It seems that no-one has ever taken a range of realistic wigs, photographed them pin-sharp and hanging from different angles against a good greenscreen, then used the pictures to create a royalty-free stock library of cut-out hair? With no stands, manniquin heads or other elements showing. Just the hair, looking as though it’s actually sitting on a head and not slumped on a desk. I just can’t find anything like that. A search for “wig” on Thinkstock finds only one suitable ‘isolated’ (cut-out) image, on Shutterstock there’s two, and even those have the shadows and highlights too stark…
In the age of Reality 4, is the ‘bad hair day’ hair we usually have to put up with in 3D renders holding back our art? While also massively boosting the render times, I might add, even if you have software that can ‘grow’ and ‘style’ its own hair. Wouldn’t it be easier for many portrait picture makers to ‘Photoshop on’ some quality hair afterwards, from a good stock collection? And ideally one slanted toward sci-fi and fantasy hair, rather than middle America blow-dry styles taken from the 1977 Hairstylists’ Guide, of the sort that painted stock hair collections seem to favour?
