Jhair 11 - WIP2

- I've been working on this one for two weeks now, thought I should do an update, especially since you've never actually seen how it looks at all. I get a bit tunnel visioned when I take on larger projects.

- anyway, layer 1 and 2 are completed. I'd say this is basically done at this point (or at least the base model is) and most of the difficulty of figuring things out is over. From now on it's a matter of detailing, how far one wants to take it and how much time someone wants to put in. I could technically close the hair line gaps in the front and it would be perfectly usable right now imo.

- I wasn't going for extreme details on this, but since I've delayed releasing it into this month, might as well use the extra time for that and put on a full 4 layers on it like the previous 2-3 hairstyles I've made. That being said, layer 3 will mostly be on the head part itself and the hairline area, I think the braid is plenty detailed as is. The only thing that's missing to completely sell the look is shorter hairs falling out which will be put on sparingly.

- speaking of the braid, I finally got the chance to make one, so yay! First time making a hair braid and ... it went surprisingly well. I expected more of a struggle, especially since the fishtail is a more complex braid vs the standard 3 strand one, but yeah ... smooth sailing there and the result so far looks pretty dang good too. Did the whole thing in about 4-5 days, one for the base in layer 1 and 3 to detail it in layer 2. Honestly, the most challenging thing wasn't even the braid itself, but rather blending it into the head hair realistically and even that wasn't too difficult. I guess at the end of the day maybe it's just difficult to screw up a braid. Or I got lucky and chose the right way to approach it.

- the base braid in layer one is a fully modelled 5 strand fishtail and the hairs in layer 2 are actually small separate pieces going from interlock to interlock (those are actually the small hair cards that can be seen in the previous post). I'm not sure if this is the right approach when it comes to rigging (then again, I'm not an animator), but for looks, this trick does the job very well. The backside of the braid is nowhere near as nice looking, but then again since it's facing the body it shouldn't be visible much or at all.

- so yeah, I think this about covers the progress so far on this. I'm very likely going to start layer 3 tomorrow, that should close up the remaining gaps in the front and further detail the whole piece nicely with some falling strands and general breakup.