Good Hair at your fingertips!

Hi everybody! Nath again, here to tell you that he's a hairoholic. As someone people think is something of an Authority on men's hair, I often get people coming to me and saying, "Where do I get good hair, Nath?" I find the question very pleasing, honestly! I enjoy helping people find a hairstyle that suits their avatar, and I'm enough of an egotistical jerk to enjoy people giving a nod to my knowledge. I wound up becoming a coiffureista (it's like a fashionista, but with hair) because early on in my SL experience, I bought what was Completely The Best Hair Ever, in my view. It's an oldie but goodie, Naughty's "The Outsider"- currently, Naughty's closed for renovations, but I'm sure Lost Thereian will bring the shop around again. 

It was 4 years ago.

  And in one of those accidental errors a newbie makes, I accidentally deleted it. Oops! Oh well, so I went back to the store to buy it again... and the store had stopped selling it in the lovely blue-black that I loved. Or grey-black. Or red-black. ALL THE BLACK VALUES WERE GONE!!!

NoooooOOOOooo! 
For most of a year then, I went around in SL trying to find a hair I liked as much. I tried many, many hairs at many, many stores... and finally the original shop got a customer support person. I mentioned the problem to her, asking why it wasn't available, and within about 30 hours, the hair was again on the shelf, and I could wear it again! And, within about 20 minutes of that, I decided I was done wearing it. But! There were some important lessons I learned from this experience.

Hat Hair is Not Your Enemy.

Hat Hair is Not Your Enemy

Hi, I'm Nath, and I am a hairaholic

(Hi, Nath). 

I have far too many different hairs - and the ones I wear most often, I usually have three versions of: one that I have done nothing with, one sized to fit properly on my avatar's head, and one which I have edited to make into hat hair. The purpose of this article is to teach you how to easily make your hair into hat hair. After all, if the hair is hidden by your hat, why waste the Avatar Rendering Cost on flexy prims and hidden locks?

I'm going to assume you already know how to size a hair up or down - just like any prim / multiprim object. If you need help with that, there may be another column coming!

In RL, hat hair is what happens when you've been wearing a hat for a while, and your hair's gotten disheveled by the hat. It has a very different meaning in SL, though!

What is hat hair?

This is NOT Hat Hair

This is not hat hair. See how there's hair poking through the hat everywhere?

This IS Hat Hair

This is hat hair. While it looks a little weird without the hat on, notice how none of the prims are poking through the hat? It is a little finicky to make hat hair, but once you've made it, you can use it with all kinds of different hats.


STEP ONE:
ALWAYS DO THIS WHENEVER YOU DO ANYTHING TO EDIT YOUR HAIR. ALWAYS DO THIS.

First thing, copy and paste the hair into your inventory. Let's say you're using EMo-tion's hair 'Rick', like I am in this tutorial. First thing to do is copy it into your inventory- then rename it. I name one copy (it doesn't matter which one), 'EMO-tion Rick [unmodified]'. This way, if I completely screw up the hair resizing or modifying it, I have the basic hair to go back to, instead of having NOTHING to go back to.

STEP TWO:
Now, put on the hat you want on your avatar. I'm going to use Hatter is Mad's awesome Mad Hatter hat, simply because it seems appropriate. You'll see some locks poking through near the sash on the hat- especially if you've taken the time to size the hat to fit properly on your avatar's skull (see NOT hat hair example above).

STEP THREE:
Get onto a pose stand- this will hold your avatar still, which you'll appreciate when you are not chasing your avatar's head around to click on your hair.

STEP FOUR:
Now look at how that hair's sitting. See all the little locks poking through the hat? That's not hat hair, not at all! Right-click anywhere on the hair, and select 'edit'. On the edit menu, select 'edit linked parts'. This will let you select individual pieces of hair and modify their position relative to the rest.

STEP SIX:
You have a few choices, now. You can either:
A: select a lock that's poking through the hat and drag it upwards, away from your head, or
B: you can tilt it, so that the lock pokes out at a different angle from beneath the hat's rim. Also, you could
C: move the hair downwards slightly, so that the lock still pokes out as it did, but from below the hat's brim.

I usually combine all 3 methods: on this hair, I moved the bangs down slightly in front, tilted some locks on the side, and dragged locks that were on top up and off.

STEP SEVEN:
Take off the hair. Then, rezz it on the ground nearby. You'll see it there with the locks floating above it. Ensure that the Edit Linked Parts box in your building panel is not checked then select all the floating locks over your hair and delete them.

Voila! Now, you have hat hair. The best part is- you can usually trade one hat for another and another and another, and the same hair will work with them all!