Hey all! I've been quiet for a few days working on this hair tutorial... I thought I'd drop a note to the forum to let people see how things are coming along. The angles on these shots might be misleading... I took them quickly to get preview renders of my ongoing work so that I could manipulate various groups against each other.

If anyone has any suggestions for what they'd like to learn, let me know either by posting here or via IM. Sorry this is taking so long, but I'm trying to do a comprehensive A to Z style tutorial.

So far I expect the full tutorial to take about 3 - 4 hours for a user from start to finish, but at the end you'll have a fully usable (i.e. the hair will look good from all angles, and be under 100,000 verts) hair style, as well as a deep understanding of the hair room's tools.

The tutorial so far is going to cover the basics such as grouping, cap design, setting up cap morphs for fitting multiple characters, use of the toolset, and working with guide hairs on the fly and from photographic references, up through intermediate stuff such as creating good materials, hair density and population theory and practice, and some basic theory on dynamics and animation principle, which a user should be able to use to start moving up to the next level.

Cheers!
softriver

Note: The "Stage 6" render less than 20000 verts, does not bog down on full tracking, and rendered in less than 2 minutes under production mode. :)

uhhh, I'd like to learn it all??! ;P lol any of your knowledge that you share would be awesome. thankyou so much for your efforts, I anxiously await the availability of your tutorial with great anticipation! :D

YES!!! This is excellent!

Looking forward to this :)

Just out of curiosity, do you guys prefer .pdf or html encoded documents?

I need to ask that because I'll probably include some basics such as a skull cap and a basic material or two (so the user can see how they work) and zip the whole thing up for easy access.

I've been careful to stay away from tutorials here, so I'm not sure if there's a format that the community prefers.

Sorry for the n00b questions if they've already been answered elsewhere. ;)

softriver

Looks like its going to be a great tutorial :-) As for a preference on distribution medium, whatever is easier for you is OK by me.

Look foward to your tutorial. My prefence is ".pdf" Nice and neat. thanks

Thanks snowriver, for your efforts. You have really taken on the topic of hair creation with a vengeance. You will soon be recognized as the resident guru in this area :) I wish you every success. My preference also is PDF, that way you get the entire tutorial encapsulated in one file. I think what I'd like to learn is as follows : (1) How to make hair in the hair room "fine" - like real hair. I've noticed that most hair produced in the hair room has the consistency of a brillo pad (or steel wool). (2) How to keep the use of resources for processing to a minimum (both when creating the hair, and when rendering it) - without making the character look like she has alopecia. (3) Details on how to create skullcaps for any Poser character. (4) How to export a hair prop created in the hair room. Thanks again. regards, Andrew

One more thing - ...... Is it possible to create one-dial morphs for a hair prop that has been created in the hair room ??

(1) How to make hair in the hair room "fine" - like real hair. I've noticed that most hair produced in the hair room has the consistency of a brillo pad (or steel wool).

This is actually due to the overuse of the dials. I'll explain that in depth. :)

(2) How to keep the use of resources for processing to a minimum (both when creating the hair, and when rendering it) - without making the character look like she has alopecia.

This is a slightly more detailed discussion. I will be adding subsections to the tutorial to explain theory and practice. A large part of this involves doing more with less, which involves multiple issues such as grouping, population versus thinckness, etc.

(3) Details on how to create skullcaps for any Poser character.

This depends on what you want. I intend to demonstrate how to make a "one size fits all" cap that will morph to fit the head you're working with, however, in lieu of future characters such as the much anticipated Geni and Eric from numanoid, or less common characters such as Dina or Posette, I'll do my best to also describe how to create new caps.

I can't go into the complete realm of cap design and modeling... it's just too much, and will eventually merit a tutorial of it's own. However, I will be sure to explain why I use the design I use, and what improvements I might make in the future.

Since working with hair, I've also found a new way of posing dynamic hair which I call "soft dynamics", which I'll explain briefly as well in with the morphing caps.

Does that help?

