I'm sure it's something I'm doing wrong. I'd appreciate any assistance you can provide.

I've not had this problem with Poser 5. You could maybe look at the transparency settings for the hair, it may be something to do with it. Sorry I can't be more definite!

If I understand correctly, the above-mentioned settings should not be used on all hair, so then you're left fiddling about seeing what works. This isn't right. The artists should make the hair so it works in Firefly with little or no fuss.

Problem is some hair was made for P4 and Firefly renders different than P4. An alternate would be to render the scene in the P4 version of P5, but then you lose some of the material room settings, like raytracing I think.

DBowers is correct.. this is a P5 problem.. not the merchants fault. older hairstyles for P4/PPP have some problems in Poser 5. Even Kazoboro's older hair has this problem. the displacement / bump map technique above should fix it.

Attached Link: http://www.keindesign.de/stefan/poser/firefaq.html

Message edited on: 01/02/2005 15:25

So let's get cracking, and either update the hair for the Poser 5 Firefly renderer or start making Poser 5 hair. Hey, Poser 5 has only been around for 2 years or more. It's time to start serving the customers.

Message edited on: 01/02/2005 16:01

updating.. good idea. thing is, you've seen how much is out there? the poserworld is unique in the world. some support poser 4. some support poser 5. some support both. some will only support poser 4 not poser 5. etc etc. some things work in Poser but not in Daz Studio. etc where do you start? hair thats from Daz is not supported in poser 5. they, at this time, have no plans to change this. K's now doing hair that works in poser 5, but has no pressure to update the rest as a commerical venture. why? he does it for free/fun.

Since Koz gives his hair away for free, I'm not about to start complaining that he doesn't support Firefly.

However, perhaps he would allow someone to make P5 MAT files for it. Displacement needs to be added to some of his models, and with some you need to adjust the shading rate or they look very frizzy.

But you get to recognize the various problems with using PP MATs with P5 pretty quickly. Soon you'll be correcting it without even thinking about it.

Thank you all for your advice on this. I tried the fix by dbowers22 and it solved part of the problem. The hair isn't pixelated or blacked out on top anymore but I still have a very noticeable hair line. I'm happy with the results though. I thought it was jsut me that was having the problem. now I know it's a P5 problem.

Thank you for all your assistance.

The hairline is probably caused by incorrect transparency settings. Try posting a screen shot of the your material settings for the skullcap of the hair. Usually lines at the edge of the skullcap like that are because Transparency Falloff is not 0.

If it's not your transparency settings, it might be a shadow. If you render with "cast shadows" unchecked, is it still there?

I don't use Koz's hair, even though it's great hair, judging from all the reviews. However, I really made up my mind to go all the way with Poser 5, and see very little reason not to do so. I find DAZ's continued resistance to Poser 5 to be one of the most "contrary" and unbusinesslike attitudes I've ever experienced. You'd think they'd finally get with the program. Hair makers should advertise whether their hair is designed to work with Poser 5's Firefly render engine. Does anyone have a list of just which hair is "Poser 5 ready?"

Daz makes lousey hair anyway. I can never get Daz hair to look realistic, no matter how much I twiddle with the material settings. It always lloks like it is painted on. It doesn't even really look all that great in their ads. I think it is their transmaps or something. Koz's hair works great with the right material settings and I like the styles.

DAZ is getting with the program. Finally. A lot of their products are old, and they aren't going back and retrofitting anything. But they're testing their new products in P5 now. The new hairs they released for V3's anniversary are all much better than the ones they used to release. The two most popular hair creators here are probably Quarker and 3Dream, and they both support P5.

Doodles...I only have P5 and I found out the hard way to do all my rendering in the P4 renderer. I think in most cases it gives better results. Could be because alot more things are still done by merchants for P4. The only hair I don't have any problems with is 3Dream, no matter which renderer I use...but still prefer to render in P4 mode with "Ignore Shader Trees" and "No Shadows" checked.

I much prefer Firefly. Once you start learning how to use it, the results you get are far superior to the P4 renderer. I only use the P4 renderer for quickie drafts, while working.

