Ok, so one of the things that I think using strand densities and root/tip thicknesses more akin to an 'accurate' model is that it reveals some of the problems in how dynamic hair pieces are made and subsequently react to materials.

DH needs to be optimised so it will drape and render quickly. What this means is that one growth hair is used to represent many rendered hairs via the strand density setting. One of the problems with this is that all those rendered hairs tend to follow their guide hairs rather uniformly - in real life there would be a much greater degree of randomness. We see this particularly clearly when a high kink setting is used. All those hairs clumped together form a mass that react as a single entity to the material properties assigned via the hair node. This is increased by the use of high root/tip widths that effectively mean that each hair has a larger surface area to react to light. This is why I think DH usually looks unrealistic - because we can 'see' the way it has been (over) optimised.

This is particularly the case when a very low poly skullcap has been used as a base - few growth hairs representing very many rendered hairs. Very little room for randomness.

One way to lessen the perception of the way DH is optimised is to use much higher poly skullcaps - more growth hairs that can 'do their own thing' and don't necessarily have to represent so many rendered hairs. The result is an overall more randomised effect, where hairs don't act so much as uniform clumped groups.

In one of the examples that I posted earlier (posted again above) I used a moderately high poly skullcap and forced a randomisation of the growth hairs by allowing them to dynamically drape and collide with each other. I also used a realistic overall strand density of about 100000 hairs with very low root & tip widths. The result is an extreme 'messy' style but it's interesting because I used a hair node setting with quite a high level of shine. This shine hardly registers at all because the clumps of hair are so much more randomly positioned than in a normal DH piece. It far more accurately represents what I think happens in a real head of hair where there is a much higher degree of randomness, even where the hair falls in curls or clumps. It doesn't attempt to look like the photos you posted but hopefully you can see some correlation in the appearance of this rendered result to what you are looking for.

Now, in terms of the problem with shine, we can just tone down the specular in the hair node - easy -  but I don't think this necessarily solves the whole problem. IMO only by using higher res skullcaps with much highre strand densities  and lower root/tip thicknesses can we start to achieve the randomness and fineness of real hair. The improved speed of the 64 bit PP2012 has at least allowed the possibility of exploring this with reasonable render times. The draping is still painfully slow so of no use to animators, but I'm loving the results and the freedom to play with this more freely.

Here I've set the specular colour in the hair node to black - no more shine.

I think this one's more realistic though. (click to enlarge)

I'm starting to think that the collision dynamics in the hair room could do with an overhaul. Seems very prone to explosive reactions compared to cloth dynamics.

Quote - its an improvement on the first.

it still seems to be a wee bit glowy and low-contrast - it may be your gamma settings or lighting. or a complete lack of hair highlights?

http://shortlonghairstyles.com/images/2009/06/Mila-Kunis-hairstyle-for-round-face1.jpg

http://0.tqn.com/d/beauty/1/0/Z/p/82169515.jpg

http://s.tidebuy.com/images/product/1/1714/1714992_1.jpg

http://0.tqn.com/d/beauty/1/0/t/x/Leighton_Meester.jpg

i would possibly suggest starting with a brunette base, and once you have that looking right then modify it into a redhead. getting a proper redhead look is tricky and might be easier once you have all the other variables worked out.

No question that polygon hair is a bit like the RSR in other discussions :biggrin: - yesterday's technology. Here's the best I can do:

... and this strategy ...

...doesn't work for all kinds of hair. It's polygon hair. Looking forward to getting Antonia WM to bed so I can play with dynamic hair!

Here's another example along the lines of using a higher poly skullcap with more randomised guide hairs plus the other refinements for density & root/tip widths. It's made using a single group that I've allowed to drape dynamically in the hair room.

It's still a little more messy than I'd like but I was able to bake the dynamic drape using  Cage's clever script, then go back and increase the hair vertice count and tweak using the styling tools. This is getting closer to what I'm trying to achieve in randomising the hair to give it a more natural density and look. I'm finding longer styles are much harder to achieve, but this is still just messing about really. I'm thinking out loud with what I'm posting here. I don't know the ins and outs of the hair room too well, and I'm approaching it somewhat from a rendering point of view, sort of trying to reverse engineer the effects I want.

