here is some fur I did. http://www.runtimedna.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=7&pos=0 That was just M#'s Santa suit that I've had foreven and added hair to the trim finally.

So much great hair room work showing up here!

I hope this does inspire SM to give some decent focus to improving the hair room for the next release.

What main improvements to the hair room would those folk using it currently like to see most?

Has anyone published any hair room preset python scripts or anything?

What, if any, off-the-shelf dynamic hair products would people recommend?

I'm keen to use it too for animals.

I know Tiny did some great looking work on dynamic fur for the MilCat...

I would like to see a few things:

• Possibly a "hair brush" tool sorta like in Zbrush 4

• A symmetry tool or atleast the ability to mirror a hair growth group and settings for things like braids, etc...

• A Poser 9/PPro2012 SSS shader for dynamic hair

• Maybe something like a "quick view" button which would allow you to do a low resolution render just to spot imperfections in the hair and the ability to edit the hair while in "quick view" mode.

• I would also like Poser to basically detect and prevent the hair from going into the figure... The dynamic part doesn't really matter if the hair is already intercepting the figure...

Quote - What main improvements to the hair room would those folk using it currently like to see most?

I think everybody is agreed that the styling tools are unwieldy and unintuitive. Improvements in this area would be most welcome.

I would also like more control over the simulation: the ability to save and load simulations; the ability to determine start and end frame of the sim; the possibility of having successive different sims.

It would be nice to be able to do the sim in the background or in some kind of Simulation Queue Manager - at the moment it chugs along quite happily for hours using very little CPU or RAM (just like cloth sims) but blocks Poser.

I would also like some decent documentation on what the hair node in the material room is actually doing. I can get some very decent results but it's a bit trial and error. If I knew a bit more I might be able to think things through in a BB stylee.

Quote - What, if any, off-the-shelf dynamic hair products would people recommend?

Check out Adorana's free dynamic hair http://www.hortipedia.org/adorana/2011/?p=111 which is certainly (imo) better than any of the commercial products.

Poser comes with some pretty decent strand hair for the internal figures that can be easily fitted to any character.

Check out Carodan's posts here and at RDNA on drastically reducing hair width and increasing density. This is essential! You may also have to increase your pixel sample render parameter.

All available dynamic hair shaders (that I have found to date) are rubbish! It's something I'm working on...

Things I would like to see in the hair room:

1 a hair brush. A tool that you can use with selected hair strands that will style from the root to end.

2 a way to do collisions while styling so the hair doesn't go into the head. This s for both the styling tools and the growth settings

3 better collision detecting when running a simulation so that if I have the bend resistance set so the hair doesn't go flat the hair still doesn't pass though the figure

4 having the ability to set frames of the simulation

5 if you add frames after the simulation the hair doesn't revert back to the original position where you added frames

6 improved shader control. hair color is very dependent on lighting currently and might look like platinum blond on one scene might look almost brunet in another.

7 the ability to change settings in growth controls without undoing the styling.

8 an integrated hair to path function

OK I think that's enough for now. I know some of what I said other's have also said, but maybe if enough of us say it, they might listen.

For scripts, Cage has a few.

A script to save hair room settings. This is a must have for me. A bake deformation script. This works on more than just the hair room but it is good if you want to incorporate draping as part of your styling tools. And a hair to path script. This script is only party functional due to poser's python limitations but perhaps an ambitious programmer might be able to build on it using poser's new add on feature (Hint Hint :biggrin:)

As far as pre -existing style of course I have to recommend my own. They are available in the free stuff here. Also as CaptainMarc has said Andorana's stuff is great to have.

I would pay for good dynamic hair shaders.  Especially if they looked good under the Envirosphere.

I also note that if you currently use the translate tool, you can move the hair off the head entirely. While I can envision the odd circumstance where that might be desirable... not usually. There should be the ability to shut that off.

Quote - > Quote - What, if any, off-the-shelf dynamic hair products would people recommend?

Check out Adorana's free dynamic hair http://www.hortipedia.org/adorana/2011/?p=111 which is certainly (imo) better than any of the commercial products.

Thanks CaptainMARC - I've downloaded those to have a play with now...

Quote - I would pay for good dynamic hair shaders.  Especially if they looked good under the Envirosphere.

IMO how good DH looks with the EnvSphere depends on whether it's the only source of lighting. IDL is just diffuse lighting - the hair node requires specular for it's sheen. Up to now I've had at least 1 or two aditional shadow-casting and spec-only RT lights. The hair shader just doesn't work well without real lights, something I'm hoping SM will enhance at some point. Even then there's usually some kind of shadow issue, IDL artifacts (beware hair strands intersecting the figure mesh) or other lighting quirk - backlighting is tricky.

I haven't tried not using the hair shader, but I suspect you'd lose a lot of the subtlety in the strands. I know adding extra specular to DH via the blinn node for backlighting hasn't yielded the desired effects, but maybe I was missing something.

