Olila’s Second Life - Tutorials & Diary Diary & Tutorials

If you are thinking of creating a prim-hair of your own, the most important thing besides the style, is your hairtextures - you can buy them or create your own. There are a lot of different styles of hairtextures that create different looks so before you start working on a hair its great to have an idea of how different styles would affect the look of your hair.

The “hair-structure” itself on a texture can look very different depending on what technique you use to make that hair-like look. Some like textures where the hair look really realistic and some think less realistic hair-structure actually looks better on the final hair. It’s all up to taste.

The look and amount of highlights in a texture is also a thing that affects the hair a great deal. Depending on the style of the hair: To many or to sharp highlights might make your hair look striped while none or to dull might make the hair look… Well, dull! But again: It’s all up to taste.

Have a look at these textures:

These are both a common looks for hairtextures: “Hairlooking” structure, two highlights - and they look almost the same.

But as you can see - the second one is darker in the middle. That’s to create a look where the haircolour closest to the skull is a little bit darker - as often in real life. The first texture without the darker part is actually much easier to work with on different kind of prims - but in my opinion the one with the darker shade look better. But that’s just what I think.

In the following examples I’m going to use the second kind of texture with the darker shade. That’s mainly because that’s a little bit more complicated but also because it will make it easier to see how the texture actually behaves on a prim.

Texture a TORUS

A prim hairstyle without a torus is almost impossible to create, so let’s dress one up in a hairtexture!

I’m rezzing a torus on the ground - witch will also open up the Edit window.

Since I’m NOT going to create an actual hairstyle - only an example - I’ll keep the torus big and beautiful and position it high so its easier to see what happens.

Ok - let’s texture the torus with hairtexture.

In the Edit window I selected the Texture-Tab and choosed a brown hairtexture with a darker shade in the middle. (This texture is 512×512 pixels - but a smaller texture works even better)

The default settings for a texture: It will show up once both horizontal and vertical.

As you can see the horizontal part of the texture stretches around the “outside” and “inside” of the “torus-ring”.

The vertical part stretches along the ring itself. In the pic I pointed out where the texture start and end vertically.

To make the torus look like a LOCK of hair I’m going to cut it. This will create an “opening” in the torus.

I’m gonna “take away” almost half of the prim - and with that also halfe of the texture…

Ok, now it looks more like a lock of hair!

As you can see the darker shade of the texture appears at one end of the lock - and that’s the part to put closest to the skull in a hairstyle.

Actually it would of look more like a lock of hair if the end of the torus was ‘pointy’ - but lets keep it this way - because this way its easier to create an example.

Let’s se what happens if I instead use a texture with an alpha channel and transparent, jagged tips to create a fringed lock of hair.

Since the same texture is covering the whole prim - the cutted edges of the prim are covered with that whole texture, too!

Can you see the two highlights and the transparent part? It looks compressed at that small surface but do you get the picture?

Its the same texture on all the “sides” of the torus.

Most of the time this won’t matter because as I mentioned before the most common shape of a lock of hair - is one with a pointy tip.

In that case that surface at the end won’t exist and the surface closest to the skull will in most hairstyles not show…

But let’s go back to the problem and bare in mind that it works the same way if you work with a cylinder instead of a torus!

It would look much nicer if the cutted surface were transparent. Here are 2 solutions:

Solution 1

Texture the surface with a totally transparent texture.

IMPORTANT: In the Edit window check ‘Select texture‘ and click on that ugly surface on the prim. Open the ‘Texture-tab’ and texture it with a transparent texture.

If you want to use this solution - a smarter way might actually be to start the texturing procedure by texturing the whole prim in the transparent texture and then texture the only the MAIN surface with the jagged hairtexture…

Solution 2

Use the same texture - but make only the transparent part of the texture visible at the cutted surface.

AGAIN: In the Edit window check ‘Select texture‘ and click on that ugly surface on the prim.

Open the ‘Texture-tab’ and change the settings of the texture so that only the transparent part is showing.