On that "check texture filtering" it tends to make the hair look great but that perennial character texture problem of the neck looking downright sick next to the head texture is made even worse with texture filtering. I know postwork is anathema, but since I don't do animations, I prefer a bit of blur to fix the hair frizzies you can get in Firefly to wrecking a perfectly good texture on the body. Ron, Bobby, whoever you are today, you have this tendency to want everything perfect right out of the box. I'm not making this up, you have said so in so many words in the past. The whole skill-- and I mean "skill" in Poser is knowing how to work around the problems that almost always happen when you use a product "right out of the box." If you don't know how to do that, or, worse, are unwilling to even try, you don't really know Poser. Koz's fixes for his hair with Poser 5 have always worked for me. I can't imagine why somebody would ignore the very very best hair out there, because it isn't perfect when you download it. I'm testy, the painkillers are wearing off, and I shouldn't be posting. But this attitude gets on my tit. Gets on both of them actually. Emily

queri, I sympathize with your pain. One thing you may fail to understand is that I don't want to spend all my time fixing someone else's work. I'd rather spend some time using Poser and making "pretty pictures." As it stands, I've spent far too much time in the past 2 years fixing bad texture and geometry references and dealing with the problems created by that struggle. Oh, then I spend even more time fixing bump maps because far too many artists fail to do that properly. I submit to you that there is nothing wrong with having different levels of Poser users: 1.) People who literally can make every element themselves. (They should learn to accept the fact that not everyone has the ability or desire to do this). 2.) People who may have the time and patience to fiddle with stuff and fix it. 3.) People who just want to get to the point and use the stuff to make art. I know "real world" analogies don't always work, but let's try one anyway: If I buy a brand new car, it should work "out of the box." I shouldn't need to tune up the engine, or finish the paint job. I should just be able to drive it. Now if I bought a "kit car," or a used car, I might do so knowing that the car needed some work to get into shape for driving. I prefer to buy the new car that is ready to run. Take that to the bank, and accept it. Then proceed from there. PS, please remember it's perfectly acceptable for us to use "aliases or screen names" here. There is no need to take it any further than that. It's just common courtesy. And I shouldn't have to keep saying that.

"PS, please remember it's perfectly acceptable for us to use "aliases or screen names" here." It's not acceptable when you've been banned from the forums here at Renderosity several times under different names. I think that a person who has been permanently banned several times from the same forums should stay banned. Ron, there are reasons why you've been banned from here so many times. Coldrake

Hey Doodles,

I had the same "hairline shadow" problem using Koz's Long Hair Evolution, and it drove me insane for a couple of days until I figured out what was wrong. Try adjusting the Transparency Edge up to 1.0 and that nasty shadow should fade away.

E.L.

Don't use Texture Filtering to fix frizzy hair textures. Instead, lower the Shading Rate. Lowering the shading rate to 0.5-0.2 will fix it, without screwing up the body textures. I often lower the shading rate on the hair anyway, just because it looks better.

It does take longer to render, so I only do it for the final render. (The Minimum Shading Rate in the Render Options menu overrides the setting for the individual items, so you can set that high for draft renders, then low for the final render, without having to change the setting for each object in the scene.)

Thank you EliphasLavey and randyM77 both your suggestions have really helped and my renders look so much better now.

Sorry for causing the controversy in here. I didn't mean to start anything. I think if you pay for a product it should look good or as good as they advertise. I've bought daz hair after hair and can't get them to look as good as renders I've seen...so I'm thinking it's just my problem with not Poser that well. But I suppose since P5 is still new it will be years before it's fully supported. There are many things I love about P5 and a few things I don't...like the fact it keeps asking for a texture I used 5 renders ago...I've installed too many things in P5 now and don't have time to re-install them for P4....so I'll make do for now.

I do appreciate all you guys help on here...everytime I have a problem there's always someone willing to help. For now I'll go back to my vow to learn to paint hair better so I won't have to rely on hair props so much.

Thanks again everyone for your help.

If you adjust your render settings for Poser hair, you may be causing problems with other parts of your figure. It's better to get the hair correct, from the beginning. "Reason is not always right."

Message edited on: 01/03/2005 09:19

Message edited on: 01/03/2005 09:21

Not if you adjust the shading rate, because you can set that separately for each item in the scene. In fact, I recommend it, because otherwise the render will be really slow. It's perfectly reasonable to expect people to adjust their render settings. Different situations require different render settings. One size does not fit all.

Kozaburo sets the standard to meet. The DAZ Sassy hair is good at the Platinum Club price. One neat thing the pack includes is a set of MATs to turn transparency off and on; it makes the morphs much easier to use. But it's a resource hog.