"Having never pulled off really successful hair before in my opinion, but having also just owrked out a technique which seems to work REALLY well and thus having started into making hair, what sorts of things are any of you, as hair buyers, looking for? Nothing I do is ever terribly expensive, so price shouldn't be a big deal. And of course transmapping is just plain assumed... More what I'm looking for is what whistles and bells might make or lack thereof might break your decision to pay, say, $5 or $8 for a hair. Stuff like lots of morphs, posability, fitting a lot of different figures out of the package, loads of textures or material settings, and so on. Or other things I haven't even thought of."

You're probably going to hear the usual requests ... more "everyday" hair for males, more wind and flow morphs for females ... they're good requests, but I wish more people were taking the risk of doing "niche" hair. (Actually I think "Superman hair" would be kinda cool LOL.) I like things like Anton's Cool Coils and Starlight Updo because they're very stylish and characteristic while being re-usable. For styles like that, fits are more important that morphs. It's great to hear that you're interested in making hair props Dodger. There are never too many IMHO.

I would like to see hair that fits a multitude of figures. Some shoulder length women's styles and normal male styles would be nice. Maybe a long hair style for men.

hairy armpits would be cool actually, the hairs need a lot of morphs, to be able to appear neat, or mussed up ... windblown, or straight. It would be nice to have length morphs to portray the "no haircut for 3 months look...you know how male hair gets kinda bendy/curly around and over the ears, straggly on the back collar ...kinda turns up a bit over the collar...

another thing that might be cool ... hair aging, especially on males ... there would be a morph to create the male pattern baldness, the hair becoming thinner, and so forth.

Hair fits, definately fits. It is one of my pet peeves that so much hair is sold only with a fit for V3.
I'd rather have a good versitile hair that fits lots of characters with only 1 or 2 textures rather than a one trick pony in 20 colors. I am looking forward to what you come up with :)

Message edited on: 02/05/2006 14:07

No offense to Dodger, I generaly use netherworks hair sets. Packages of magnets that will help you convert hair from one figure to another (though some figures aren't supported, the majors are).

I would love to see hair with "wet" morphs. So you could use the same hair for normal dry conditions and then apply the wet morph for showering or swimming. Fits to the major figures is important too.

No painted highlights.

What I like to see in hair models is actual style morphs, as opposed to dozens of individual dials. (Like Move Left Front Bang 7 Left to Back) As Shanims Litsure hair is a great example; lots of easy poses plus handles for simple tweaking. A few more things to consider: There arent enough long hairstyles out there. Watch out for noisy textures. Youll only make money if its for V3. Please release it as a .CR2! Hr2s seem to fall off in Poser 6. Thats my 2 cents.

Wow...not to pick on jt411...but I'd go in exactly the opposite direction.

• It seems to me that there is nothing BUT long hair available and it's all for V3!
• I'd love to see more hair for Mike and David...they get left out so very often, and I think that there's a market there if the hair looks good (Though you may not want your first marketplace hair attempt to be for M3 D3)
• Whatever you do, include Aiko3 in the set. IMHO, Aiko3 gets A LOT of attention. I think she's nearly used as much as V3.

If you're looking for good male hair (actually, this holds true for female hair as well), my recommendations are to look at TV and music personalities. You can look at comic books too, but generally comic artists draw fairly stylized hair on many characters that may not appeal to a broad market. It's better to have realistic hair with some stylized morphs that allow for creative flexibility.

Well, hope this helps. If I think of any great TV hairstyles, I'll post 'em. ;-)

Message edited on: 02/05/2006 15:27

id love to see hair like tom welling's hair in well u all know * :) and n'ormal styles :P

I second what Jackson proposed in post #12. Gymnast/upside-down hair. Also other angles than verticle, I offten want my characters way off verticle, but have to use short hair because the long stuff looks silly at large angles.

Kristta said "Maybe a long hair style for men. " : There is a glut of those already. For starters, go to RDNA and take your pick. Furthermore, many of the female hair props here and at DAZ have dials or pose files to fit M2/M3/H3/David .... and when all else fails, you can use the hair fits from Netherworks.

