Today, an acquaintance showed me a product called Sasquatch that renders hair in Lightwave. The effects are astounding. I've always felt that hair is the key shortcoming in Poser's ability to convey realism, I'm surprised no technically savvy individual has made use of Sasquatch. Can anybody shed light on this? Check out www.worley.com for more info and to see amazing 3-D hair that surpasses anything done in Poser.

Oh, I agree. Sasquatch can produce some stunning results. I'd love to see Worley's technology implemented in Poser or D|S, but alas, it's only for Lightwave.

Sasquatch is cool, but there's a lot of great strand-based hair technologies out there for various 3D platforms, and most of them rely on the same core philosophy. Strand-based dynamics and spline interpolation methods.

Here's a few that are as good as Lightwave's Sasquatch, or perhaps even better:
**
Joe Alter's Shave and a Haircut (used in King Kong, and other major productions)
Ornatrix Hair
Hair FX
Cinema4D Hair**

I think Poser's hair room is relatively young compared to some of these, which have had years upon years of production-proven developement under the hood. Given the chance to dev, I'm sure Poser's could become as good as some of these.

Message edited on: 03/08/2006 19:25

Attached Link: http://www.3delight.com/renderman_gallery.htm

The biggest hurdle of strand-based hair is the usability point - especially for a spoiled Poser user that is used to add hair to a figure with a double click on Koz' Messy Hair, styling hundreds of hair strands sounds much more daunting. However, I have seen promising results from those few daring to dive into it.

IMO there is "hair" as in cute-girl-with-shoulder-length-straight-blonde-hair" and "Hair Effects" which often consists of short hair, for instance on the many animal images at Worley. Both are valid categories, of course. There is plenty of room to find great results in the Poser hair room. As stated above, you have to learn the tool to reap the results. Leaving "growing" hair in Poser aside for the moment, and turning to working with completed dynamic hair models: First, the sym engine in Poser produces very realistic movement; that part is cool. Second, there are tricks and strategies to bring down sym calculation time. Third, firefly is definitely capable of resolving even very fine and dense hair dialed in in the hair room. Fourth, the controls for spring, stiffness, damping, gravity, clumpiness, etc., work well but definitely require a learning curve. ::::: Opera :::::

Sasquatch doesn't work with Poser. It has to find the lightwave dongle to work even in lightwave. Also, it is a render function....i.e. does not cast shadows, or reflect in glass or mirrors.

operaguy, your point is well-taken. Even so, I've seen maybe one great hair effect in all the poser galleries here on Renderosity. If getting great hair results in Poser is even reasonably attainable, I would hope that there would be more examples in the galleries here, instead of countless uses of the same old Kozaburo wigs. I'm not putting down those users who take the easy way out--as I'm among them--I guess I'm wondering if I shouldn't learn Cinema Max, which, as maxxmodelz points out, does have a great hair plug in. I guess we're only limited by our own time and money (to buy the newest software!)

even tho I am championing Poser hair room, the tools in the other programs are/might be better.

Here's a vid:
http://jrdonohue.com/blurr.mov 5 MB Quicktime.
Not great, but 'on the path'
much more to come from me on this subject.

::::: Opera :::::

Opera, thanks for the URL, that is an interesting example of the potential of Poser hair. Still, those of us who are fascinated with Poser often lose perspective, and become so excited by "the future promise" of its present capabilities, that we are more forgiving of its shortcomings. Clearly, the motion of the hair is what impresses in that movie, and not the quality of the hair itself, which is still artificial looking, as you've already pointed out. I am loyal to Poser, and will stick with it until it advances (hopefully) to the stage of offering hair that is as realistic as other programs are already providing. (I like the site that the movie is housed on. Are you the site-owner?)

yes that's me

I have never once experienced satisfactory collison detection with the strand based hair, even using some of the tricks like a low poly surrigate head. Usually the hair turn's into a frizzy nightmare. With colision off it works fine, but that definately limits it's usefulness.

actually the problem with that animation is not the poser hair room. It's the animator (me)! Far better results are possible. I'll have much better examples to see over the next six months. ::::: Opera :::::

I also have not had anything successful with collision on. Even with tight damping I get jumpy hair in the animation. Still, that might be that I have not hit on the right combination of controls.

I'll bet that all of the plugins mentioned cost as much or more than Poser itself. It would be great if Poser supported them but I think that expecting that type of output from Poser itself is somewhat unrealistic. Sure, Poser may one day be able to match them but by then, they will have moved on and maintained the gap in capability. The whole idea of Poser and the IMO, beauty of it is to provide an integrated environment that does many things well for a reasonable price. If you want best of breed performance in every area then you really need an application that accepts plugins (perhaps eventually DS) or a mega package like Maya with a mega price. That's not to say that Poser can't and won't improve but I don't think it's parts will ever match the capabilities you can get with the ad hoc approach.

bookmark

Wow!
Seeing the dog picture I might as well put my 'hairy dog project' in the closet and forget about it. :oP

Quote - Oh, I agree. Sasquatch can produce some stunning results. I'd love to see Worley's technology implemented in Poser or D|S, but alas, it's only for Lightwave.