Depending on what your texture looks like you might have to play around with these settings to make it work - but the pic shows the settings I used. Repeat vertical: 0.010 / Offset vertical: -0.475

Witch solution shall I choose?
The first solution might seem to be the simplest and maybe that’s the way to go if you are making one single hairstyle for yourself.

But let’s say you want this hairstyle in several colours… Then it saves a lot of time if you use only one texture on each prim.

Why? Because you could link the fringed prims together and retexture them with the one new texture - all at the same time. With the transparent texture on the cutted surface of the prim, you would have to click the main surface of those prims one by one - and retexture only that part. Phu!

Get it?!

Ok! Back to business! Now the cutted surface is transparent!

But let’s turn the prim around a little…

Oops! That edge you see is actually the very top of the hairtexture showing - and this will look very, very bad on a hairstyle.

This is the far most common thing beginners overlook. I actually bought rather expensive hair with this bad kind of texturing! One shouldn’t have to retexture a bought hair!!

It’s very easy to get rid of and it’s a MUST! Here are 2 solutions:

In the Edit window check ‘Select texture’ and click on the MAIN surface of the prim. Open the ‘Texture-tab’.

Solution 1
Change the ‘Offset’ settings of the texture. I used: Vertical 0.020. This will “push the texture” down a little so that that ugly edge disappear.

Solution 2
Change the ‘Repeats Per Face’ settings of the texture vertical. I used: Vertical 0.970. That will stretch the texture a little - and take away the ugly edge.

Depending of the looks of your prim and the texture, different settings might be better for you.

IMPORTANT in both cases:
Make sure that the jagged ends of the texture don’t reach all the way down to the bottom of the prim! This will look horrible and it’s the second most common thing beginners overlook.

So much better!!

Texture a CYLINDER

Many hairstyles also contains cylinders. Often for ponytails and longer, flexi locks of hair…

I rezzed a cylinder and made it less thick. I also rotated it 180º - that’s what you would like to do if you want to make it flexi later…

I textured it with the same texture as before: The transparent one with the alpha channel and jagged ends. Since I rotated the whole cylinder180º - I have to flip the texture vertically or it would be upside down.

To get rid of those ugly edges I changed the ‘Offset’ settings to: Vertical 0.020.

I also made the ‘bottom surface’ transparent - using one of the solutions that was mentioned before.

Since a cylinder isn’t cut in half: As you can see the darkest shades of the texture is right in the middle of the cylinder - and that will look bad on most hairstyles - makes the lock of hair look “striped”.

If you are working with this kind of texture the best is to change the settings so that only half the texture is showing. I also changed the offset settings a little.

Now the cylinder has almost the same look as the torus. But only almost…

If you are a perfectionist you might think that the texture look a little stretched out…

The highlight cover most of it… That’s because this cylinder is much “longer” than the torus from before… And most hairstyles uses cylinders for longer flexi parts of the hair.

That’s why you might want to use a different kind of textures on long cylinders.

Maybe a texture that looks like these instead - same resolution but with the dark shade at the top?

With a texture like this you wouldn’t have to use half of the texture on cylinders - only this different kind.

Using different kind of textures on different kind of prims would give you the possibility to adjust the looks perfectly to your liking. What looks good depends on the hairstyle and again: TASTE.

(If you would want to use this kind of hairtexture on a whole hairstyle you would have to change the settings on your toruses so that it appeares 2 times, to make it look the same.)

Easy to use Hairtexture

A hairtexture like this - with the “same” colour vertically - without any darker shades, is much more easy to work with. Then you wouldn’t have to bother with where the dark shade appeare on your prims - and consentrate on the highlights instead…

Final words

I made this tutorial to give you a small glimpse of the options when creating prim-hair along with hair-textures. Every good hairdesigner create their own textures. All of them use different techniques, colours and styles that match the kind of hairstyles they are creating.

If you want to create an unique hairstyle - the options are almost unlimited.

BUT! Bare this in mind… If you are going to create a hairstyle in many different colours you shouldn’t use too many different kind of textures in the same hair. It will be very time-consuming to change it into new colours. And a hairstyle might not look better just because you used many different textures. Compromise!

Hope this was helpful! Tjingeling!

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Updated: December 2007