Mizrael I share your amazement. I recently purchased "Wild Hair" and I've fit it two or three widely different models. But since I rarely use prop hair, I do the same for dynamic, just use one of the supplied Poser5/6 hairs (I love Kate Hair!) and you can make it fit any model within a few minutes. You can go into the Hair romm and make it thicker, wavier, longer, etc. I've also never understood why you need a whole separate "Mat" just to change the color! ::::: Opera :::::

Male Hair... short ... everyday... Male kids ... ... Male... Male...

easy answer- 1940's and 50's hair :D

Definitely more good male hair is needed, if a good generic short style could have morphs for gelled spikes, zhuzzhed, gelled flat, wet-look, a little longer and just "normal", that would be great. Maybe morphs for "Grade2", "Grade3", "Mullet", etc? I'll also join the chorus for the upside-down hair. I'm putting a pose pack together at the moment for Aiko which includes several upside-down positions and I'm stuck using short hair for those. I too prefer preset "styles" in addition to the individual movement morph dials, and pose handles are great. Anything that saves time is good by me. I prefer texture maps to be flat rather than have painted highlights, too. The transmap and mesh should be of a high quality and not have that "nylon stocking" look that some of the Daz hair used to suffer from.

I'd like to be able to buy several different hairs, that look as if they are the same person's hair eg a hair that is in a pony, then in braid at back, then in updo etc. I wouldn't expect you to make extreme morphs for each model as that would spoil the look of the hair. I would be happy to buy all the different hair if the hair suited the look of my character. for female, I would like long straight hair with bangs (fringe) at the front then the back could be in various styles with each different hair model. Love esther

What I would LOVE to see is a professional floor length hair ala Crystal Gayle for female chars (V3 primarily, as stated above, anyone should be able to parent a conforming hair to any other char's head and yTran and scale it to a perfect fit for the camera view that will be rendered. Something that can be made to either cover the breasts or not, it seems many of the long, mid-back to waist length hairs for the ladies cover all the chest by default. Id love to do a Frank Frazetta style pic with a chick with floor lenght hair being whipped about by sorcerous winds and not obscuring any of the curves and things. I also must strongly agree with the suggestion that any new hairstyle have a wet morph, and wow it would be something if new hairs also had a "reverse gravity" or "char is upside down" morph so those that didnt study gymnastics in school can at least play "bat" if they find a sufficiently guano-filled cave...... Geoegress, if you want 50's and 60's style hair you can find a beautiful FREE assortment here: http://www.comm.unt.edu/~ktaylor/downloads.htm Im not sure if any of these will be what you consider 1940's, but 50's styles are NAILED :)

I don't really care about fit morphs. I've rarely had any trouble using hair on any figure. Just position, rotate, and scale, no need for magnets or anything. Heck, I've even put Vicky hair on the MilCat with little difficulty.

One thing I would like to see more of is hair that combines dynamic elements with prop hair. Seems like a good way to get the best of both worlds.

I think there's a shortage of very long hair, too. Like, floor-length hair. It would be neat to have really long hair with "pool at the feet" and "drag behind" morphs, as well as the usual wind morphs. Dynamic hair that long is a real resource hog.

I'd also like some good-looking modern male hair. The Japanese modelers have made some, but not enough. There's very little modern male hair, and much of what is available is not very polished-looking. It doesn't match well with the idealized female styles available.

A good french braid. Not one that is tight to the head but tapered. Morphs that would change the length and allow for drape over the shoulder as well as whispy bangs and no-bangs. :)

yep kendra i second that!

dito Kendra :)

<< One thing I would like to see more of is hair that combines dynamic elements with prop hair. Seems like a good way to get the best of both worlds. << What would this be like? I can't visualize how it would operate.

