Nomad Sculpt: Sculpting Hair

Hi, this is erica kasab from small robot studio in this video i'll teach you my approach for sculpting hair in nomad sculpt. I actually made a video in the past analyzing in depth, the anatomy of hair and fur for illustration, for this video i'll focus on what is relevant for sculpting. To start, we need to understand three characteristics of the hair or fur that we are dealing with its volume, its main groups and the origin and direction of these groups. Hair is shaped by the volume it sits on. High density and thickness of hair will add more volume to that original shape. This is the first stage of sculpting blocking the extra volume that hair creates on top of a vase for eyebrows or facial hair. I might just mask the area of hair and slightly build it up with the clay tool or inflate if we are dealing with a lot more volume. I might instead mask the area that i am interested in and extract a shell as a new geometry that i can sculpt into the general shape of the added volume. Alternatively, shape a primitive like a sphere to create this extra volume. The advantage toward mask extract is that we can control the topology and start low for better control, forget about detail and only focus on the silhouette. You can use as an extra help the pure white matte cap without detail. The silhouette alone should already communicate that it is here by the way, for this example, i am using the self portrait i made for my three hour course sculpting a realistic head in nomad. You can learn more about it in smallrobotstudio.com, head sculpt, all right having the big volumes, we can pay attention to smaller shapes, not individual hairs, but strands groups of hair. Look at what master sculptures. Do we don't see every individual here from start to end? We see big groups in sculpting, it's virtually impossible to make every detail. If you actually want that, then what you should be doing is hair simulation, which is not a thing that nova does. Once you have identified the groups, we need to figure out their origin and the direction they follow. Since we already blocked the volume, the origins will be all around it, but here may also be parted, which means there will be more visible origins. The direction of the strands come next, even when hair is all directed into a ponytail, it will follow all sorts of direction. This will get even more complicated with curly hair. This is the second stage of sculpting i'll work it on a separate layer for extra control. All you need to do is go into the layer, menu and tap on, add layer. If hair is parted, you can make the division with a crease tool, with a big radius for short, hair or four i'll start sculpting. The strands with the clay tool to build natural overlaps i'll start from the bottom and move up towards the visible origins, smooth out the area that will be overlapped and with a clay tool carve on top. You can enhance the shapes by carving down with a crease tool, lowering its pinching power and keeping a somewhat big radius or reverse its action. To create strands with sharper corners for longer or curly. Hair will need the help of the tube tool. Just add it to nomad last march 2021. It will allow me to create cylindrical long shapes, either with free hand, curves or editable pads. I will turn off symmetry and choose pad for more control. Every tab gives me a point tap on an existing point to switch it between a corner or a soft curve, drag it to another to erase or tap between two to create a middle one. Once you're ready tap on the green dot. To accept the volume is not validated yet so we can fine tune this mesh by moving the pad points open the topology menu to control the width and even the density of the mesh vary the size of the start and end radius and keep low topology for Extra control once ready, validate to start sculpting, i'm gon na use, blurred mask and the gizmo tool for adjustments on size and width. The drag or move tool are great for adjustment. Sim positions inflate will do a good job increasing or decreasing the radius of a strand with the flatten tool. We can turn these strands into square shapes. I know it's tempting, but avoid detail. This is still a blocking stage. Build a good foundation. Variation and simplicity is key for good design, create strands in only two or three sizes, but overall keep them big, avoid symmetry and sameness in size and direction. Otherwise the hair might feel artificial. It might end up looking like spaghetti or mop hair. Let'S go back to the masters. The main groups of hair are broken in some areas into secondary groups and those into even smaller groups. The key idea is some areas. We are not breaking the whole shape into smaller pieces, just areas of it. This sign implies balancing the areas of complexity with areas of visual rest. Let'S go into the third stage of sculpting breaking the main strands into secondary groups. Once again, i'm gon na create a new layer, don't cross from origin to end the main strands fade in and out the secondary groups to fade back into the main strand, use the smooth or the flattened tool, just like we did before parting. The hair. The crystal with a big radius will help dividing the main strands after making these partitions i'll use again the clay and crease tool, but with smaller radiuses work, with the directions that you have established and add a bit of variety, breaking or overlapping these directions. Since we are working with layers at any point, you can erase what you just sculpted with the delete layer tool as long as the stages are separated in layers. The other stages will be intact to do the same with the hair created with the tube tool. You'Ll need to subdivide or remesh the main strands to have enough resolution for visible sculpting if your design has smaller or separate strands now, it's the time to make them with the tube tool before moving on to more detail, make sure the silhouette of the hair still Works. The very last stage is the smallest and finest detail take into account that the more stylized your design is, the less detail you will need where hair originates. You will often observe short and soft individual hairs that transition into thicker and fuller areas. Let'S reference again what the masters do on falconette's cupid, we see most detail where the strands are thinner, mainly on the origins and towards the end. The mid section isn't as dense with detail back to my sculpt i'll work, with a crystal with a falloff set to only a short peak, the smallest, your strokes, the more resolution you'll need. I will do strokes carving down following their direction of the main and secondary groups, but i also want to carve up little independent strands with different directions. Break the patterns with this rogue hairs for this overlaps you'll need to combine the use of clay and crease variety gives realism like on previous stages. Let the smaller visible strands fade in and out into bigger groups for the hair made with tubes it's time to merge them all into one volume before merging, make sure the strands have a good space between them and the overlaps are where you want them. So we don't have weird or awkward connections. I also like to merge it into the base to work. Naturally, the areas where hair originates, especially because it starts thin before growing in density and volume. This stage is about detail, not just adding it also removing it or it might be out of control. For instance, i don't like the intersections between two strands, so i'm gon na use the flatten tool with its action reverse, so it fills cavities watch out for over detailing these are just tiny. Accents of variety detailing is like adding salt to a dish too much of it will spoil it and will steal the attention from the main ingredients. One final thing that you can do to reduce detail is lowering the intensity of your layers. Alright, here we go. The final result, i look forward to see your creations happy sculpting, that's it for this tutorial. If you find it useful make sure that you leave a like, so other people can find it, and if you haven't already make sure you subscribe as we are bringing out cg and illustration tutorials every week become a patron and access tutorial assets bonus content, a private Discord and more by clicking in the link below