Any Decent Custom Hair?

[Darkstormyeve]

I am having real trouble finding nice hair to download. Sure they all look good on the website but they are crap when you see them on your sims. Some still a blue hairline etc.

I downloaded alot from Simconnection but they looked really fake on my sims and just not as subtle as the maxis made ones. They seemed to 'move' wrong. Anything trying to achieve a curly look looks like a painting on my sims head - not like hair.

Pronupsims have great hair, but again the curly look just doesn't work.

Anyone found any good sites with nice hair that isn't too fake and are well made? They tend to be such big files, I only want to download good ones.

Cheers
Stormy

[Motoki]

It's hard to make good hair in games. You can't do stuff like Poser does with modeling every strand in some cases because the poly counts on those would choke games. So you have to settle for low poly stuff which tends to look plasticy. Alpha channels help, as does a good texture but there's really on so much you can do.

Also good is in the eyes of the beholder and while I agree with you about a lot of custom hairs looking fake or having cracks show through in the mesh etc, there seem to be a lot of people who like them and are quite happy with them. I even notice people doing the gender swapping on hairs and being quite happy to ignore the fact that there's a gaping whole in the head because the hair wasn't made to fit that gender's head mesh.

I guess to start I could ask are there any hairs Maxis or custom that you liked and then maybe get an idea what you're looking for and see what I could come up with. Also are you looking for women's, men's, kid's etc?

[Darkstormyeve]

Thanks Motoki. I have no idea whats involved with making hair and I truly do appreciate the time people take to make them but yep, I'm fussy and often go back to maxis hair. But again I have found pronupsims to be the best, particluary their really long straightish hair and the big bun style.

Most ponytails turn out good too for some reason.

I like the maxis colours and I like bangs with formal updo's.

I am happy to live with maxis ones I guess.

[IgnorantBliss]

I think one of the reasons custom hair meshes look "plastic" is because, from what I understand, impossible to animate them like Maxis hair. Long Maxis hair moves so smoothly, but I think there is only so much movement you can have with custom hair. Correct me if I'm wrong, though.

[themaltesebippy]

I was really disapointed with Simconnection hairs.  http://sussissogoodsims2.com/ has some very nice ones.

[Darkstormyeve]

Thanks everyone. I just downloaded one from http://sussissogoodsims2.com/ to try. Hopefully I will like it!

[Bangelnuts]

Thanks everyone. I just downloaded one from http://sussissogoodsims2.com/ to try. Hopefully I will like it!

  http://www.sims2.thesimsresource.com/items/ts2hair.php?ID=4011
 http://www.modthesims2.com/index.php

[Regina]

Have you tried hair styles from Guppy Sims?  I didn't like all of them, but there were a few I thought were pretty good.  Like you, I've run through a lot of hairstyles in my game and ended up throwing most of them out because they just didn't quite work.  I also really appreciate all the hard work that goes into them but at the same time can't quite get past the ones that look like plastic.

Here's the link to Guppy Sims: http://guppysims.webcindario.com/frame.htm

There's another site or two I've found styles I liked, some of them kind of curly-looking but I'll have to see if I can locate from whence they came.  My everything's just not quite as organized as it should be at the moment.

[SciBirg]

I like the hair at Simpathethic.com, it moves like it is supposed to most of the time.
Other than that I find good stuff at MTS2, SanMoo's stuff is fairly good.
I have tried pronupsims hair and Janna's hair. No thank you, too plasticcy.

[Motoki]

I think one of the reasons custom hair meshes look "plastic" is because, from what I understand, impossible to animate them like Maxis hair. Long Maxis hair moves so smoothly, but I think there is only so much movement you can have with custom hair. Correct me if I'm wrong, though.

I think it depends on how they do it. If they use and existing Maxis mesh but merely modify the shape it should still retain the animations, albeit they might look funky with the new shape. Also people tend to do this to make a hair longer but then it stretches the texture and they don't bother to modify the UV Map (the coordinates for how the texture is to lay onto the mesh) to fix this.

