Hi all,

Quick question (Not really)
Would you happen to know how to make super-curly hair textures, and also with that transperancy touch? ( I use photoshop)
For example:


These are Nouk's.

I found these videos right here,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XNDdaeuthtY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_YasGOkg82o
But I must know moree

Thanks!

I found that do do that transperancy (I think) Is with ''colour range'' for anyone interested !

Some of these have a 'alpha channel' which gives you a more accurate erasing effect than Colour range will do. switch the layer view to 'channel'. see if there is an alpha channel in there and use ctrl (or shift) + click, then invert selection and delete the white background.

Also, i'm not sure if you're familiar to brushes, but there are some hair brushes out there that even I use in my digital artwork. So it's worth a shot to try that one out. And looking at the texture, I'm pretty sure this person made the hair with those brushes. ^-^

Really!? I have sen some of those brushes. Would you know where I could get good, curly ones?

That's an AWESOME tip! I had no idea that was so easy to do, thanks!
Edit: Hm the texture I'm studying doesn't have an alpha channel. Those could be made with layer masks, right?

Actually you could make like circular movement with the brush as done in the texture you use and a lot of highlighting strokes. Just take that texture as reference and it should work out just fine ^-^ It's barely impossible to make curly brushes so far I know Photoshop and it's settings.

For the alpha channel, it's NOT in the layer nor is a layer mask. In the top of the layer window, you see 3 tabs (unless you changed the setting yourself) One tab says 'layers', the other one says 'channels'. Click on that one. Usually alpha channels come with PNG files and DDS files. Though, just so you know, I wouldn't just use someone elses textures unless they gave permission or the TOU says so. Else it's pretty much considered stealing.

Oh okay. I hope it's not to hard with only a mouse.

Oh yeah I went into the ''channel'', and it didn't have one... It was a Maxis one too! (Black and white, right?)
Oh no I wouldn't dream of stealing any! In that case I'd just use those haha

Though, just in case, ARE there any pre-made curly brushes?

Yep that's the one! The black and white one. Though there seem to be some brushes, but from my experiences they're more like stamps and... not really helpful: http://designbeep.com/2012/11/13/10...hotoshop-users/

Yeah that's the one I can't find! Haha

Ooh! Wait, did you mean using these brushes you just linked me would be considered stealing? 0.o

This is the best I could get from the normal brushes, with a bit of noise and motion blur


But those brushes look amazing, and the one I made isn't nearly as curly as I'd like ...

After more editing.


But yeah I was looking at those brushes and it would basically be copyright. so I guess this is the way to go?...

Would you know how to make them all maxis-matchy? (Sims 2 wise)

AHA! I found the secret to the true curls!
Fer anyvan intzested, I vill tell you

Make sure too make the texture waves, then a few storkes of highlight and all you like, then what I did was add some noise, and then motion blur. BUT. Instead of doing the ''motion blur'' at 90°, do it at 0°! Doing it at 90 seems to be more for straight hairs.
In the end it ended up with the curls. I either didn't add enough noise or might've blurred it to much though, because it's got no detail ! D:


Mh, the noise is rather difficult. I would prefer fibers but the make it black and white.

Okay but for example, you think that the textures at the top were made using special brushes?

Looking great! Just one thing though with using the motionblur, the result on the mesh itself will look very odd. You want to work with more highlight actually. I studied the very first hairstyle by making circular movements with the brush and I actually ended up with really small wavy movements because that looked way better than the circular movements (I did this with a straight hair brush):



This is the very first layer. Also I did this pretty quick so don't expect it to look perfect.



Then, I added some more hair to it but also made darker spots to where it should be



And the last part actually shows what looks better, when it comes to quick shading.

Now I should have made the waves a bit more 'narrow' like the beginning of the hair, but this is basically how you want to work. The person who made the texture actually got that wavy effect by doing the same thing I did when it comes to movements of the brush, but also highlighted a lot if you can see.

HOLY that looks AWESOME!

So wait, basically, no motion blur, no adding noise, just full on semi-circular movements?
Would the ''realistic'' effect just come afterwards from playing with the saturation and what not?

It looks really good! I long for that talent! :

Edit: Something like this?


It just looks nowhere near as gorgeous as yours, nor as realistic. Yours is so soft and silky

I just quickly drew those so they aren't perfect XD. Anyway, it's indeed like that when it comes to the movements! but to make it a bit more realistic you want to play with the lighting. Now I did them on the top as you can see, but the creator of that hair texture did them around the 'points'. And I mean like bright highlight, so using like light gray. And then you want to use a darker one to where it's suppose to go 'inwards'.
You could take a reference of a real life picture and see how curly hair and it's highlights work. It's not too hard though, you just want to use a lot of different opacity settings and references ^-^

The movements are good like that? :D
Ooh yeah I get it perfectly

So even if these are just blobs of colour, they will look realistic?
Thanks for taking your time to help me!

Edit: Is that alright? (On the far left)

Edit:

Those are the areas you want to work with, yes. make sure your opacity is low if needed. (I would use that for darker colours actually)

Oh yes that looks much better


And thinning it down really helped too

After lot's of duplicating and scaling:

In your most honest opinion, what do you think/What would you fix? :D

I also made the alpha channel and inverted and deleted. Is this what it's supposed to do?

That looks great! So i'm not sure if you want to make a retexture of some sort, but in any cases you should create a grey texture. never coloured since the sims 3 has a recolour function in itself.

It does it by itself? Thats awesome o.o

And yeah I'm doing the basic sims 2 ones.
So does it look better with the alpha channel or mabye no?

Well it needs an alpha channel to make the game see the mesh is transparent. I'm not really sure what you want to make with the textures?

Oooh okay. It's for a hairstyle!

On the other hand, this is a maxis texture that I fiddled with, but I really regret making those transperant lines, is there a way I can fill it in with the same colour as the rest?

The clone stamp tool or the spot healing brush are great tools to help you out. Else I guess you could import the same hairstyle and delete parts of that one texture.

WOOOW I just tried the clone stamp tool, it's amazing! Great! I wish I used it before re-doing the whole thing though haha