I too would like some modern short male hair. At this point, almost any style will do since this category has been almost completely ignored for years. Anything from a high and tight military cut to something you would expect to see on a conservative CEO would be fantastic. The only long male hair I would like to see is a "proper" male ponytail - one that is gathered at the nape of the neck so that it hangs flat against the back. The only ones I have been able to find are ones that are gathered at the center of the back of the head and then stick straight out before they bend down like young girls typically wear them. While I'm sure that some guys wear it like that (nothing wrong with it), I never see it where I live and it just doesn't fit the characters I'm trying to create. I would also like it if the male pony tail hair were not so poofy on top, such that it has a slicked back appearance and lays relatively flat against the scalp. I wish I could find a picture of this one asian actor who always seems to play the role of a Chinese gangster. He has the exact hair I'm thinking of - long, straight, black hair pulled back tightly and gathered at the nape of his neck.

like lara croft's tomb raider

Again, upside down hair. Or specific morphs like Lara Croft hair.. but.. make them easy to use, like characters (good ones) have one dial that says "Victoria 2" and you set it to 0 or 1. 1) Upside down / blown hair. I know everyone wants a ton of morphs - windblown left, windblown right, etc, but I don't think people wanna spend hours posing hair. Either a few settings for presets (easier to test, too), or a 'handle' to let you drag the end of the hair whichever way you want. Ideal for someone lying down, drag hair a bit randomly. 2) "Superman" hair etc. Yes, people will buy niche market hair that does something unique. But why limit it? Make hair called "American Trendy Male Hair" and make it look ordinary, then make one morph for it to make it have that curl etc and call the morph "Superman". You'd do well doing that, and it would be easy to use. Good luck, and thanks for asking.

just a wild stab....but for non-animation, for upside down hair, can't you just aim a magnet on the hair and pull it down?

"More what I'm looking for is what whistles and bells might make or lack thereof might break your decision to pay, say, $5 or $8 for a hair" I do not often buy hair, since I've got more then enough of it already, especially for women. But what I look for in hair and is worth paying for a bitmore are: - Multi-figure use. If a hair fits a number of figures, I'm more likely to buy. (I know you can refit it yourself, but when in a hurry for a project, I just want to select and apply without going through fitting it) - Morphs. Shorter styles, longer styles, formal styles, casual styles, wind effect and such. - Unisex hair. There aren't tons of these around, but the ones that are around I've got and use a lot. Same hair fits both male and female and yet doesn't look girly on a male and looks feminine on a woman. - Every day wear. If it isn't what men and women wear on a regular day, I'm not buying. There's too much sex orientated stuff around already, we're in need of some day to day stuff, hair also. - Male hair.... as stated before. I'm not getting anymore female only orientated hair. I've got more then enough of that in my runtimes. Males on the other hand are seriously lacking hairstyles.

I have yet to see a good afro or kinky hair generally, strand or trans. Ponytails with completely morphable tails (which would help with the upside down thingie). One of my first major frustrations with Poser we have that nice Chestnut ponytail ram itself into the back of Posette's neck when she looked up. The hair styles in P4 are all excellent; if only someone would update them to at least the quality we can get from Koz's hair. Yeah, more "ordinary" hair. M

I bought one hair recently from daz, and when I wanted the girl to lie down doing a bench press the pony went right through the back of the bench and I couldn't fix it or make it go over her front of flatten behind her head. So I tried another pony hair and this one, when the bangs go backwards so does the tail whereas when she's lying on her back the pony should come forwards a bit, and the bangs go backwards. Love esther

Has anyone tried running the tail of the ponytail through the cloth room for a more relaxed fit?

"The hair styles in P4 are all excellent; if only someone would update them to at least the quality we can get from Koz's hair." Didnt koz do that?

Has anyone tried running the tail of the ponytail >> through the cloth room for a more relaxed fit? Good idea. That should work. In spite of the "no thickness" folklore, I've found that the Cloth Room (at least in P5; hopefully they haven't "fixed" it) works just fine to make soft body parts, etc. Used with PoserPhysics, you could get realistic give when you bounce a beachball off someone's head.... M

Didnt koz do that? Have to go look. Not that I remember. His 'do's are still my favorites, but they don't actually duplicate many of the basic looks in the P4 hair: pigtails, short afro, tight ponytail (male), page boy, '40's movie look, etc. The P4 hairdo's look like classic action figure ordinary hair. Which is a good thing and a bad thing.... M

I'd love to see a long spiral-curl style for the females and "normal" style short hair for the males. Upside-down morphs would be fantastic, too.

