Threads of tradition
This was my final project for my intermediate term on Think Tank.
I decided to try to match as well as I can a real image, and do something related to my country. After looking for inspiration, I found this picture of a rural workshop for the traditional Paja Toquilla Hats (mistakenly known as Panama Hats).
It was tough matching the original concept and light, but I'm quite happy with the results. It was my first time doing this type of "hair" system, at first I tried with hair cards, but it looked horrible, so I decided to try using SpeedTree, as I have more knowledge of that software than how to do hair cards, and I knew how to control the flow and direction of the strands.
I can't thank enough my supervisor, Saphir Vendroux, who helped me to deepen my understanding of texturing, polygon and uv optimization as well as lighting.
The original image it's from Gabriel Lucas' workshop, taken by The New York Times
I decided to go with SpeedTree to create the hat strands