Thats a little better there! Since I doubt he used a stencil to do it…just his finger…I wonder if you feathered the edges…not so uniform…same method…spray stroke so looks solid from a distance but up close skin shows through will help it look more natural?
I didn’t get a chance yesterday and no promises this morning but will try to experiment a bit and see if I can help ya out with this somehow.
Thanks! I find it slightly ironic that you like the wire version of the alice. ( Especially with it being your ‘trademark’ technique LOL.) What with you being the reason I moved from low poly stuff to high res and photorealistic modelling. It’s also nice to see yet another person who likes alice. It’s amazing how many modellers share similar tastes.
It may interest you to find out you’ve actually been to bed with me and my other half!!
( I spent a few nights working through the gnomon dvd’s while in bed… being an insomniac has it’s uses)
There’s another better wire type effect render with the Alice head over at this link on my Zbrush alpha site ( I belive in getting as much mileage as possible from my models):
http://www.dashdotslash.net/photogallery/details.php?image_id=113
I’ve not had a helluva lot of time to do anything on the alice today, it’s been just one of those mad days. If you can get a decent effect I’ll stand and appluad you for saving me much weeping wailing and gnashing of teeth. Hair wise I’m expecting the next update of shave and a haircut soon and hoping that it’ll make doing the hair a bit easier. Mind you I’m having saturday off from modelling as it’s my other half birthday…any sign of Zbrush, maya or photoshop and I’ll get shot and roasted alive PMSL:lol: :lol: :lol:
Wayne…
Hi Wayne,
This is coming along quite well, the paler color corrected version has a real creepy Alice feel, but perhaps his nose is bigger,lol!
Was wondering if this will be moving or a still shot, and if the the hair generation is being determined by this end result.
I’ve used it for a few years, but never for long shoulder length hair.
If moving, I can understand the need for Shave dynamics, if a still perhaps there are other avenues.
At the Shaveman - Yahoo User Group there may be info on long hair, but you’ve probably searched there already.
A good example of animated long hair from their site: Exorcist Quicktime example (will load in browser).
But you’ve probably seen that one too.
They do update Shave almost weekly at times, usually for the better, unless you’re locked into settings on a file which could be changed automatically by a newer version.
Expect longer render times for lengthy dense hair, that’s the way it is presently. Hopefully an update breakthrough will put an end to all that one day.
If you’d like to post a screengrab from the maya-ui showing your shave-setup, it would be great to see your arrangement.
This is really enjoyable seeing how you create A.C.
So many parts to the puzzle, right?
Hair Test (at least it doesn’t look like he’s been electrocuted this time)
This render is as far as I’ve got today after spending 5 hours working with shave and a damn haircut. (I’m really starting to hate that plug-in LOL). At long last I’ve got something that looks something like long hair, and not like someone’s plugged Alice into his electric chair! I’ll be sure to post some screen grabs of the shave setup etc as soon as my eyes can keep open long enough. If you have ANY suggestions Joe I’ll really be pleased to here them as I’m having a tough time with this plug-in.
Hair workflow is this:
1 - As mental ray takes about 4 hours to render the hair as geometry (or fails 90% of the time) I render the hair as a pass using the maya default renderer.
2 - Once hair is looking other than like someone plugged into the mains, I do a mental ray render with model and camera in same position.
3 - Photoshop and composit the hair over the head render using the alpha info on the hair render to cut away the rest of the render. (this is hair only).
4 - This looks ‘ok’ but I found that copying the hair layer about 4 times and bluring the 2nd from bottom 1px(gaussian) both fills the hair out a bit and gives it a little more character. Well at least more than I was getting anyway.
Maybe I’ll start to get this looking a bit better now lol. So far animatio isn’t a priority, although if I can get the thing to render fast enough I have an intereting idea for one. Failing that I have a couple of compositions in mind for the ‘scene’ when I’m finished.
Enjoy.
Wayne…
Nice one Wayne,
You’ve peeked my curiosity with longer shoulder length hair, I’ll try something tonight to compare notes - settings with you.
What is your hair count setting in the shaveGlobals - shaveNode panel ?
Seems we could get a mentalRay render down below 4 hours.
Nice likeness 
Very cool stuff man. The suggestion I would make is to sss the eyes a little. I never actually did it, but I ran across some eye sss tutorial out there. I especially love the frozen expression of Alice Cooper’s mind horror. You’ve really captured it.