Didnt koz do that? KOZ updated the P4 male styles with his transmaps and realistic textures, but I don't think he did the same for the female styles from Poser 4 unless I missed em'.

One thing I REALLY REALLY want in any hair (whether bought or free) is a grey-scale texture map, with NO highlights. That way I can colour it any way I want. Black coloured hair can rarely be converted successfully to a blonde colour. Blonde coloured hair can usually be converted in most other colours, but usually requires some extra steps to get rid of the yellow (causing deterioration of the texture). A grey-scale version of the texture would be ideal:-)) Oh, and I add my vote for the "upside-down" morph. That would be very useful (at a relevant percentage) for someone looking up.. (it's surprising how often that situation arises..) Cheers, Diolma

Say, the main part of the hair is a prop, with only parts of the hair being dynamic. Ponytails, say, or wisps of hair at the side of the face. Or even a skullcap with a high-res texture, so the dynamic hair doesn't have to be as thick.

Image is my attempt to do "Lady Godiva" hair with just dynamic hair. It really didn't work to well. Slowed my computer to a crawl. Plus it was hard to control where the hair fell. I was thinking, maybe if most of the hair was a conforming figure, with a few locks that were dynamic...you might be able to get the right coverage, while still having details like the strands of hair draping over the arms.

No matter what style: I like hair that doesn't "stretch" textures. I like hair with the ability to be posed in all directions. I really like hairs that have "bodyhandles" to move it around; it's great to use in extreme poses where normally most hair looks awkward. Especially if the hair has a lot of morphs, I'm lazy and I hate turning 100 dials to get hair over a shoulder :)

Non poofy long hair for the guys is on my want list. Something like the Long Hair for M2, which was great, but it's very limited. Something a bit.. stepped maybe. I like the umm Wild Hair RDNA put out but it's too limited in style. Also, what makes or breaks the hair is the textures. Clonky fat textures are simply out. I won't use it. BTW I'd love the hair in the above pic too. And I want a hair that actually comes down a bit on the forehead. Most I see are very high on the head which makes it look very unnatural. If it has a slight widows peak (like the one above) I would buy that over ANY other one, because it looks more natural.

"Image is my attempt to do "Lady Godiva" hair with just dynamic hair. It really didn't work to well. Slowed my computer to a crawl. Plus it was hard to control where the hair fell. I was thinking, maybe if most of the hair was a conforming figure, with a few locks that were dynamic...you might be able to get the right coverage, while still having details like the strands of hair draping over the arm"... - gave me an idea (dunno if it would work, though..).

Instead of a hybrid, how about a "tribrid":

1. Top of hair (just the top of the head), a smart-prop.
2. Join that to some dynamic cloth for the main (mane?? - pun) hair in several long, thin strips.
3. Attach some dynamic hair near the bottom to give the final effect.
   It'd be a pig to texture, but who knows?...

Just a thought. If I were any good at texturing I'd try it myself (might even give it a go anyway).

Cheers,
Diolma

Message edited on: 02/07/2006 13:43

Wet hair, long & short, without painted on highlights & with messy morphs, especially on the long hair, it doesn't just smoothly flow down over your back it gets in your face and in your mouth Actually file that one under more realistic everyday hair, real people can't go around with perfectly coiffured hair for more than a few minutes before a gust of wind, etc totally hoses it up Hair that moves naturally, conforming hair 'sticks' to body parts, wondering if you can use your armour trick to create something that will move properly without crumpling into unsightly lumps Also adding my vote for upside down & sideways hair Sideways can be done with magnets but to get it to flow around the head & face you have to use a lot of magnets And you usually just can't do upside down hair with magnets because the shape of the hair distorts all to buggery