Step 42.
Take photos of your subject's head from several angles, side, top, front, back.

Using a software package such as photoshop, create alpha channels to separate the hair from the skin.

Once these alpha channels are created you can create a Hair texture with an alpha channel similar to the one on the far right. Your images may look very different depending the hair your working with.

I create my alpha channels by copying a channel from the RGB channels. Which one I use depends on the contrast of the channel. I try to use the one that has the darkest background with the brightest area to mask.

For example Cooper's hair is blond so I used the green channel since it gave me nice light tones in the hair and a dark area outside the hair.

Once I have my channel I begin Dodging and burning the edges with the options set to Shadows and highlights respectively. This helps brighten the hair to a white and creates a black mask on every thing else.

My last step is to do a levels to make sure the blacks are black and the whites are white.

Save the final image as a Targa with an alpha channel.

Step 43.
In AM create a new rotoscope in the TOP view by right mouse clicking (cmnd click on the Mac) and selecting New/Rotoscope.

Load your Hair Targa.

Make the Rotoscope uneditable by clicking on the hand next to its name in the project workspace.

Step 44.
Draw a spline in the top view with enough points to create a hair piece that's will mold around the skull well but won't be two cumbersome to edit.

Begin extruding the spline to create a grid that covers your rotoscope. Only do half the hair.

Step 47.
Right mouse click (cmnd click on the Mac) and select new/decal/Fullhair.

FullHair was the name of my Targa, you'll select your image.

The Decal will appear for positioning. It may need to be scaled to fit the grid you created.

Step 47a.
Scale the decal down to match the size and shape of the rotoscope. Then right mouse click (cmnd click on the Mac) and select "Apply" from the pulldown.

The far right image shows the shaded view of the hair on the grid. But there is a problem. The hair has now transparency do to the fact that it defaulted to a color map.

Step 47b.
In the project workspace open the images folder under the Decal you just created. Change the image type to "Cookie-Cut" in the Type pulldown.

Viola, very flat transparent hair.

Step 48.
Now our old friend the Magnet tool.

Here is where you need some patience and practice.

Set your magnet to roughly the size of the grid. Using the 2 key in birds eye view select the center point and pull it up. The 2 key constrains the movement on the y plane.

This will pull up a bump in the hair. Its already starting to look better.

Step 50.
Position the hair over the skull and continue to tweak. Lock the hair so you don't move points on the skull.

Notice how some of the mesh "collides" Its OK because the hair doesn't appear on that part of the grid.

If you don't see this kind of collision with the detail turned up and no textures showing then you probably have the hair sitting to far off the head at the edges.

The idea is to have it "bubble up and out from the skull, but be snug at the edges to mimic the shape of real hair.

In the old version of my tutorial I added a displacement map that added depth to the hair.. however this didn't work very well and wasn't worth the trouble for any extra detail that resulted so if you aren't adding particle hair I would simply suggest adding a bump map for the extra texture.

For AM version 11 hair (which we'll cover later... you'll want to make the wig as snug to the skull as possible. You'll probably want to delete a few more patches on the fringe as these might cause too much hair on the edge of the head.

Step 51.
Select the skullcap and give the group a name. Create a new material using the particle hair plugin setting.

Set the Preroll to something like 1 second to allow the hair to settle if the dynamic options are turned on.

If they aren't on turn on Dynamic options and for now leave them set at constraint... the program will run faster that way... The other settings though more realistic will bog down the redraw making it hard to style the hair. Set the stiffness to whatever you want.. I chose 53 percent.

Leave object collisions off for now as well.

Set the Angle limit to 130 or 140 degrees. This will keep you from combing the hair to a point that makes it lay parallel to the scalp.

Set the Realtime quality settings to shaded.

Step 52.
Set your starting settings for your hair emitter. Ignore the fact that I'm using an image on mine for now... we'll cover that later.

I set the density of my hair to 6... If you are going for hairs that are actually thin and wispy... you'll need to set this much higher, which will slow down the redraw, and in my opinion give you less than stellar results... so for now try leaving this setting low.

Set your length variation to something like 25 percent. This keeps your hair from being all evenly cut. Of course if you want every hair to be the same length set this number to 0. I set it to a higher number because Coopers hair is messy and tends to clump together in "tufts" and this will help simulate that.

Give your hair some specularity... Unless your character is very sick there hair should have some shine to it. Don't go overboard here though.

Set the brightness variation to something appropriate for your chosen hair color. Cooper's hair is blond and the colors vary greatly so I use a fairly high setting on brightness variation.

I also added just a little kinkiness to his hair..to make it seem just a little wavy.

Step 53.
And here is the result. Yuck! but there are some things to notice.

For instance... The hair already looks to be growing in all the right places... No density maps or other tricks needed. This is a big advantage to using skullcaps. The other advantages are that you can add geometry to the Cap at any time and it wont affect your head geometry. You might want to add more patches to add more hair in certain areas like where the hair parts. You could do this with a density map but that can take even more tweaking to get it to look good.

The final advantage of using the "wig" method is just that.. it becomes a wig that you can use on other models. This means you'll end up combing less virtual hair down the road.

Try both ways and see which way you prefer. To me its easier to model than to texture, which isn't always the case but When your talking about heads with textures for the face why go through all the tedious work of painting a density map and getting it mapped around the whole head when you can just model where the hair should go?

You may find your preference is to texture and that's fine as well.

Step 54.
Select the the hair emitter and open the timeline tab if it isn't already open.

Select the thickness setting and click on the graph button at the bottom of the time line. This should change the view from a time based view to a percent based view, counting from 0 to 100 percent.

Set a key at 0 percent add some thickness to the hair. It should look more like shag carpet than fur.

Again you'll have to trust me on this one... Its going to look fine...Remember we are simulating the "clumpiness" that hair usually has... In Cooper's case its very clumpy.

Step 55.
Now set another key at 70 percent that starts to taper the hairs.

Then set one more key at 100 percent that tapers them completely.

This is also the technique you would use to create feathers or scales.

Now the "Shag Carpet looks a little more fur-like. But still not very realistic.

Also notice the places where you can see through to the scalp. That means that it probably just the right amount of hair. because once you comb the hair down those spots will be covered up and remember since we textured the skullcap earlier with a hair texture.. it will show through if the scalp isn't covered completely. Its better to have to little at this point and add hair density later.

Step 56.
Set the Realtime Quality to wireframe for now. This will allow for better feedback while you style the hair.

Step 56.
Now go into grooming mode by selecting the grooming mode button located between the bones mode button and the muscle mode button at the top of the modeling window.

This will bring up a bunch of hair control splines and change the tool bar to the grooming tools.

Select the brush tool and begin combing the hair the way you want it.

The first image is after about a minute of combing.

Make sure you check your work as you go by looking at the hairs with the realtime shading turned on every now and then. It may even be possible for you to groom with it on if your machine has enough horse power.

Step 57.
Not bad if I want my son to look like Mick Jagger, but his hair actually is much shorter on the sides and back.

So now I go into lengthen mode by selecting the tool under the brush.

Then I place the cursor over any splines that I want to shorten and drag it against the hair to shorten the strands of hair.

....

A few more minutes and the grooming is over.

Step 58.
Now I add the final touch.

I created a hair texture from one of the source images I had of coopers hair. I copied the image and created an alpha channel using the same technique I mentioned in Step 42.

Step 59.
Import the images into the images into AM.

In the properties panel for the hair emitter I set the image setting to my hair texture.