Eyelash and hair~

[kamsvag]

i'm driven crazy after many experiment on making eyelashes and hair

the second picture is a photoshop touched up version of the first one, and my goal is to archieve the looking of the second image in maya

the part i'm really frustrated is hair and eyelash

i have 3 methods in mind
use 1)texture map, 2)real eyelash gemetry 3)painteffect
1) gives a quite poor quality when the texture surface are not facing perpendicular to the camera, which is the case always happening becus the eye lashes have a large range of curvature
3) is quite difficult to setup and the visual quality is not what i want

then i tried to use texture map on a sphere for hair which can't move and polygon mesh for eyelash and make the following render:

the hair can't flow but it is not not as big issue as the eyelash
the head is a polygon blendshape and the eyelid is part of the polygon model and its movement is a blendshape animation
the charcter need to BLINK and the most important thing is the eyelash follow the binking EYELID EDGE, after working after 2 nights, i still can't find any good menthod on this... originally i think of use make the eyelash goup a proper pivot point and roatate it as the eyelid move, however, the eyelid edge is of different curvature and shape when it's openeye and when it's closed eye, as shown below

anyone have ideas how to make it work?
even if i use texture map, how can I stick the surface onto the edge of eyelid? it 's a polygonmodel, i can't attach curve on surface like NURBS...
and if i want to attach real gemotry on it, how can the eyeleash geometry flow the flow of the eyelid edge, as it change its shape?

complicated enough... any idea?

thx

[kamsvag]

finally I figure one solution myself...
since i got my questions answered in this forum for many time,
so this time i would like to share the method i figure out, see if it's useful for anyone:

i basically use real gemotry , i start with 1 piece of polygon eyelah and animate them to the motion curve , the curve is drawn on the face surface by making the surface LIVE, so i draw a few, say 4, interpolation for better result,

then i use animated snapshot, i adjust the keyframes of scale and rotate of the eyelash on the motionpath. when i satisfy, i duplicate the animated snapshot partitions and ungroup them. then use polgon combine to make one mesh, for each of the inbetween position, finally i use blendshape with in-between options to make the eyelash animatable, and finally finally uise driven keys to drive it by the eyelid blendshape node...

that's it~
hope some one find it useful