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I suggest you take a look at how an EA hair mesh, and also a CC mesh is built up and how it compares to the textures (there are usually a few differences, because a lot of CC meshes don't utilize the "hair" group other than leaving it be, but EA meshes tend to have it textured). You should also read up on hair tutorials if you want more details on how to use the different groups.
The "Hair" group is connected to the skin texture via the skin shader ("SimSkin", found in the "cMaterialDefinition" tab in the TXMT settings, needed for the head to take on the proper texture), and any hair parts you put on this layer needs to be fully meshed and can't have alpha-editable parts (parts that go invisible), because any non-textured parts will be covered in skintone. This can be used as an effect, if you for instance want a shaved look for the rest of the head instead of completely bald.
If you want parts that go invisible, for a more "hairy" look, these parts need to be on a "hair_alpha" layer (name can vary a bit, but the important thing is that it's alpha-enabled). This needs the "SimStandardMaterial" shader. This layer need to be in addition to the "Hair" layer, not instead of. For the mesh, you need one front and one back group (these can be named the same), but you can make do with one texture group per front/back set, because this creates fewer resources and smaller files. If you UVmap the hair properly and layer the groups from the innermost to the outer one (otherwise they can cause transparency issues), you can make do with just one texture for a hair. The "Hair" group should always be the innermost layer.
If you want a layered look with stripes and/or many colors, you may need more than one group set and more texture maps, although this will cause a larger filesize and a lot of texture maps to keep control of when recoloring.
A couple of basic tutorials/tips to read through
https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=158048 (basics)
https://modthesims.info/showthread.php?t=252950 (neeed-to-know)