Realistic Hair for 3D Characters

I've been doing a bit of High Poly character modelling, and looking for a decent way to do hair. I found this tutorial online, and thought it was great.. I've played around with it (in an app other than LW) and got pretty good results. For those who are interested:

http://www.newtek.com/products/lightwave/tutorials/modeling/hair/

Here's their final image:

Why can't *I* be that talented?

[Skitchy has tantrum]
;)

Best bit of art I've ever seen on this site quite frankly.

3 Questions :
-Where did you learn to do stuff that complex?
-And how do you get that realistic 'focus' effect (notice the far distance is completely out of focus, as are the tips of the fingers, but the face is in perfect focus - just like a photo)?
-What modeller did you use (and what plugin to get the focus effect).

I believe Ntense says: "their image", so I reckon the image was made by the guys from the tutorial.
Nevertheless a marvelous piece of work but moreover very good learnings!

cheers,

John-Robin

Try Hairdo.

I've been thinking of ways to add hair dynamically to 3d characters. I wonder if there would be much call for it?

Oh yeah. I thought HE did it. ;)

Still a fine piece of work though.

I wish I had done it. I was looking because I did do this and was looking for a way to do decent hair.. I've also thought that realistic hair might be attainable in realtime using the above technique if you did it similar to the Grass_particle system that's been floating around on the forums here.

BTW Skitchy, I use Animation Master for complex/cinematic stuff, and Milkshape for my realtime stuff. The rendering focus in the tutorial pic above was done with depth of field applied to the rendering I'm sure (using a camera jitter similar to motion blur effects). As for learning this stuff, it's pretty much just taking time to go through tutorials, and practicing. The more you do, the better you tend to get (much like programming).. Of course, as with everything, some people come by it more naturally than others.