This rendered in almost exactly one hour btw. Not bad for 70000 hairs, IDL and RT shadows.

The problem for me now is one of control. The dynamics are hit and miss in the hair room with individual hairs often flying off uncontrollably, collisions failing such that hairs end up in the body etc. We could use some extra fine tuning control over the influence of the dynamic sims, rather like that we find in the cloth room.

It might be easier to have some kind of feature to handle randomisation of the rendered hair density rather than having to use more guide hairs to achieve the same thing. It'd certainly mean simulations would run faster.

Anyway, I'm hoping to put together some kind of report on dynamic hair over Christmas to send to SM in the hope of getting some more development for future versions. If anyone would like to contribute or do the same I think it'd be well worth the effort. I'm really seeing a potential that I'd personally love to see moved forward.

Same problem I'm having, the shadows the hair casts at the bottom are obnoxious and blotchy.

How to iron those out, I wonder?

carodan,

 

Your last test render is getting quite nice. Is there a hair thread with some settings posted?

 

,r

Attached Link: RDNA dynamic hair thread

This was a thread at RDNA that started off with an issue a user was having with dynamic hair apparently locking up Poser. We solved that and I posted a few of the refinement tips I've been using.

I've just been having fun with it in PP2012, converting freebie hair pieces made by others and dabbling with simple stuff in the hair room, so there's nothing really comprehensive. I was intending to do a mini tut with what I have been doing, including a sample setup, but haven't had a clear run yet to get it together.

William_the_bloody - just a guess but some of that shadow blotchyness may be IDL or SSS related due to hairs that are intersecting the figure mesh. May lessen with higher IDL render settings.

> Quote - I hope I haven't killed your thread.  > > I wanted to note that I've tested a working process for editing Poser dynamic hair in an external application. > > - Export the guide hairs.  Poser is able to export line .obj files. > - Edit the hair in a 3D modeler which supports line geometries.  I was able to test this using Blender 2.48.  Blender 2.60 no longer seems to support line .obj import, out of the box, although there may be an add-on script for that. > - While editing, do not move the root vertices for the hairs. > - Export the shaped guide hairs. > - Load the new shape as a morph target on the original hair prop in Poser. > - Set the morph to 1.0 and bake the morph into the geometry, using the bake script. > > That process seems to work.  Unfortunately, Blender's toolset doesn't make the process much easier, so I've only performed a proof-of-concept test and don't have any results to show.  Other programs may offer more flexible tools for handling imported line geometries.

Hello cage,

I tried this approach, exported the guide hair vertices, edited them in blender, exported as .obj again, but I fail loading the morph target.  I cannot load it for the hair parent prop (a subdivided square here), because that one expects a morphed square, and I cannot load it for the hair itself, because I have no "load morph target" button there at all. What do I do wrong?

Best regards,

  Michael

 

Thanks

 Might get more people into it.

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone involved in this post.  I avoided the Hair Room like the plague since forever, and this thread helped me learn about some of the do's and don'ts.  I will say, that Dynamic hair can be truely daunting, but if you have the patience it can produce wonders!

Feel free to stop by my gallery to see what I've learned.  The images 'Rough Patch' and 'Milk' use what I have learned (Nudity Advise).  I didn't want to post the pics here as this has been an 'advisory' free thread, and I'm not one to muck that up!

Anyway, I am still learning the ropes, and check this thread daily as it has been envaluable!  So thanks again!

-Jeremy

Quote - Hello cage,

I tried this approach, exported the guide hair vertices, edited them in blender, exported as .obj again, but I fail loading the morph target.  I cannot load it for the hair parent prop (a subdivided square here), because that one expects a morphed square, and I cannot load it for the hair itself, because I have no "load morph target" button there at all. What do I do wrong?