As I understand, Sasquatch has no real limitations, AFAIK, on how to create hair. You can create extra-thick braids, straight or curly hair, hair wrapped around your waist, even hair as looooong as possible - how about having a Rapunzel with hair that hangs down a tower and drags the ground for several more feet or meters.

I'm about to be rabidly fanatical. ;)

1. Yes, Cinema 4D Hair module is expensive - $395.

2. No, it does not in any way have "years" before Poser.  It was just release several months ago - and it blows Poser Dynamic Hair out of the water, into space, and crashing into the sun with its power, ease, and amazingness (it makes Shave & A Haircut and Sasquatch look pitiful).  "3D World" magazine (one of the top 3D CG mags, well, in the world) gave it 10 out of 10 (they don't do that very often, believe me).

Yeah, you pay for it - but it is worth every penny.  Poser Dynamic Hair may be workable - and it has potential, but it lacks control and is just too demanding for Poser.  Had they done it as a separate application streamlined for hair, it could have been worth some of the pain.  Integrated into Poser, I never use it.

I specifically purchased the Hair module to do hair on Poser figures in Cinema 4D.  The image below is David/Aiko3 (appearing as Eros and Psyche) using Cinema 4D Hair.  Test Render (HDRI Radiosity w/Sun light for sharp shadows) took less than two minutes.  Hair on each figure took maybe a couple hours each - and I'm a real newbie with it.

Thank you for drooling... ;P

Robert

I think Sasquatch-level tech would choke Poser and any machine that could run it....until they get some of the legacy code out of the P codebase, memory issues are going to keep a cap on some things.... :/ People need to get some of the current CGI flicks and take a good gander at the bloopers. Strand based hair explodes and does interesting things in every app (Shrek and The Incredibles both come to mind). Plus the fact that there is still a 'one size fits all' mindset in Poser users. Back to 'The Incredibles', Violet had 5 different hair props, all designed for specific reactions (The wet hair was made solely for those scenes, as was the blowing back hair in the fall, her standard straight fall, the style with the barrette, and the blowing to the side in the 'boat ride' (I think that's right, at least). What Poser actually needs more is a better windforce system. There needs to be more control over turbulence and envelope shaping, and I wouldn't object to e-frontier borrowing the wind controls from Vue Infinite. Being able to specify gusts by per second intervals would make it ever so much easier to synch the Poser work with other apps....

It would seem logical to for E-frontier to fix what's wrong with Poser before adding on to it. However, business and logic rarely often meet.

Sebastian

I have to second kuroyume's opinion that Cinema 4D Hair blows anything else away (including Sasquatch, which I also have). It impressed me so much that I am switching over from LightWave and Sasquatch ... I am eagerly awaiting delivery of C4D XL and Hair next week and can't wait to get my hands on it! I haven't been this excited about getting a 3D program in a long time!

These images convinced me it was a must have ....

http://www.maxon.net/pages/products/c4d/images/modules/hair/gallery/2/befoc.jpg

http://www.maxon.net/pages/products/c4d/images/modules/hair/gallery/bunk.jpg

http://www.maxon.net/pages/products/c4d/images/modules/hair/gallery/bobtronic4.jpg

As much as I loved Sasquatch ... the C4D hair appears far more realistic to me.

My main problem with Poser dynamic hair is the fact that it doesn't import into Vue 5 Infinite very well. I almost always render my scenes (large landscapes with lots of figures) in Vue 5 Infinite, the Poser render engine can't handle that type of scene.

I have done a couple of experiments with P6 dynamic hair, and the results are promising. As much as I like Kozaburo's transmapped hair, I can get more realism out of the hair room.

More intuitive control, and better wind force, that is what the Poser hair room really needs. It won't beat Sasquatch or Cinema4D, on the other hand, the complete app is cheaper than those high end plugins. I do not expect top of the line quality from a low-end application. Actually, Poser 6 delivers quite a lot of bang for relatively few bucks.

I sincerely hope that e-frontier will take enough time for Poser 7 to rewrite the core. I'd love to see multi CPU support, 64bit support, large memory support, and an improved boning system, along with improved dynamic cloth and hair.

I don't think I'm going to shell out the bucks for Cinema4D. I've seen fantastic renders from it, true, but I'm not interested in learning yet another 3D program. I'm fairly happy with my current toolset, in spite of their shortcomings.

Actually, Poser 6 delivers quite a lot of bang for relatively few bucks.

Agreed .... the cost of the plug-ins mentioned in this thread, along with the software required to host the plug-ins, is at least three, four or more times the cost of Poser. You get an AWFUL lot of bang for the buck with Poser .... and it's addictive as hell 8-)

Yes, Poser 6 definitely gives you quite a good deal for the cost.  The fact that they shoe-horned in IBL and AO along with Pixels3D Shader nodes, Dynamic Hair and Cloth for $250 is still amazing.  Just wish that it could have been done without so much hassle to the user.   For Hair and Cloth, they should have made some simpler setting modes (like in P6 Materials Room) and optimized the wahooka out of them so that a supercomputer wasn't a necessity. :)

As for shelling out the bucks, yeah, it is a choice of your needs and resources.  In my case, six hours over six weeks was a need for doing production and the investment paid for itself.