Attached Link: http://www.renderosity.com/viewed.ez?galleryid=646806&Start=1&Artist=mathman&ByArtist=Yes

I definitely agree with you about the Montero hair. It's complete arse. Who in their right mind would want hair to look like that?

Y'know, both hair pieces you pointed out aren't made by Daz (as in, a Daz Original), they're brokered. Maybe you want to complain to the artist, April YSH?

Ok, but it's still arse, and DAZ are selling/brokering it. Anyhow, I don't have a complaint, since I didn't buy it. I'm expressing an opinion, which, last time I looked, was allowed. For the record, I have one of April's products, and very nice it is, too, so I have no axes to grind here.

Being that I was replying to the thread starter, I wasn't mashing any of your opinion-letting privileges, SamTherapy.

I bought the Montero hair today and am asking for a refund Monday morning. Too many of Daz hair props look liked "chopped up nylon stockings." The transparencies are very poorly done so that you can spend more money getting a transparency fix; and of course a bunch more colors that take 30 minutes of work max with Photoshop to create. Look at the new Wedge cut hair also. Bangs that look like ribbons and sideburns like triangles. Just typical of the hair found at Daz.

Message edited on: 06/05/2004 19:58

"Being that I was replying to the thread starter, I wasn't mashing any of your opinion-letting privileges, SamTherapy." No prob, lhiannan. Sorry for the misunderstanding. :)

S'okay. I think it has something to do with Renderosity sending an email saying someone has replied to your post :)

I was also venting an opinion, and I see I am not the only one. Maybe these are not DAZ originals, but DAZ still puts their name to them, AND charges high prices for them, so as far as I am concerned that makes them DAZ products.

Interesting opinion, Mathman. I have a number of brokered items there, but I don't consider them Daz Products. I consider them mine, and I chose to broker them there, because that was where the original models they were created for had the most traffic.

Good point, Gareee. I also had a technical question at the bottom of the posting, and was wondering what are the best ways to manipulate these products to make them more realistic...

As a followup, I just saw a new hair product at Rosity that looks pretty wonkey as well. I'm wondering if all the good "hair" artists have all moved on to character creation? Neftis did some great stuff, and she pretty much devotes her time to characters and thier support now.

WOW! The difference is awesome! What kind of bumpmap did you use? And "sharpening", does that mean you sharpened the texture in a paint program (like PSP or Photoshop)? France

Yes - sharpen the hair texture in a Paint program (a little "Sharpen" plus a little "unsharp mask" in this case) - until the hair detail is crisp instead of blurry. Some textures may not need this, but you have to look at the map itself to see, since you can't tell if Poser is softening it or if it is soft to begin with, and you want hair textures to begin as crisp as they can. Then for the bump map take that sharpened image and remove the chroma (desaturate) until you have a grayscale - this is not absolutely necessary but it helps you see the contrast range that the bump map will actually use - you want it to have clear definition of the hair grain with as much contrast as possible. So, without loosing the fine detail - use a combination of brightness, contrast and sometimes lowering gamma a bit until you have as much contrast as you can get (and still have fine detail). Use that as the bump map, which is ESSENTIAL if you want to get realistic highlights when it is rendered. For the highlights, set highlight size to a medium value, and a color of dark gray. Do NOT apply the texture to the highlight as this will make the hair look metallic instead of like hair. If your scene has primary lights that are colored instead of white, you might tint the highlight color very slightly with the same color as your main lighting - but only slightly. Try it, and you will see that most hair can be made to look 100% better than the original. But this works best on hair that does not already have strong highlights already painted in (as some of Koz's hair does). What bugs me is, why arent things like this done by the vendor? Don't they care how their product looks?

Thank you! I've saved that info in a textfile and will certainly try it. It's no problem that we can't do that on Koz' hair... I think his? hair look great. Not like DAZ' hair I've seen. I saw a set of hair yesterday at DAZ (not the cuffed hair about which I talk in another message) and I loved the hairstyle but frankly, the texture looked like Raggedy Ann & Andy hair! And they actually SELL it when we can get beautifully done hair for free... France

The only recent decent hair I've gotten at Daz is the Bombshell hair with the texture add-on. Try the hair at Runtimedna. Much better.

Really the big problem with the recently released Daz hair is the textures. After all, Koz did some textures for the old P4 hair, and now it looks great. If you've got P5, try this trick. First, link the reflection to the texture, and the reflection strength to the transmap. Set the color of the reflection down (grey it up). You may want to turn the reflection value down some too. Second, a lot of these new hair don't have a bumpmap. So link the bump channel to the texture, and set it between .1 and .4 or so. Third, link the specular color to the texture and set to white. Play with the highlight size some, and link it to the transmap also. Real hair has a sheen, and an almost metalic look when cared for. This method can really help. But the best thing is to hope that Koz makes textures for them. No one does it better.

