When making low-poly creature models for a game, it's easy to end up with a lot of blocky looking straight edges. This info is about how to make a fur-tuft texture that can hide some of those blocky straight lines and make a low poly model seem more detailed without gobbling up resources by going hi-poly.
This is from the user Verdite:
In GIMP there is a brush shaped like an 'x' so if you are using Paint Shop etc, maybe you can make an X shaped brush. Set a cubed selection with a black background in your texture, then set your opacity to about 10-20% and your pressure to 100% use only a white colour for this. This texture will use multiple layers, so paint the first layer using your x brush without letting go of the LMB, to create a frayed effect - I would suggest shaping your fur-tuft as a half oval shape. When you are happy let go of the LMB, and move to the next layer and make another row of fur just beneath your first row. Repeat procedure to the bottom, stepping down the rows as you go.
It should have made a nice layered effect. But it looks too symmetrical, so now you want to change your brush to a simple dot and increase the opacity. Paint lines to add variant hair strands. Going from one layer of hair to another is ok with a light opacity brush, but you should finish off with a higher opacity brush (35-40%) to get that harsh, wirey texture, and to merge the layers better.
For the final step, you need to select the hair and colorize it with whichever colour you want. I suggest a low saturation, low lightness colour at say hue:32, saturation:18, lightness:-40 Then use a medium lightness palette colour to add variance.