(4) How to export a hair prop created in the hair room.

Unfortunately, I'm not sure I can help with this. As a softimage user, I can't think of any way to get Poser hair into XSI, or I would in a heartbeat. The crux of the problem is that Poser defines hair with internal data structures that don't translate to any outside formats. I highly suspect that this is the reason that Shade 7 can't support dynamic hair, despite the availability of a true pipe (PoserFusion) into the application. However, in the coming weeks and months I will be pouring through hair prop files and hair-based .pp2's to see what can be done with the Raw data... possibly an export shell might be possible if I can find a good coder.

Is it possible to create one-dial morphs for a hair prop that has been created in the hair room ??

Yes. Furthermore, I think I can go well beyond that with continued research. I've figured out ways of using dial morphs to reproduce dynamic hair motions without requiring use of the dynamic tools. So far I can move the hairline, apply some gravitational effects, make receding hairlines and bald spots...

Much of this I can't go into with this tutorial... It's just too much to cover without writing a book. So I have to prioritize as much as is reasonable.

This first tut will be aimed at getting rid of the hundreds of misconceptions people have about hair, most of which are caused by the poor documentation, which is 95% wrong, and 65% misleading. ;)

These first steps are actually going to feel like huge leaps. Once you take them, you'll feel like a hair god, I promise. After that, it's all detail work, applied theory, and sweat, to move beyond what you see above. :)

Cheers!
softriver

Btw... an interesting (but not recommended) experiment to test the stability of Poser 5 under SR4:

Populate one dynamic hair group with 100,000 strands, 20 verts per strand. Add a reflection value to their material.

Render on Production Mode.

Poser was still responding, trying to do the billions of billions of calc's required for the image, 10 hours later. Of course, opening the task manager to check the status of the application took about 45 minutes, but, hey, what can I expect on a computer that cost less than the Earth Simulator?

Thanks a lot, softriver :))

Which OS were you using for that mega-hair? BTW, I've been fiddling around with non-human figures, making a copy of a section of the head-neck mesh as a skullcap. Needs external editing to reduce the polygon count... Dynamic hair for a horse's mane, for instance.

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Which OS were you using for that mega-hair? Running under Win 2k Pro. Btw, I have been playing around, and I made a morph set for my cap (I call it the "softcap") that fits on the DAZ Toonimal Puppy. I haven't actually tried morphing a finished hair group onto it's head yet... I'll let you know how it turns out. (I currently have about 5 irons in the fire, between school, work, Poser 5, et. al., but if I get the time to play, you can bet there will be a Toonpuppy in the gallery with some ghetto-fabulous curls!)

BTW, I've been fiddling around with non-human figures, making a copy of a section of the head-neck mesh as a skullcap. Needs external editing to reduce the polygon count... Dynamic hair for a horse's mane, for instance. Missed this one last night... I don't recommend using the grouping tool in Poser with an existing mesh for several reasons. First, my emphasis is on distributable hair. It would be, IMO, unethical to redistribute vertex placements based on an existing mesh without prior permission. I know you probably weren't planning on doing so, but learning to make a cap like this may be a hindrance down the road. Second, I don't like to rely on outside applications if the tool is available from within Poser. While the cap I'm using was modeled in Wings, it's possible, and not too rough tocreate a workable one in Poser. Normally I would encourage people to take up modeling, and I totally think Wings, which is free, is worth a download. However, I don't want to force users to step out of P5. As for your horse's main, and just about anything else you want to do, don't make the assumption that a skull cap has to be a welded, continuous mesh. That's thinking too far "inside the box." Try this experiment: Take three primitive planes, and place them close by each other, but not touching, or connected at any point. If they do intersect, it won't matter, but it will make it harder to see what Poser's doing. Export them together as an .obj. Next, move one or two of the squares a bit, and export as an .obj making sure to check the universe box and the "as morph target" box. To finish set-up, clear the scene and import the first .obj. Click Object>Load Morph Target select the 2nd obj and name the dial. Next, go to the hair room, and set up 6 hair groups, which we'll label A, B, C, D, E, and F. Group A will consist of only Square_1, B of square_2, and C of square_3. Group D will have two poly's being square 1 and 2. E will consist of square 2 and 3, and F will be squares 3 and 1. Now, populate all groups with 40 or 50 hairs, then twist them all together halfway from root to tip. Go back to the pose room and move your morph dial, paying attention to what happens to the different hair groups, and how they interact. Congratulation, you've just received a crash course in softdynamics. :) Obviously, the interactions created are extremely complex... I've been developing the technique by manipulating vertex placement and creating custom morphs, as well as "rotating" certain poly's while keeping them free of the cap mesh. Will post some cool results tomorrow or Monday. :)

