8. As an alternative to tip 4, you might want to play around with Maya's bult-in hair/fur texturing options. There's some good stuff in there. You might also want to play with its actual hair simulation engine. The dynamic geometry won't be usable, of course, but renderings of it can make for some good textures.
9. Again, don't get frustrated. This is a big subject. Don't look for shortcuts, but rather embrace the fact that there's an awful lot to learn. Look forward to discovering more and more, and to getting better and better. If you're insistent upon overnight success, you shouldn't be dabbling in this field at all. That's just not how it works. Enjoy the learning process, or don't bother.
From: Elize Carlucci
Or is there a better/easier program around for designing sculpted hair, since it's a 'bit' different than creating other kinds of sculpties (such as furniture for example).
I'm not sure what you think is different about it. Modeling is modeling, and texturing is texturing. It's all the same.
In every case, whether you're making a chair, a hair piece, a person, a woolly mammoth, or a tree, it all comes down to two basic things: shape and paint job. Usually the actual 3D shaping is the easy part. It's the texturing that makes or breaks a model.
Want to get good at painting hair? Well, hair is very similar to cloth. Do drapery studies, hundreds of them. Train your artistic eye to see how light and shadow fall across a fabric, as the fabric itself falls over other objects. Throw a bedsheet over a chair, and start drawing. When you're done, bunch it up, and draw it again. Do this for at least an hour every day, and in a few weeks you'll be pretty good at it. Then keep doing it.
This is how painters, illustrators, and other 2D artists have been approaching it for centuries. The tools are a little different for texture artists, but the concepts are exactly the same. Learning to draw draperies well WILL help make you good at texturing hair (and cloth as well, obviously, so if you do clothing, this will be a double win for you).
Trust me; this is the "wax on, wax off" Mr. Miagi stuff of artwork. It might not seem directly relevant at first, but you'll be developing skills you aren't even aware of as you do it. It's like chasing that chicken in Rocky. Whether or not you ever catch the sucker isn't the point. It's not about the chicken. It's about the muscles (or in this case mental faculties) you build by the attempt.
Remember, in digital art, the operative word is ART. The digital part is just a minor descriptor. Art is is art is art. Expect the program you're using to be either the cause of or the solution to your problems, and you'll get nowhere fast. But train yourself the same way traditional artists do, and then apply that artistic mindset to the technicalities of the digital world, and you'll do great. Be 99% artist, and 1% technician.