Fallout

My hair has always been unworkable. From as early as five years old, I can remember the struggles I had with being able to do anything with it.

For a start, it parts on the opposite side to most other people, which made it look lopsided. It was very thick and dark, which gave it no shape, and no control. It just did whatever it wanted, which was always the same thing - fluff up and sit like it was somehow separated from my scalp. Hairspray and gel don't work on my hair; thus far they have been unable to tame it. If it's cut too short, it spikes up, so it needs some amount of length at all times to look even remotely acceptable.

Whenever some new trendy haircut was in style, I'd go to the hairdresser's and ask for something resembling it. They'd immediately say "Sure! No problem!" and get to work. After five minutes they'd start to hesitate, and go "Hmmm..." until eventually they gave up. "Sorry, I can't really do what you want. But I tell you what, I can make you look like a dork for the rest of your life. How about that?"

End result, the exact same haircut I have always had, forever.

I started losing my hair when I was in my mid-20s. It was a slow, but incessant, loss, which wasn't really visible to others for a while, but by age 30 it was much more evident. I also started going grey at about the same time, and though I wish it had gone shock white instead, it remains patchy and haphazard.

So. Uncontrollable, lopsided, dorky, patchwork, potentially spikey and flyaway, and rapidly falling out. What a disaster.

The common approach to such situations is to shave it all off. But that would mean having to constantly keep it close cropped a lot more often than regular haircut frequency, which sounds far too much like hard work to me. And anyway, it would just spike at the earliest opportunity, which I hate. Plus, I suspect my head is a funny shape.

Genetically I have to blame my Granddad on my mother's side; I have the exact same pattern of hair loss that he did. Whereas my brother is not losing his hair at all, and has something resembling our Dad's curly frizz.

There's not much to do about it. It's not like I have enough vanity that I care about my appearance in any way. I'll just continue to slob along looking like a scruff, as always.

Still, it does suck.

3D Hair

There are a few holy grails in 3D graphics that most artists struggle to get to grips with. Water is one such feature that only recently has been finally knocked on the head, but even then only in certain situations. A lot of the water and ocean effects in Peter Jackson's King Kong were excellent, and a few were not. As long as they don't draw attention to themselves from their wrongness, then that's considered a success, but geeks like me tend to notice the tricks that are employed a little too readily.

Another difficult to nail down aspect of 3D is animating physical motions like jumping or falling. I've never seen a convincing hand animated jump yet. All three Spider-Man movies are full of crappy attempts at hand-animated leaps and swings, and it annoys me a lot.

The Uncanny Valley problem of eyes is another continually difficult nut to crack. It's improving, but it's still not there yet.

One that has been figured out, relatively recently in computing terms, is hair. But the problem is if you want it to react and interact like real hair, it takes a huge amount of processing power to do it properly, and I haven't got such a luxury. So my attempts at things like cloth effects and hair have to be simplified and reduced to something relatively basic.

Here is my first attempt at polygon hair, based on a tutorial. I am... not satisfied, but it's a good start.