How to create hair textures? (without 3ds max)

Development Rendering
1

I’m trying to find how to create hair textures for ue4 hair shader.Photorealistc charactertutorial says:

“In this use of the UE4 Hair shader, the final result is driven by five primary textures: Diffuse, Alpha, Root, Depth, and a unique-per-strand ID texture. At Epic, these textures are typically generated using 3ds Max’s Hair system, projecting the simulated hair results onto a piece of geometry. However, there are **many available options **for similar results.”

Too bad I don’t have 3ds max. I only have Maya LT and blender. Maya LT doesn’t have hair system (it’s limited to full version).

So, about those “available options” which are “many”. Does anybody knows how to create those textures in maya lt, blender or photoshop or something else?

I already have hair mesh with correct UVs and everything, just need textures. I was thinking to generate hair sheets in blender and bake them, but i don’t know blender very well. Is there any script or tutorial bout it maybe?

Also, even a tutorial of how to make and bake it in 3dsmax could be useful.

2

You can create hair textures in any content creation package. In fact you can do that even inside UE4 itself. All you need to do is render a heightmap of a bunch of tapering spline meshes