We all have to start somewhere, right? Behold my first custom hair prop, Orszebet for Genesis 2 Female.

I wanted to make a layered wedge cut, longer in the front than in the back, with some bangs and a buzzed nape. I’d say I got about 80% of the way there.

I constructed this model using Abalone’s HairShop 1.0 beta version. Starting with one of the existing hairstyles provided by the program, I used tools within HairShop to cut the distinctive wedge shape and to harvest bangs from another hairstyle so I could add them to this one. Skullcap came from yet a third HairShop model.

I exported all the pieces of the hairstyle as OBJs, then imported them into Daz so that I could work with them on the target figure. I made small changes to scaling and used some D-Formers on the bottom of the wedge to give it a bit more of an irregular and organic shape. While in Daz, I also experimented with texture, using a freebie texture tile from MSTene that I modified, and with transparency maps. I made my own trans map for the main wedge and bangs, but modified a HairShop one for the skullcap.

I tergiversate about whether to release this as a freebie. On one hand, the world needs more free digital hairstyles, and I haven’t seen any of this type. On the other hand, it’s full of painfully obvious flaws so that, while proud of having created something hair-related, I also feel self-conscious about releasing it for distribution. I did want to document my first effort, however, just so I have an initial milestone by which to measure my slow, but inevitable, progress toward actually superb results!

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