I didn't read RonStuff's reply. Still think hair IS a little metalic, but it's all a matter of taste. The big thing is to be sure to link the transmap tp the reflection value in P5, otherwise you get ghosted highlights. Great minds (grin).

And I second the comment about RDNA hair.....some of the best there is and good pricing as well. You still can't beat Koz though! And his stuff is still free! :) Most of the DAZ stuff seems ok for distance shots, but is not good for closeups.

Thanks ronstuff and pdxjims for your useful feedback. I agree that the RDNA hair is good, the problem is that all of their male hair is long. There doesn't seem to be many good short hair props. Some of the "older" DAZ products seem to be OK (e.g. the original wedge cut) but they are very distinctive and not easy to morph.

pdxjims has a point that some highly treated female hair like you see in the commercials and a lot of the overly postworked magazine ads has a metallic look to it, but most ordinary hair does not. I believe that the real factor in creating realistic hair (aside from bump mapping and good materials) is transluscency, which we have available in P5. If you plug your hair texture into the transluscency channel you will not need to "fake it" by multiplying the texture through the highlight which in real-life is indeed a "sheen" that has the color of the lighting and not the color of the hair - though in the virtual world we sometimes have to fake an effect due to rendering limitations - at least in P5 we don't have to do it as much ;-) The problem with applying the texture to the highlight (especially with darker textures) is that you will never be able to get the kind of sheen and natural highlights from your scene lighting that I have demonstrated above. It is fine if you have painted highlights in the texture map itself, but hardly realistic if one knows what to look for.

real hair does to have a metalic look look close at it broun hair is like thin strans of bronze and blond hair is like gold or bras.

I agree that the RDNA hair is good, the problem is that all of their male hair is long. Agreed! I already have an awful lot of long 80's glam hair in my runtime. ;-) Thanks for the tips ronstuff and pdxjims! -Heidi

I prefer hair available here at RMP and some free hair objects. I like Kozaburo, Danae, Quarker, 3Dream, Hman, Maya, Swam and many others. They are great!!!!!

Agree about the DAZ hair although I think way back as Anton made hair for DAZ it was much better.

Hi everyone, Just FYI... I am working on some short styles too, I did the long one's first because I was tired of trying to fit long fem hair to M3.

Cool! Thanks, Traveler. Looking forward to it.

Great Traveler. Looking forward to it too!

Thanks in advance, Traveler :)

I agree, except I do like the Handmaid Hair by Dark Whisper, and all Hman's hair. I think his Mystic Moon hair is so great, it needs no post work at all. I love Danae hair wild and windy, and the post on that is fun. I also love Maya and Kozaburo free hair. I also have tons I hate. Neifts early hair for vic 2 is outstanding. Swam's hair is fun creative hair too. That is one thing about Daz, you can get your money back, for the reason you hate it. :O)No one eles does this.

Actually, Polymage is doing the same thing now...someone posted in the forums that they weren;t sure they wanted Elle...

Great tips. Thanks, folks. I really like the styles April comes up with, but the textures are very disappointing. They only look good from a distance. But this is obvious in the promos, so I can't say I didn't know what I was getting. :-) I wish someone would make textures as good as Koz's for April's hair.

This is a fantastic and helpful thread. Thanks everyone for all your great tips on solving this annoying problem. 8) Catlin

What settings did you use on the Cool Coils in Firefly? The scalp areas are always grungy on my renders.

It looks like she's got a dandruff problem. ;-) Is that intentional?

No, it's probably a result of not enough antialiasing. The specularity is used in such a way that it tends to do that, since it's being multiplied through the texture. I'm working on a tutorial for this hair effect, as well as one for a weird new way to use Firefly shaders.

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R_Hatch Sed: "I'm working on a tutorial for this hair effect, as well as one for a weird new way to use Firefly shaders." Any ETA on those? Where are you likely to post them? That render is amazing. Never seen nicer out of P5, great work.

R_Hatch - yes, I'd love to see that too. BTW.... If you look at the ear... I often get this effect (almost like a glowing skin) on skin a lot since SR4 in P5. I'm assuming it has to do with the skin shader node, and the texture being plugged straight into it, but I'm not 100% certain. If anyone has any ideas of how to avoid it, I'd love to know :) Silke