If they use a completely new mesh for their hair then as far as I am aware yes there's no known way to animate it yet so it will just sit there in place. That works okay for short hairs but looks rather odd for long hairs.

Also a lot of the longer hairs tend to clip through the body and not move correctly with the body either. Like if a sim were to tilt there head down to look down, the hair will stay at the same angle and then stick straight out instead of lying flat against the back.

Oh and I agree about Sussi's hairs. I'm picky about my hairs too but I do use hers. She has a lot of very nice updos.

I also use some of Peggygirls hairs (mainly the shorter ones)

http://www.peggysims2.net/

Some from Sim Cribbling:

http://mado.new21.net/louis/sims/

The Jeannette Biedermann one if you don't already have that (it's a Maxis made hair) and there's a male version of it at MTS2 too.

Also I use a few other random hairs from MTS2 but you know how it is there, it's kind of a hodge podge and you really have to dig through stuff to find something good, kind of like those bargain basement stores.

[Brynne]

I have a lot of simsconnection hair, too. I don't like to criticize too much, since I haven't the first clue on how to mesh, myself, but I agree that many of those styles look just plain bizarre in the game. Of course, there are a few from that site that I like very much, as well, and use all the time.

I am a big fan of Neptune Suzy's hair at TSR. Many are recolors of Dr. Pixels and others' meshes. She just does the best texturing!

I have a question that maybe you can answer, Motoki, or any others familiar with meshing. About that "gap" that often shows in hairstyles. I use RoddyAleixo's backwards cap on many of my sims, as well as some backwards caps from simsconnection, simsquirts, and other sites. They all have a gap at the nape of the neck, where daylight shows through. I tried with my trial version of milkshape to make my own mesh for the backwards cap, but I need some seriously easy to follow tutorials on hair meshing as all I seemed to do was get the cap into the program, then somehow send the image so far off into the distance it was just a pinpoint on my screen  . My question is about these current meshes, though. Is there a way to close that gap so that when my guys look downward I don't see daylight? It's a bit creepy, but my guys must have their hats lol! Anyone willing to give me "The Idiot's Guide to Closing the Daylight Gap"? 

[Motoki]

There's no real way to close the gap without going into a 3D program I'm sorry to say. And while there are tutorials, in my personal opinion most 3D programs have a pretty steep learning curve. Then again I learned on 3D Studio Max which is one of the harder 3D programs to learn, or so I'm told. It took me a year on and off (more off than on lol) to really get it down to the point where I could use it. What really helped me a lot was some video tutorials I found that were basically a class on how to use it that started from absolute beginner and how to use the interface.

That's one thing you really need to learn first in any 3D program, the interface. Otherwise you end up with the mesh being way far off in the distance and not knowing how to get to it. It's not always the easiest thing to do either because I swear some of those 3D program have more buttons and controls than a 747. 

The reason I did the female afro in the first place is because some people modified the male one to go on women but there were horrible gaps. I spent a lot of time closing all the damned gaps and it too me a while too. I kept rotating the head and hair from every angle in the 3D program and then going into the bodyshop and doing the same as well. It seems like every time I closed a gap I'd find another one. I'm still not completely happy with the shape of it, but at least I think I sealed all the cracks. 

I'm definitely no expert on 3D so I don't think I'm the best person to ask about any of it, but I've been doing little bits here and there for several years. I'm very picky about my own stuff and not to sound like a snob but it seems like a lot of people are far less picky when it comes to sims hairs and will happily use them with huge gaping gaps where the sunlight shines through.

[Brynne]

Thanks for that reply, Motoki! Milkshape was mind-boggling to me, and like I said, I had a baseball cap so far off into the distance I couldn't do a thing with it. I read the tutorials, too, but still, whoosh! Right over my head. Did a lot of cussing that day LOL

Are there any other 3d programs that have free trials and are somewhat easy (relative term, I know) for a beginner to use? I do a lot of graphics stuff, but not any 3d stuff. I think I had a free trial of 3d max, come to think of it, but never used it and I'm pretty sure it's expired. All I want to do is close these freakin' gaps on my guys necks!