I usually use an infinite light along with the Envirosphere.  I've tried adding some specularity to my old hair shaders, but it just doesn't look the same.  Which is a pity, because I really like how SSS skin looks. 

I used the Envsphere in this render, there is a specular only light also... I had to turn the specular way down because it was way too shiny, and it didn't look right with this hairstyle... (Hairstyle is Aurora Hair by Adorana; Clothing is Principessa by Esha (RDNA); Character is Lyon from the Lyon and Paris V4 package by Danae):

Image is with old fashioned Poser lights.

randym to me that looks very real, but not quite glossy enough even for my tastes.

randym77 I like that, it's like Repunzel hehe... I also like that with dynamic it responds to gravity. On a side note, I tend to like the glossy look but sometimes it doesn't respond well with all hairstyles so sometimes I use glossy sometimes I use a very light sheen... Also it's funny how my hair (and a few of my friends and family's hair) is not that shiny, I mean I have to really overload my hair with conditioner and use that stuff that comes with hair dye to get mine to look anywhere near what Poser dynamic hair looks like sometimes, lol. So I guess I (and a lot of others) will have to keep experimenting til I get a cross between real and desirable, hehe...

Attached Link: Previous dynamic hair thread

randym77 - dont think that looks bad at all bearing in mind the figure is isolated against a stark white, context less background. The dark shadows jar a little, something I struggle with.

DH is a quirky system at present which is why I'd like to see that dev work. Some of the best results I've had have fallen into a mid-range of quality settings, simply because the hair has taken on a slightly rougher appearance. The same scene rendered with more pixels and higher quality often looks too perfect and the shading can completely change.

One of the things I suggested SM look at is a way to roughen the appearance of dynamic hair at the propagated hair level. I found that when running draping sims properly the strands tended to take on very uniform flows. Part of the reason for this is that the system renders a thickness of hair based on a much lesser number of strands, so when you use a high propagated numbers of hairs (as I tend to do) they all have too similar a flow, even with high clumpiness settings. This can work for very straight styles but not for waves or messier styles. What I tinkered with for a couple of my experiments was to deliberately force the strands to intersect before running the sim, thus causing more chaotic collisions. I can't recommend this approach as the sims suddenly take a lot longer and can cause dramatic explosions of hair strands. But I have had a few promising successes.

So the final rendered results are quirky and a little too unpredictable for my liking, and are not at all dependant on just the shaders used.

Heh. I almost always end with up with colliding hair strands without intending to, unless I use only one hair group.

But I'm with you; I've actually been thinking the past couple of days about the desirability of a "randomize" setting.

Yes, randomisation of the hair propogation was how i put it to SM. Even better if this can be done to varying degrees, like the clumpiness slider.

I'm sure this has been done before, but whoever did it didn't release it as a material preset for everyone, so I started experimenting, I already knew I could create patterns using simple nodes and even images, but I wanted to try and make the color differences look more like natural streaks instead of the kind you get done at the salon...

So I used an fbm node and put the x and z scale at 0.004 and the y scale at 6.000 and the Octaves at 2.000... then I took the usual noise node and used a blender node to blend the noise with the fbm node... then I connected that to a ColorRamp node and gave the top two dark brown and the bottom two light brown then connected those to the color imputs on the hair node (not the specular though, there is nothing plugged into that). It is very simple but it turned out extremely good in my opinion. I also put more specular than with Aurora and Jessi_Short_Blonde... (Hair is Annelle Hair by Adorana; Character is Lyon by Danae), Hope you like it:

Quote - Here's a thread from a while back - earlier days of PP2012. My typical hair node settings area in there.

Thanks.  The shader I was using was very similar to yours (except blond).  I adjusted it to match yours exactly (except the tip and root color, which I left blond), and also lightened the specular color.

It's not bad:

That's with the Envirosphere and one infinite light at 42%.

But I still prefer a glossier look:

That's with conventional lighting.  Main light is at 110%.

After some experimentation, I think it's simply a matter of the light intensity.  Setting the light bright enough to make the hair glossy washes out EZskin shaders.  Not sure if anything can be done about this.

can you make that one longer and have a fringe at the front (bangs)

Love esther

PS that looks great. I didn't know the hair room could do glossy like that.

Quote -
After some experimentation, I think it's simply a matter of the light intensity.  Setting the light bright enough to make the hair glossy washes out EZskin shaders.  Not sure if anything can be done about this.

You can try to reduce the 'lightness' value in the skin nodes.

Alessandro has just released a plugin for DS (Look At My Hair) that has a lot of the functionality we've been asking for for the hair room. Some of that functionality can be seen here: http://www.furrythings.com/category/demo-videos-screenshots/

Really wanting some of that for Poser.

A few examples of functionality:

Easier to use styling tools

Density maps

Randomization

Multi-threading support

I don't think the hair is actually dynamic, though. Perhaps that's why he was able to accomplish so much with a first release.

