Looking for a term better than “over engineering” or “pixel f#*king” for the act of adding detail to areas that will likely never be seen. I’m haunted by a story I once (mis)read or (mis)heard where Steve Jobs would judge the quality of a bookcase or chest of drawers by looking at the backside. So…yes…there has been a fair amount of geo and texturing effort put into the inside of this character’s helmet – which will probably always be obscured or in shadow.

I’ve been building, kit bashing, tweaking, and remodeling this astronaut off and on since February. So when June rolls around and I’m still futzing with XGen hair – for a head that will always be covered – I’d like to know what I’m guilty of.

This is the first (or fiftieth if you count all the crashing) attempt at an Xgen groom.

Groom test nine: #Xgen became slightly more manageable after quadrupling the resolution of the skull cap geo. Masks seem to behave better and instead of having to max the density up to 1,000,000 just to get coverage, I can use values like 128 or 256.

The higher resolution skull cap helps a good bit. However still having lots of issues with strands between the guides being interpolated into ears and such.