Moose!
KO
Wayne have a look here for a render and settings.
*edit - oh I should read closer, you have render set to geometry, try buffer.
*edit2 - Another test, perhaps too well groomed.
Forgot to mention I started with the Preset named SPbrunette, then scaled the hair in the edit interface. (not the ‘Scale’ slider in shaveNode1).
Same settings as before, except I lowered the tip thickness to 0.020, and under Frizz Properties, the Tip Frizz to 10.163
Thanks for posting that info joe, straight away I can see a couple of things I’ve done differently. I suppose the biggest difference was that for a base for the hair I made two bits of geometry. The first was a ‘skullcap’ type of thing, and the second was sort of a band that went around from the back to the front / side (on both sides). My thinking behind this was that as the hair at the front and top of the head appears a little shorter (and not knowing a thing about cut maps) it would be easier in the long run.
So I was really interested to see how you did it! The screen caps of the globals and shave node are enclosed. The shave node is exactly the same for both sets of hair. I used the SP Brunette as a basis for mine as well. Hopefully if I get time tonight I’ll give it another go using what I can glean from your screen caps as a basis. I didn’t have any idea you could resize the hair length in the shave interface either, so your post has been really useful so far. I’ll be over the moon if I can get the hair to render in the time you did.
Wayne…
[Edit for being an idiot and forgetting to attach the damn file :rolleyes: ]
Wayne, some thoughts on the long render time you have experienced:
Keep it simple, no need for two nodes (1.skullcap and 2.band for the same region).
That takes twice the time to compute.
See if setting ‘Render Quality’ to ‘Medium’ is acceptable (you have it on ‘High’). Ha, the next highest setting after ‘High’ is called ‘Duuude’, don’t go there.
under your shaveLightList you have ‘all’, meaning all lights are being considered-computed.
If you could narrow that entry down to just one (or two) spotLights, that would speed things up.
The docs have further info on that.
Since I don’t know your light setup, this may be a mute point.
Use the skullcap as bulk mass to give the hair volume. Don’t try to accomplish mass with high ‘Hair Count’, since that number will increase the render.
The denser the geometry on the skull cap, then logically more hair will sprout from said geometry. Consider that when modeling it. (i.e. more here, less there)
Don’t smooth the cap after applying the shaveNode., weird things can happen, eventually.
Get very familiar with the ‘style hair’ interface (Shave > Edit Current > Style Hair)
That’s the backbone of the plugin, and almost all of your editing can be achieved there.(scale, translate, rotate, on and on)
Here’s a .gif showing the hair example using shake mode.
Great for globally adjusting the hair, but make sure your Global Dynamic Parameters - Gravity is set low, default is 1, here it’s 0.050.
Keep exploring it, you’ll be over the moon soon enough.
Pardon the OT comment, but I love your website Joe.
Thanks for the info Joe, that gives me some more stuff to try out and to learn. Once hes got his hair sorted my job list on this is:
1 - Give the bloke some teeth for gods sakes:lol:
2 - Same for mouth and tounge etc.
3 - Rig the head and pose.
4 - Revisit and revise all textures and shaders if needed.
Once I have that sorted then it’s ont the main composition. So far i have a choice of two… loks like before long I’ll have a choice to make.
Wayne…
PS Bill no worries I have to admit I love Joes work as well…I could look at his stuff for ages.
heheh thanks fellas!, glad you like the site. 
But since the topic at hand here is Wayne’s cool Alice Cooper character…
with his messy hair…
Some more thoughts:
Check also how few Passes you can get away with, more will give you a better translucent-subtle quality, but also increases render time.
Usually it’s best to start with the crappiest settings and hair count, then by increments increase those, noticing how that affects the look, and your render time.
Maybe try styling his hair at a low hair count, before adding more to the count. Less splines and easier to adjust. Experiment.
No need to sort the hair out before moving on… since it’s attached to seperate geometry you can come back to it, or delete it, and try again anytime.
That’s the advantage of not having it attached directly to your head geometry (but you could do that too). Just parent the skullcap to a head bone and you’re good to go.
Disclaimer: I own no stock investments in Shave and a Haircut, am not a sales distibutor, nor related by birth or marriage to the company…LOL!
They do work very hard at focusing on and improving cg hair… sans the big corporation feel.
