This thread is dedicated to all of you (us) who are playing around with different kinds of dynamic cloth hairs. I'd like to share everything I've learned about it since starting, and how it came about. I think it can be an interesting discussion! I've seen dynamic cloth hairs before, but I couldn't find anything that was fully satisfying. The biggest challenge seems to be to get really long, flowy hair to fall realistically over a figure. Conforming hair and hair props can looks incredibly gorgeous (have a bunch of them in my runtime), but when I want them really long, plus trying to fit them over a custom body shape and clothing, it gets trickier to get that natural look. I've had some decent results with custom morphs and magnets, but it required a -ton- of work for every type of pose. Another issue arises with the hair room.. Long, rich hair will take extreme times to simulate when collisions are on (Unless someone knows some really good workarounds for that) I have for the past year or so played around with different ideas for how dynamic cloth hair could work, according to my own ideas, and with Poser 8-9/2012 ran into a really weird bug, which gives an invisible collision with the eyebrow actor, if it's not deselected in collision and visible in the simulation... Thanks for wimvdb for figuring that one out, even SM couldn't help me with it! It's reported though, so they know it's there. Then I tried working with soft decorated groups for thickness, turned out to become a chaotic mess when there are so many layers and strips. kobaltkween then suggested using displacements which works quite nicely. So, finally I've uploaded a monster of 6 clothing props to the freestuff, for anyone who wants to play around with it. It needs a lot of layers, since I didn't want to just attach the cloth strips to the parting at the top, which would look really bad if the hair gets pulled away, make the rest of the head look bare. So the different layers start at different heights of the head, to give a better simulation. http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/details.php?item_id=69568 It can probably be made a lot better, it's the first time I finish modelling and texturing a hair item, but it works quite nicely for the art I am making. :) What's missing is some good shine shaders, and a blonde texture. The photos were made with dark brown hair and I couldn't get it look right in blonde. It works best with darker shades. Anyway... Maybe there are betterways to model and arrange this kind of hair, and I'd love to hear about them, or any improvements that could be done with this one!

That actually looks pretty good! Nice job!

 

That looks great - thanks very much for the freebie!

Attached Link: Dynamic Cloth Hair by Joe Bushido

You aren't the first person to think along these lines. However the product I've linked to is no longer on sale; whether that's due to some flaw, or another reason, I can't say. I personally couldn't get results as good as those illustrated, but I'm quite willing to admit that may have been due to lack of persistence on my part. :)

Anyway, I look forward to trying your freebie, and thanks very much for making it available.

One issue I found when doing experiments myself is that collision against the ears is a particular problem, presumably because of the increased mesh density in that area. One solution is to use an 'ear proxy' which is just a low-poly prop (the capsule would be ideal, for those who have Poser 8 or later) positioned to cover the ears.

Or you could go the whole hog and use a head-and-shoulders proxy such as the one included in Kirwyn's V4 Hair Proxy (available here: http://www.morphography.uk.vu/dlkirwyn.html). It works well with dynamic hair, but might be advantageous with dynamic cloth hair too.

Let's pool our experiences and see how far we can get! 

Thanks for the link EnglishBob. :) I have Joe Bushido's hair and used it for inspiration. I found that I got pretty good results with the ears by having thick strips that cover the whole thing, the worst part seems to be when they get tangled in and behind them. Proxys is a really cool idea, and would probably work really well with hair that needs to be more styled. I saw a dynamic witch dress somewhere in the MP that uses prop underneath to make it wider.

Looks great Whimsy. Thanks! I'm off to give it a try.

Now that is interesting! I don't have V4 so I'm not sure how hard it will be to match the hair to different figures but I think I'll give it a try if it looks anywhere near as good as your first images. :D

Ears ARE a problem if you collide against the head. The solution i have used, as hinted above, is to make a low-poly proxy with no ears, parent it to the head, and collide only with the proxy.

In the case of long long hair you can still collide with chest, arms, etc.

::::: Opera :::::

The issue with ears is of course that the outside direction is not well defined. Poser gets confusing information about where to move a hair vertex that is 'in' the ear. Best solution would be to use a 'swimcap' type proxy for the collision.   

This is something that was always possible but no on thought of it. I'm glad to see you take it on. I always thought that if someone can find a way to relax the comforming hair after a pose, so it flows more naturally and have gravity and be affected by the wind prop. I think it will add to the realism of the character as your image demonstrates.

I tried this with some of the comforming hair in my library but they always fell apart because the layers were too dense to add constraints after the fact but I felt that they could be converted if the layer strips maintained their bond to the base. The way you've done it makes this workable

My friend, don't let this be just an experiment and then move on like the other guy did. Try different lengths and styles, this could be a game changer. others will follow once someone has proven a concept can work. Keep up the good work.

Cheers

Just letting you know: The problem with the eyebrow causing problems with the dynamic hair is fixed in SR3.1 and is available now at the Smith Micro site

 

 

Quote - Just letting you know: The problem with the eyebrow causing problems with the dynamic hair is fixed in SR3.1 and is available now at the Smith Micro site

 

 

That's awesome!