Moe Simpson - Hair

[Anonymous]

I'm currently modeling Moe from the Simpsons, and I'm having trouble with how to go about modeling his hair. Essentially his hair is like a series of overlapping sphere's (see attached photo). Does anyone have any ideas for what technique could be used for cleanly modeling this type of geometry? I'd like to model this properly as a single object so using a whole bunch of individual spheres isn't a option.

Thanks

[n8skow]

You could do the individual spheres and merge them together at the end - you'd want to make sure to align verts though to keep it all clean...

I'd like to model this properly as a single object so using a whole bunch of individual spheres isn't a option.

Thanks

[Anonymous]

Thanks n8skow for the idea, but I think it would be too hard to keep all the verts aligned.

[tkaap2]

Depending on how much Dynamics work you want to try, you could do n8show's suggestion with the spheres, change them all into passive objects, then wrap a cloth object around them as a kind of shrinkwrap. If you have access to nCloth in Maya 8.5 or 2008, this is fairly easy to set up. That would solve your vertex alignment problem, and still only be as hard to model as a bunch of spheres.

-Tony

[Anonymous]

Thanks Tony. I like you suggestion. Dynamics might provide a solution to this problem. Unfortunately I only have Maya Complete, so I don't have access to nCloth. Does anyone know if it is possible to create a soft body in Maya and then interactively push sphere shapes in to the soft body to mould it shape?

[n8skow]

not sure about integrating softbodies - but 'this' is a nifty shrinkwrap utility:
http://highend3d.com/maya/downloads/plugins/modeling/poly_tools/polyShrinkWrap-5011.html

[Anonymous]

Very nice n8skow... The shrinkwrap utility is exactly what I'm looking for. I'll try it when I get home from work tonight. Thanks Mate.

[Anonymous]

If youre really desperate, you could make you could use a bunch of spheres, and booleans>Union, that way you keep the geometry clean, but don't count on it working.