Boot Camp
I've given Caitlin very short hair so I can concentrate on other aspects of hair apart from styling. It's starting to look a bit more real. I'll start working on eyes, eyebrows and lashes soon, which should finish off this second iteration of my project. It's slowly coming together.
I've picked up a couple of other techniques too. Reading Jeremy Birn's Digital Lighting and Rendering was very useful. He has a very sophisticated approach to 3D lighting. In my current image I've achieved a better highlight in the eyes by moving them to a separate layer, adding a light there that lights only the objects on that layer, and is set for specular light only. Voila, nice specular highlights in the eye without adding to the general lighting anywhere else. The book actually refers to this as Link Lighting, but I figured its implemented via layers in Blender.
Later...
I've added some eye lashes and re-rendered. Lookin' good.