[ZephyrZodiac]

Hairfish has some good recolours and slight remodelings of the Surfer boy hair.  I also have lovely recolours from The sims Zone UK made by Starrat, and a few from The Real Sim and some long hair recolours from Around The sims.

[Regina]

I have one daughter who I believe would have the wherewithal to learn 3D meshing and I'm trying to encourage her in that direction.  My oldest daughter tried MilkShape and it was too confusing for her, which seems extremely odd considering how well she learns other things, but maybe it's just not her cup of tea.  She seems to be a lot more flatsy-artsy inclined, rather talented I think.  But my younger daughter is not as creative on paper but more creative in other ways.

I don't remember if I've ever been to Sussi's site but have downloaded some from MTS2 and if they're hairs I'm thinking of have been pretty happy with them.

I found one site months back and went on a downloading spree (one of my first hair sprees) and put them all in the game and realized that no matter what kind of sim I had at least one of those hair styles was never going to look right.  Although the others are a bit stiff they look reasonably good in the game so I use them from time to time.

With the turn-ons in NL I'm finding I wish more of my custom hairs were programmed like GuppySim's to show up in regular hair instead of custom.  I think maybe I could fix that myself, just need to find out how.

[laylei]

I really like WDS's hair. Of course, it's a paysite, but some are free, and they look very nice in my game (to me, at least.) I also use Sim Cribbling's hair a LOT.

[Motoki]

re: learning 3D programs

I'm a firm believer that anyone can do it given enough time and patience and desire to learn it. Some people will pick it up faster than others of course, but that doesn't mean those of us who look at it and go 'HUH?  ' can never learn it. It's totally cliche, but if I can learn it, anyone can. Believe me when I say I was NOT one of those people who picked it up quickly. I used to think I would never be able to learn to use those 3D programs and make or modify meshes and I tried and gave up many times, but I kept going back to it and eventually now I'm at the point while not anywhere near an expert, I can make some things with it.

The best thing I can tell you is read all the tutorials you can and just keep at it and even if you're totally frustrated or intimidated keep trying.

As far as what program is best, I learned 3DS Max because it was really the only program I could mod for Morrowind with which was what I was interested in doing at the time. I haven't ever bothered to learn Milkshape when I went over to making TS2 files other than to use it enough to convert files back and forth between Max. If I were starting out learning specifically for TS2 though Milkshape probably makes the most sense. All the 3D programs are pretty much intimidating and confusing when you start out IMHO. I've never seen what I would consider and easy to learn user friendly 3D program, but if someone knows when let me know!

Once you get the controls down though, that is by far the hardest part since you can do anything if you don't know how to navigate the controls.

[Brynne]

Yeah, all those controls! Like you said, it has more controls than a 747. And it flew right over my head just like a 747, too!

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, I couldn't even do anything for Sims1 apart from rugs (with the rugomatic!) so Sims2 is just not on for me - and I can't afford a decent paint program, even if I could work out how to use the darn things!

[Oddysey]

If in need of a paint program, google GIMP. Has all the necessary functionality of Paint Shop, but is free. Open source is a wonderful thing.

I learned Animation Master last year. I'm not bad at working with it; my problem is that I never know what to do. If I already have a project, sure, but just doing something off the top of my head is hard.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Thanks Odyssey, I'll maybe try it, but I always come off second best against any paint program I've tried!

[Brynne]

Gimp is awesome. I've used that for a couple of years, now.

[ZephyrZodiac]

Well, I did go and have a look at the website, but I couldn't suss out what exactly I should download! 

[Brynne]

Here's the Gimp for Windows download page:

http://gimp-win.sourceforge.net/stable.html

[ZephyrZodiac]

Thanks, Brynne.  I did actualy find that page, but I just couldn't work out which version to download.