Typically realtime hair that is partially simulated, like what may be needed to simulate the example effectively, still have UV coordinates that textures could be mapped to. It has been a while since I've done any real game art work though.
This makes for a neat "presentation over realism" challenge too. If the player isn't brushing their hair every time they stop moving, the sim would need to ease back to the default combed layout.
Way easier with cards, but either way it'd be interesting to tackle
Modern strand-based hair systems typically offer a length-wise per-strand UV coordinate, so it's technically doable. You would somehow need to parameterize the texture lookup based on a function of
Short answer is yes, long answer involves knowing how it's intended to be rendered (style, shaders, modeling tech, etc.)
It'd be a lot harder to accomplish with strands like you might see on a Metahuman or in Dragon Age, but with hair cards or a solid model it'd be a snap
I imagine you'd have to vertex paint directly onto the hair?
You could do it pretty quickly with a decal-like application but it wouldn't work right, it would look like it's permanently projected onto the hair (hair would move, design wouldn't)
True. I imagine with a card based solution that would be how this could be approached, but I know nothing about the way the hair strand method works in current gen.
Strand tech is all alembic based which doesn't have material knowledge, which is why it has all of the other custom baked maps on the realtime side to put it all back together.
That's kind of where my knowledge ends unfortunately 😭
[the dude in question basically made a process where he prints a design onto a sheet of hair, and then applies that to the model after the fact, so it's not traditional hair dying technique]
On paper the texturing process would be it'd effectively be a triplanar projection, which might be a nightmare to arrange and make look good at various LODs because texel density.
I'm also wondering if this could be a shader solution if there were also hair physics involved.
Very interesting conversation! As a matter of fact, I'm also curious whether the hairstyle works in real life - like, 15 minutes after leaving the hair salon if there's a breeze...
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Way easier with cards, but either way it'd be interesting to tackle
It'd be a lot harder to accomplish with strands like you might see on a Metahuman or in Dragon Age, but with hair cards or a solid model it'd be a snap
https://youtu.be/1xVkNMOKqWQ?si=dT5D4SqptGTQnXeP
https://youtu.be/YmXUkOs5ErY?si=FMbFYNWKcELhsI7A
You can also make a texture to define the physics mask as well but magica has a great UI to let you paint the dynamic areas
You could theoretically break it up into discrete pieces that move separately, but that would be a bit labor intensive
You could do it pretty quickly with a decal-like application but it wouldn't work right, it would look like it's permanently projected onto the hair (hair would move, design wouldn't)
That's kind of where my knowledge ends unfortunately 😭
I'm also wondering if this could be a shader solution if there were also hair physics involved.