Thanks again :)

I'm having a bit of trouble visualising exactly what you're doing to set all this up, but I think I see what you're getting at. The hair doesn't need to come from any sort of subtle shape, though the mesh needs to suit the structure of the hairstyle. Right? How do you handle the edges? I assume you use a combination of transparency and putting the edge-polygons "under" the skin, so the hair appears to come out of the figure.

I'm having a bit of trouble visualising exactly what you're doing to set all this up, but I think I see what you're getting at. The hair doesn't need to come from any sort of subtle shape, though the mesh needs to suit the structure of the hairstyle. How do you handle the edges? I assume you use a combination of transparency and putting the edge-polygons "under" the skin, so the hair appears to come out of the figure. Let me give you a visual example (see below). This is the 77- poly low-poly cap available here. I've used the grouping tool to detach each individual polygon surface, so the actual model is a series of squares, which in the default state align to the head, just as a normal skull cap would...

In the above image you can see how I've grouped the hairline...

In the above image I've roated the polygons that will define the hairline, and moved them enough so that they will still conform to the figure's head, remaining just under the surface. I then export as .obj, with the above options checked. After a certain amount of work, I figured out that you will need to check the universe box for export as well.

In the above image, I've reloaded the original .obj, and selected Object>Add Morph Target. Name the target, and point Poser at your modified .obj to add the "hairline forward" dial.

In this image, you can see that I've made two hair groups, one consisting of hairs that will bridge the hairline-crown gap, and one that will reside only on the hairline.

Next, you create the hair, bearing in mind that each morph will need "bridging groups" and "hard" groups. (i.e. Groups that cross the morphic gaps, or reside solely on a single poly group). The image above shows a populated hair style, rendered in the default position, the "Hairline Forward = 1.00000" position, and the "Hairline Forward = 3.00000" position. Subtlety and proper planning are obviously the keys to designing softdynamic hair. I'm about 80 hours in development on this idea, and can currently make finished hair styles do damn near anything I want without ever getting into the hair room... However, I've found that the key is to decide what morphs you'll be attempting well before you start creating your hair, then to remove any morphs that work improperly after you're finished. I honestly don't see much use for this beyond animation, or making distributable hair products and freebies, as it requires a large amount of planning and implementation to do properly... If all you want to do is make a great render, you should focus on getting the styling tools and materials right, and only creating the parts of the hair that you need. In other words, I consider softdynamics a very advanced technique. I am using it because I plan on releasing some hair products, to help support the content gap between P4 and P5, but it's certainly not necessary to get great renders. ;) Cheers, *softriver* Note: The above renders are of an unfinished hair style. I haven't added the parts, filler layers, or final materials yet. (I just wanted to be able to show you the final result after a bit of practice... ) Disclaimer: You still need to know how to make hair look right before softdynamix will work well with whatever project you're doing on, but for animators and content creators, it should be a godsend.

Oh, yeah... did you notice how the bridging groups completely cover my mesh separation, while the hard group moves with complete autonomy? By using both types of group properly, and planning the layout, you can literally design thousands of morphs for any mesh, that will allow you to customize any finished hair style as much as you like. =D

Mmmm, been very quiet. I am waiting in anticipation. Hope you are still working on this.

Bookmarking :)

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