Low Poly Game Character Hair by Paul Tosca, Romania Web: www.paultosca.com

Using Normal Maps

I will start by showing you the difference between the hair with and without normal map. (Left with nmap , right without)

Both versions have diffuse, transparency and specular map but the one in the right looks too flat. By using a proper normal map you will add a lot of variation in the surface direction of the hair and it will catch more light through specularity resulting in richer volumes.

Obviously the version with normal map looks better, the normal map adds more volume and realism to the hair. I have seen a lot of people doing normal map for hair by just using Nvidia normal map filter on the diffuse pass or actually sculpting the individual strands of hair in zbrush/mudbox ; that will not help too much (the first example in the image below).

A better idea is to add big volumes in the normal map (the second example in the image above). Something like in the picture below will work better. Just calculate a normal map between a plane and a blobby surface like the one below and overlay it in Photoshop in the normal map texture for the hair. This way you will have more variation in the surface direction and with a proper specular and transparency map a simple plane will look much better.

That pretty much cover all i wanted to include in this tutorial. On the next pages I will show you the textures and geometry I used for Varga.