Best regards,

  Michael

The morph must be loaded onto the hair itself, if you exported the guide hairs and that was what you edited in Blender.  I was able to import the morph target using the "Load Morph Target" option from the "Object" menu, at the top of the screen.  It does look like a dynamic hair prop has no morph loading option on its Properties tab, which perhaps suggests that the Poser dev team doesn't want us doing this sort of thing.  :blink:  (I'm sure they've just never considered the value of loading morphs onto dynamic hair.  After all, they've apparently felt the Hair Room design tools were perfectly fine, since 2002.  :lol:  :unusre:)

Thought I would show a sample of what I have achieved with what I learned from here, and more playing around.

It's amazing what this Hair Room can do, it's just so dang frustrating sometimes!  lol

Take care everyone!

-Jeremy

Thanks to all of you for this thread, it has truly encouraged me to get experimental in the hair room.  As a result, and I hope you agree, I've finally got a great result with long, wavy, messy bottomed hair that parts right and the top flips left over the side.  It's a hair I've always wanted, and it is rendering great (nevermind the shadows, I know how to fix them this is just a test render that took 3 minutes.)

I feel confident in the hair room now, as long as I'm not simulating (:-S)

 

 

So i tried playing around with the dynamic hair styling tools.  It was one of those things i keep track of with each version, hoping (like with dynamic clothing) that they've improved it.

Mostly i care about dynamic since i enjoy animation.  For obvious reasons, dynamic cloth and hair makes this easier :)

The latest poser pro does a great job of improving rendering times.  However, the dynamics engine is brutally slow.  once i have a long hair style, one that drapes down the back and shoulders, it takes an hour (dual core Mac Book Pro with 6GB RAM) to drape the hair.  And the drape effect is a mess.  The hair becomes spastic when it hits the shoulders.  And I styled the hair so it should drape nicely over the body.  What gives?

I'm really hoping that dynamic cloth and hair are high up on the dev team's list (thickness and elasticity, please).

Sigh....  Still using ploy hair (i read that U3 uses dynamic poly hair a'la "cloth hair" which i tried and cannot get results that are even remotely realistic looking)

Something I've realised just lately is that sims tend to run much more quickly under certain circumstances, one being in a fresh load of Poser.

Also the dynamics are far smoother and quicker if the hair strands (certainly within groups) are not tangled or touching each other at the start of a sim. This is easier said than done if you've styled the hair extensively to start with.

With long hair I've been using fewer verts per hair (20 or 30) for the sim, baking them with Cages script and then increasing the verts. This probably isn't of use to animators unless it can be automated to bake each frame (not even sure if that's possible).

 

Quote - Something I've realised just lately is that sims tend to run much more quickly under certain circumstances, one being in a fresh load of Poser.

Also the dynamics are far smoother and quicker if the hair strands (certainly within groups) are not tangled or touching each other at the start of a sim. This is easier said than done if you've styled the hair extensively to start with.

With long hair I've been using fewer verts per hair (20 or 30) for the sim, baking them with Cages script and then increasing the verts. This probably isn't of use to animators unless it can be automated to bake each frame (not even sure if that's possible).

That makes a lot of sense, but it's really hard to achieve using the limited styling controls.  In fact, it makes perfect sense.  I've noticed I can lock poser up easily by simply running a hair simulation with collissions and have the hair start inside the body.  Locks up, every time (on OSX - says app not responding - maybe it's just super slow?)

If worst comes to worst, couldn't you brute force the baking on a frame by frame?  I mean, run the simulation in draft mode, use a script to export each frame of hair as it's own prop running it through cage's script.  Then, when it comes time to final render, you run another script that advances the frames, loads the frame hair prop, change the verts, render, rinse repeat :)

The second script loads each frame to render, it loads the correct frame hair prop, makes the vert change, renders, then goes to next frame?  It could dump those frames to the queue manager which would still kick them out to different network render nodes a'la a normal animation.

 

Wait, can we even access the queue manager via python?  I though we couldn't, in PP2010.  I suppose it's possible to figure out the inputs to the queue manager and call it as an external command.

