I’m having fun sculpting hair, and I’ve watched various YouTube tutorials on the topic. Some people use a sphere or other prim and drag it around, adding clay and creases as they go. That’s the workflow I followed. Some artists mask and extract. Others use tubes in abundance, or even just tiny flat planes. I don’t think Nomad has a Fibermesh option (yet), does it?
Anyway, I’m trying to make hair for a low- to medium-poly character for export to Blender for rigging, posing and animation. (I’m aiming for 30,000 polys including hair but no clothes.) I’m wondering if I should be using a skullcap of some sort before making my sphere-based hair. I’m also wondering how one might use Nomad to make low-poly hair, like hair cards. And I’m wondering what paint/material settings one might use to put basic textures on hair, for possible refinement in Blender or ZBrush or elsewhere. I know I can texture in other programs, but I’d like to do as much modeling/texturing as possible in Nomad, because it’s the only 3D program that does not hurt my hands. (Mice and styluses do. I have arthritis.)
30k polys is extremely extremely low, you’ll have trouble getting decent detail on that, and since the hair will only have a small fraction of those 30k poly’s, you’ll just be able to get away with some basic painting. Using tubes and various other methods you have seen for hair are models into the millions of poly’s. No fibremesh in Nomad.
Thanks. That’s mostly what I figured. I appreciate your reply!
Edit: I should add that I’m certainly also interested in high-poly sculpting, not just low-poly modeling. So I’m still curious whether a skull cap is a common tool in making high-poly hair.
Skull cap will add more mesh and increase the count, its not necessarily a method for making ‘high-poly’ hair, since a skull cap can be textured easily. It’s more suitable for UV mapping for games, etc. High poly models it’ll be non-physical, so more like particles as opposed to actual mesh, easier to control en-mass etc for animation. Sculpting software like Nomad sits in the middle, you’re best off using the physical sculpting tools and making it traditionally with crease cuts etc.