Hair Week 02 - So Many Curves

My goals for this week were as follows:

Step one, do a test bake of the one clump of hair I completed last week in order to ensure that my methodology was solid.

Step two, do research into the polycount availability that I had left in our game's budget for Persephone to ensure this was a feasible tactic for creating her hair, that wouldn't bog down our engine.

Step three, finish the high poly for the hair around the entire head.

I have accomplished all of these steps this week!

For step one, I simply zremeshed a chunk of her hair, auto-laid out the uv's, and brought the hair chunk into marmoset for baking. There's a handful of baking errors and is shown in ambient light w/o spec, but I'm hopeful from this test that I'll be able to get the look I'm searching for, while remaining in the alotted additional polybudget I have for the character in our game.

With that test completed, I felt confident enough in my findings to continue onwards, and finish the rest of Persephone's hair, which I have displayed much nicer beneath.

And here's a turn table, to get the entire effect

My plan for next week is to retop all of the hair to the best optimization that I can manage for our game's specs and do all of my research into the anisotropic hair shader workflow out of substance painter. Depending on my timeline, I might then place down flats onto her hair, but that is a stretch goal. I've been documenting this process as I go along, so it is very exciting to see it coming to fruition!