Native Dancer: Custom Character Hair

 Author: Ariann Rousu – Native Dancer Digital Artist

While we have worked on getting the Male character equipped with the rest of his Grass dance regalia in Unreal, we have faced other issues. A problem with the current hair styles in metahuman is that they are not culturally appropriate for Regalia.

It is more appropriate to have a dancer’s hair pulled back in braids when they are in regalia. Although braid options are available in metahuman, they are not as clean and pulled back as we need them to be. We had the same problem when we were using Character Creator to design characters. Below you can see how the hairstyle I am creating is looking so far.

To create new hairstyles for the metahuman characters, I have continued to use and learn Maya. I have been using a tool called xGen in maya to create hairstyles. Xgen can create hair and be used to generate fur or areas that might need splines such as grass. I used the same tool to create the Roach for the grass dancer. Below you can see the hairstyle being modeled to fit underneath the headpiece. I am viewing them in different colors as I work so I can see the splines more clearly.