I have created a new custom hair model, but I have problems with creating Tangent and/or Flow maps.
Unfortunately, there is almost no information about building these maps (especially about the Flow map).
I found a very interesting free application - Krita (Krita | Digital Painting. Creative Freedom.), which allows you to draw Tangent maps. But the default Tangent encoding settings seem to be incompatible with CC.
See pic. :
Many thanks for reply.
I read the topic, but the video was new to me.
Unfortunately, they contain simplified information about the Tangent map (only directions from top to bottom and left to right) and there is nothing specific about the Flow map at all.
Flow map is used in the latest versions of hair shader and I think it contains more detailed information about the hair direction.
I found how the standard Tangent map is constructed for DirectX, but it does not look like the Flow map for CC.
I’m working on a shaved hair model that is designed as a two-layer scalp, so I need to create a Flow map for all hair directions. The current version looks like this -
(If you would like to view it in full resolution, open the image link in a new tab.)
I think I managed to figure out how to create Flow textures for CC hair.
The closest result to CC requirements can be obtained using the Substance Painter program. You can read the instructions here.
It is important that you select DirrectX (not OpenGL) when creating a project.
Krita can also create Flow textures, but it has some issues in the left-bottom direction, so the textures are not as “clean” as in Substance Painter.
Here is a short instruction:
Edit the standard “Texture Normal Map” brush as shown in the image.
Load the texture into an image editor that allows you to edit individual color channels (Photoshop e.t.c) and fill the blue channel with 50% gray.
Perhaps the last step can be done directly in Krita, but I did not figure it out.
