Dear Budding Hairdresser,

Hi, this is a simple attempt to change the hair colour of one of the haptek wigs.
I'm no expert, so I'm sorry if the hapfiles don't work; I have had some problems getting
the textures to load up properly.  The hair texture seems a bit hit and miss sometimes but this might
just be my PC having problems with it.  Either way this is just to get the ideas out, so maybe 
someone will work it out.

If it doesn't work straight away then try emptying the scene by using the console and start again 
from the very beginning. I found that it seems to like being reset or cleared out sometimes, then after
that it loads the wigs with no problems, weird!  That could well be my simple script, but I'll work 
it out fully at some point!  Sooner or later I will try getting them into Hal too.

In case you don't know what you're getting into:

To set things up just drop the 'colourhair' folder into the 'wigs' folder of the 
Haptek Player in Program Files.  Then put the remaining HAP files somewhere you can get
at them.  It's simple enough, you just drag the 'col_hairstart5' to load wig 5 or 
'col_hairstart6' to load wig 6, on to the player and fingers crossed it will work first
time.  If not then DO try emptying the console to start again, it usually works.     

If you want to change the hair textures/colours yourself (and you probably will as I'm no hair
dresser) then just save your files over the JPGS.  You need a decent texture; one with very fine
hair strands is best.  I found cutting and pasting from a large hi-res, image of some 
straight hair works best.  Then later you can add in the finer details.  

On texure Size:

You get better results working on a 1024x1024 and then down-scaling to 512x512 for speed.
You won't notice a huge deal of difference in appearance unless you tend to talk with hair in
close-up.  Hey, maybe you like talking to hair pieces, I don't know.  Whatever you do, save the
file in the highest JPEG quality setting, it's often set up to 80%, but use 100% quality.

I've used 1024x1024 textures which have great definition, but slow down rendering too
much for my system. These two wigs are 512x512 texture size, I have the larger size if you
want to email me about it or use the forums.

If you examine the JPG's in your graphics software you will see which way the hair strands
need to run for this particular wig, each one has a different layout, but this one
is straightforward, though a bit tricky in places due to the way the texture has to
curve around the wig shape.  You may want to try disguising the back seem better though.

I may have a go at some other wigs, but this was one I got to work, whilst still
retaining the finer details at the ends of the hairs.  By the way, you may find if you use
the higher res textures, then you may not get the wig object's stranding rendered.  It may well
depend on how good your graphic's card is.  It doesn't matter so much with a rounded wig like this,
but the bangs don't look so good.

On the Texture detail for anyone having a go:

Be careful what features you use in your graphics software.  Use something that is aimed 
at photo editing.  Don't try too much colouring free hand, instead use things like 
contrast/brightness, tone variation, saturation levels and especially colour-balance.
These can make finer changes to colour tones and shades, as you need to retain the variety
of shades that will give it a more realistic look.  

A good tip to get some final fine detail and strands is to make use of transparency settings.
Cut yourself a finely detailed piece of hair, then set this so it is quite
transparent (or better, so that it will only paint if it is lighter than the image underneath).
Use this as a kind of 'print' to place faint hair strands where the detail isn't so good.  You can
scale this 'print' down so that is even finer too.

If you do a fair bit of that and remember to line up the strands as you go(!) you should have
something looking more like real hair.  By the way it takes ages, and I still haven't finished!
Once you've got a base wig then you can get a wide range of shade just by altering the colour
balance of the image, this seems the least destructive on detail, depending on how far you go with it.

I hope it works and Have fun,

freddy888 (at the ZabbaWare forums).

Note: I only scripted in a line that removes the default (blonde) wig of the fullBody girl,
as you'll no doubt start up with this one, which means you'll have to remove any other wigs
manually.

Don't forget this is just an experiment, so if it drives you crazy too please don't
send me nasty things in the post!!