Still working with the hair shader and tweaking settings. I had the point light to the left a bit too close here. This scene is in Paul's free render room prop (with some Bagginsbill shaders applied to surfaces), and two point lights only.

Yikes.  I don't have a clue how to do that.  Without EZ Skin, I'd still be using Poser 5 MATs.

I did try turning down the specular using EZskin.  Light is 100%.  That delicate glow that SSS gives you is gone, and the eyes look downright creepy.

Sorry, the eyebrow part of the texture is a work in progress, to say the least....

Quote - > Quote - You can try to reduce the 'lightness' value in the skin nodes.

Yikes.  I don't have a clue how to do that.  Without EZ Skin, I'd still be using Poser 5 MATs.

I did try turning down the specular using EZskin.  Light is 100%.  That delicate glow that SSS gives you is gone, and the eyes look downright creepy.

 

In EZSkin, open the 'skin' tab. On top you see ' HSV Control', with inpute for 'H' 'S' and 'V', allowing you to change the tone (Hue), saturation (S) and value, or value (V) of the skin. If you have Photoshop, see what an HSV correction layer does. There the 'V' channel is named 'lightness'. It makes your skin darker so less chance of wash-out.

altenative: If you have Pro try the exponential mapping modes (in render settings window, below, on the right). This will affect your whole scene, but over-exposed areas less than areas than have correct exposure. 

Any ideas for speeding up the render of dynamic hair?

I'm using PP2012 and have most of the render settings at pretty low values as I do a lot of "quick renders" to get the look right before doing any detailed ones. I often turn radiosity off for transmapped hair, but doing that for dynamic hair really kills the look. Any ideas?

Thanks

Mark@poser

Fresnel reflection on skin via EZskin really slows things down if you're using it. Multiple lights will also slow a DH render down. 

How long did that render take?

I wasn't sure lately whether something in the recent SRs have affected DH rendering. In the  initial PP2012 release I was doing tests not unlike yours ranging from 15 mins to 40 mins (without FR on skin) depending on IDL quality and pixel samples etc. Feels slower now although i dont have a way of difinitively measuring that.

Nice dadt. How many guide hairs are there on that style?

Quote - Very few, it's a very open mesh which means it's possible to move each guide hair into position individually.

Is there an upper limit you can push the propogated density & root & tip thickness settings with this few guides? I was finding there was a point at which the rendered hair started looking very uniform.

Quote - Mark@poser

Fresnel reflection on skin via EZskin really slows things down if you're using it. Multiple lights will also slow a DH render down. 

How long did that render take?

Long for me is about 12 to 15 minutes. I have four lights on that one. My EZskin settings are the same as with transmapped hair, but are you saying somehow the fresnel reflect interacts with the dynamic hair to slow things down? Hummmm.

Thanks

The density for this was only 200 per square inch with root 1.0 and tip .4. Like you I find that pushing for ever finer hair results in unrealistic renders.

Quote -  

Long for me is about 12 to 15 minutes. I have four lights on that one. My EZskin settings are the same as with transmapped hair, but are you saying somehow the fresnel reflect interacts with the dynamic hair to slow things down? Hummmm.

 

Thanks

EZskin uses a blurred fresnel reflection on skin which is going to lead to quite an intensive set of calculations with all those strands. With transmapped hair there's far less geometry with textures, but transparency to deal with instead. Losing fresnel reflection from the mix when using DH is a trade-off but does dramatically reduce render times, certainly in the tests i did a while back.

Quote - The density for this was only 200 per square inch with root 1.0 and tip .4. Like you I find that pushing for ever finer hair results in unrealistic renders.

And that's just a single hair group in your last example, right? What does Poser say the total propogated hair density is for that group?

Yes, a single group, total 23,872 hairs

Quote - Yes, a single group, total 23,872 hairs

Thats not a bad density. I'd been pushing up to between 70,000-100,000, but that was on the (perhaps misguided) understanding that those numbers represended a density on par with real hair.

Ah bingo, that's a great way to style. I had been using hi res skull caps, and lately just implanting on V4's own head. But yeah, I can see that the lo-poly skull cap would make styling far easier. Hmmm.

Quote - > Quote - Yes, a single group, total 23,872 hairs

Thats not a bad density. I'd been pushing up to between 70,000-100,000, but that was on the (perhaps misguided) understanding that those numbers represended a density on par with real hair.

Note again though, Dan, that dadt is using 1.0 and 0.4 settings. So no surprise he can get away with -25k. If you can get away with that kind of hair thickness, why not? but I much prefer the look of much finer hair, so am paying the price in render times.

Of course, some folks do have coarser hair, so those settings are decent for that.

BTW, dadt, I still occasionally use the colorramp setup you showed me a long time ago... but it doesn't seem to have the effect it used to. Maybe I'm not using a wide enough colour variation....

Perhaps the node you are using to drive the ramp (fractal,turbulance,granite etc) does'nt cover the full range from black to white,in which case it would not trigger all the colours.