Hope this helps Wayne, I could feel your frustration from across the Atlantic.
Alice Cooper fan here, and a fan of your WIP too!
Looking forward to seeing his teeth!
Latest Hair Test - Close but no Cigar just Yet
OK here’s another hair test, I’m still learning the shave interface properly so it’s not final hair by any means but its a whole lot better than it has been. I owe ya one Joe.
I’m still shocked that people I respect as artists (including yourself) like this model. I started this basically for myself and I’ve sort of got this compulsion to finish this model whatever it takes.
Render times are now down to about 10-15 mins when I’m rendering hair. So I’m going to set up some render passes to cut the time down a little. I feel I need a bit more variation in the colour of the strands of hair, so I’m going to spend some time playing around with that till i get someonething I like thats close to the hair alice has. Although on a side note to this, I do have a certain amount of room to manuviour as alice is always changing his hair. LOL
Hopefully the teeth wont be as bad to do. I normally like to get things done in ‘sections’ so I know that I am free to move on to the next part.
Wayne…
Dwayne sorry, but this is never the hair from Alice :-/
(He looks now like SF-nigga-transvestite:lol: ------I hope U understand jokes?)
“Hopefully the teeth wont be as bad to do.”
definitely more shave than haircut for the teeth, I’m thinking.
Looking good.
Now go and stand in front of the class and write ‘manoeuvre’ 10 times on the blackboard.
manoeuvre
manoeuvre
manoeuvre
manoeuvre
manoeuvre
manoeuvre
manoeuvre
manoeuvre
manoeuvre
manoeuvre
(Does cut and paste count:D )
Hairy Teeth eh? You know that might just work.:o But seriously there’s still a long way to go with the hair yet, I guess in an ideal world I should have been already able to use shave before putting it in a model. Life never seems to work like that for me, mind you they say its good to go ‘in at the deep end’.
Wayne…
“I’m still shocked that people I respect as artists (including yourself) like this model.”
A nostalgic attraction to the subject first sparked my interest…
If it had been Britney, well…
She was never accused of biting the head off a live chicken on stage. (eeew, but she kissed maddana).
You’ve chosen to recreate someone with very interesting facial features and characteristics.
Then seeing the struggle and effort (yes, it’s difficult!) to get the model convincing, where we see your process working really well, and at times not as well.
That’s part of the formula for checking out your progress here, which seems to be going well!
As for the hair, glad to be of service, but 10-15 minutes for such a hair render still seems a bit off.
Are you holding on to the two original shaveNodes you started with? That could possibly be it.
As well as the resolution size you’ve set.
Of course the power in your cpu is obviously a factor, ram, processors, blah bla.
Just a little suggestion on his likeness if I may 
Really study this guy’s nose a little closer, it defines so much of the character in his face.
There aren’t many profile shots of him, but in the photo gallery at alicecooper.com there’s a good one.
It doesn’t flatter him to make his nose so small, and there’s more going on with the bridge, and how it meets the bulb. Just my take on it anyway.
Keep on it Wayne, and btw congrats on your new member of the family
ps… just got your PM, I’ll check it out…
I was sort of hoping no one would notice I sort of messed up the nose a bit.:lol: I was going to discreetely go back at the end and redo it
So you’ve called my hand a bit and I’ll have to redo the nose early But I think it can wait till after the hair is sorted. I got you email a few minutes ago, and all going well will pass over the relevant info about the hair node tomorrow. (Thus not filling the thread with posts. )
Progress may be a little slow over xmas.
Wayne…
Just hair work done on this render. It’s getting closer and more lifelike (thanks to Joe’s guidance) but still has more work to be done on it. The ammount of time I’m spending in ‘shave’ I’ll be a sodding expert at this rate.:lol:
I also managed to mess up not only my lighting but my skin shader today due to some innate fiddling on my part. Obviously it’s spoiled the skin somewhat but I’l put that right soon.
Wayne…
A SubSurface Effect Test in Zbrush with Photoshop Post.
Just for a change I thought I’d post a little test of an idea I had to get a subsurface type of effect in zbrush. The workflow seems to work fine although some crits would be nice. Soon it’ll be back to the ‘proper’ renders with hair in Maya / Mental Ray. (BTW the teeth are just a set I downloaded from here as a make do, i got sick of loking at a toothless alice :lol: ).
Wayne…