Or, can you export the hair simulation frame geometry in such a way that you can load that information back into the prop at the correct frame?  I haven't looked into what a hair simulation looks like at a file level.

Quote - Or, can you export the hair simulation frame geometry in such a way that you can load that information back into the prop at the correct frame?  I haven't looked into what a hair simulation looks like at a file level.

The internals of the dynamics file are mysterious and hidden from us.  But the geometry of the hair is just .obj format using line geometry.  The dynamics file, like that for cloth, seems likely to be like a series of morph deformations, present either as deltas or as actual vertex positions.

What you might be able to do is run the sim using the lower resolution, then spawn a morph target on the hair for each frame.  Then to animate, set the vert count to the number of verts compatible with the morph, bake, raise the vert count, and repeat for each frame. 

That is, assuming the morphs would still be present and valid after the vertex count has been changed.  I think they should be, based on experiments with different methods of geometry switching in Poser.

Hello,

Cage, thanks for the trick how to import the morph target for the strands, it works!

This brings up the idea that for certain "poses", this could be included into the hair, like "bend head back", "turn left", "wind right", as seen a lot in transmapped hair. 

Now, these morphs would ideally be set in the scullcap object and then ERC-like apply to all hair groups. I guess that's where the native Poser support ends, because it's not a figure.  Maybe some script (like parmatic) could apply a dial change to child hair props (just dreaming).

Actually, also magnets work on strand based hair!

With the morphed strands in blender, I'm getting further to design my first strand based hair for Antonia.  I attach a WIP (2 scan lines replaced by a render without the hair, because I suffered from a similar Poser lockup (2 squares never finished rendering, so I had to kill Poser). I'll try the suggestions from the RDNA thread referenced above.)

 Best regards,

   Michael

 

 

 

Hello,

I changed the hair node parameter "opaque in shadows" to "yes".  The overall look is changed a lot. It's a lot faster (this image took only 10 minutes to render). The skin in the hair's shadow no longer shows the blueish tint. The back hair is no longer glowing (illuminated by the rim light), but shows much more the desired effect.

My only issue is now the bald spot on the forehead. I just don't remember any more how I got rid of that in the previous picture. I upped the hair density to insane numbers (2 million (a unit "meter"), that's 78000 hairs just for that hair prop), tried to mess with the root softness, no avail. Too bad I have no access to the setting which was active for the crashed render.

 

Best regards,

   Michael

 

 

P.S.: The hair density of 2 mio corresponds to a hair density of 1290 if your units are inches. My default (final render quality) hair density settings never exceed 500000 (320 in unit inches).

 

is it possible to 'spawn' a morph for a strand group, without the import/export step?

Thanks.

Are you looking to create an injectable morph or to save a morph to a new hair prop?

I don't know of a way to do the first, sorry.

You can add morphs with the morph tool and then resave the prop with those morphs if that helps.

thanks RP

i was looking for a way to move strand guide hairs and save it as a morph so i could manually move strand hairs in animations.

the morph idea sounded promising 

Just wanting to keep this thread alive, I'd really love to see more advancement in poser hair :)

This is the luck I've gotten out of it so far:

Does anyone have general styling tips? So far my best results have come from a layering technique, where I do the bottom layers first, almost like styling a wig. I've yet to try the styling script I heard about a while back....

Quote - Just wanting to keep this thread alive, I'd really love to see more advancement in poser hair :)

This is the luck I've gotten out of it so far:

Does anyone have general styling tips? So far my best results have come from a layering technique, where I do the bottom layers first, almost like styling a wig. I've yet to try the styling script I heard about a while back....

with dynamic hair make a "skull cap if commercial" with a texture that works with the hair color
and as much hair as ya PC can stand.

conforming hair, 3*'s more strands then ya ever seen.especially at the ends.

I've never thought much of Poser's hair dynamic or conforming.

 

Well I knew better than to keep viewing this thread, now I am going to have to have a go in the hair room.

But it will have to wait until I finish up two or three other projects. :)