Hm, I think my setup is basic: Alt Diffuse > Hair > ColorRamp, and then each color outputs to a Noise nose. Then a Clouds node off the input of the ColorRamp. (And Diffuse_Color is set to 0.)

I'm liking the actual output; I'm just not seeing quite the variation I would expect.

Maybe my colour use is wrong? My Alternate_Diffuse colour is white. On the Hair node, I have Root_Color as black, Tip_Color as white, and specular as gray. (My minimal understanding of nodes suggests that both root and tip should be white when used with a ColorRamp, but that's not what my screenshot of your shader shows....) The Clouds node has Sky_Color as white and Clour_Color as black. All the desired hair colours are in the ColorRamp.

I can't remember the shader you refer to, but the root colour would normally be white as you say. Possibly I was doing a dark hair with coloured tips.

Ihave just looked at a set-up as you describe and with a cloud node the bottom value had to be set to zero and the gain to more than .9 to provide enough contrast to drive all four steps in the colour ramp.

Putting a noise node onto the ramp colours darkens them considerably unless you increase the min value considerably (this is the main reason for difficulty producing a blonde hair)

Thanks, dadt. I will do more experimenting if I get time today.

> Quote - 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.

Thanks.  I realized trying to follow your directions that I'm using an older version of EZskin.  I installed the newest version, and it seems promising.  Better than it was, anyway. Though the eyes are still creepy.

It looks to me like there is far too much light in the scene, hence the yellow bloom on the skin. The eyes might look better in more natural lighting.

Quote - It looks to me like there is far too much light in the scene, hence the yellow bloom on the skin. The eyes might look better in more natural lighting.

Yeah, that's the problem.  The kind of lighting that makes the hair look the way I want is way too much for EZskin shaders. 

Might be able to find a balance with a little experimentation.

 

If the hair needs such strong light then it must be the hair shader that is at fault. It is easily possible to produce blonde hair that works in more normal light levels.

I don't think it's "at fault" so much as it's meant for the old type of  Poser lighting. Dynamic hair shaders just look so different under different lighting.  This isn't really an issue with painted hair textures.  Which means hybrid styles (part transmapped, part dynamic) or dynamic hair with a painted skullcap can look quite odd under the Envirosphere.

I can make dynamic hair brighter, but then it looks odd in dimmer light, and it loses those rippling highlights when it moves.

I guess my expectations might be a bit distorted by living in the Poserverse so long.  The old style hair and textures pretty much look the same under all kinds of lighting.  Hair does tend to look very shiny in bright sunlight, but skin does tend to wash out.  Still, it seems like it might be possible to adjust skin, hair, and lighting so they all look decent.

 

 

Dadt, let's remember that this is about what randym is after with his hair renders. He basically wants a blown-out look on the dynamic hair and nothing else. If we had item-specific lighting, this could be easily achieved.

Something I noticed was that if I attatched  an image to the hair node once and it seemed less suseptable to light changes. I haven't had much chance to test this yet though.

There is no 'fault' or 'good'. If we want things to be compatible, we must agree on a light level we can consider as 'standard'. In real life we have this, at day the sun shines on all of us the same way. In Poserverse we must find a standard ourselves.  

Hey dadt, nice Peggy!

Thanks raven, hi-de-hi and happy Ghristmas.

Ho-de-ho, and happy chrimbo to you too :)

The image in my last post is not totally OT, it includes another example of hair room magic.

Click to enlarge : Here a hair I use a lot. Bb's sphere with One infinite light at 75% (The picture on the BB sphere is dark, so I increased the Infinite light back to 75%)

that hair looks very good!

Ha, thank you Ester.
You should see the figure by now.... :-)
I have to dress her up :-) :-) :-)

a long time ago now, i had an idea for a skull cap with preset hair growth zones on it, eg, fringe, front side L, front side R, side R, side L, top, back etc etc, essentially a predivided skull cap , the idea being you could just select the hair zone in the hair room and grow your guide hairs, anyone think there would be a demand for a prop like this, and what do you see the problems that may arise ? apart from the fact that everyone would want a different template lol

Quote - a long time ago now, i had an idea for a skull cap with preset hair growth zones on it, eg, fringe, front side L, front side R, side R, side L, top, back etc etc, essentially a predivided skull cap , the idea being you could just select the hair zone in the hair room and grow you guide hairs, anyone thing there would be a demand for a prop like this, and what do you see the problems that may arise ?

I would LOVE something like that. 

A big problem with the skullcaps currently available is that they are way too high-res to be ideal in the hair room.  Dynamic hair collisions only work well if the objects involved are relatively low-resolution.  Poser just can't handle it otherwise. 

Many skullcaps have thousands of polys.  The Poser 6 skullcaps cut that drastically, down to about 200 polys (about the tenth the number in the Poser 5 skullcaps, IIRC).  Today's technology would probably allow a bit more than that, but still...low-res is where it's at, for dynamic hair.

Having different growth zones would be great, because then you could have higher resolution (and hence higher hair density) where it mattered.  Along the hairline, for example, where you can actually see the strands.  You could also run in a sim on only one or two hair groups (if you're animating).  That would be enough to make it look like the hair is moving like real hair, but reduces the resource load, and would also let you preserve the styling in the other groups.

A couple of tricks that Kirwyn, now not around much, used for his Genesis Hair (before DAZ co-opted the name ;-).  He modeled the skullcaps tilted back 30 degrees, so that the hair would naturally fall back a little, instead of into the figure's face. 

And he designed the skullcaps so they fit just inside the figure's head.  With the skullcap inside in the head, the hair appears to be growing naturally out of the scalp.  (Poser ignores the first part of a hair strand when doing simulation calculations.)

That means you can't texture the skullcap to cover bald spots, but you could add another, visible skullcap later.  (I use 3Dream's universal skullcaps.)

 

this was the sort of inspiration for the idea, replace the skulls part names with hair growth group names.

That could work. But what I'd really like to see is a band of higher resolution mesh along the hairline, over the forehead and along the temples.  So you could make the hair very dense there, and avoid that wiry Barbie look. 

The back looks good.  I like the idea of having separate upper and lower groups on the back of the head.  Hair growing from the lower back of the skull isn't very important in most images (though you'd miss it if it weren't there!)  I like the idea of being able to make that coarser, with fewer vertices, and save resources for more visible hair over it. 

Have you see that "Sexy Manga Dancer" video on YouTube?  He says he used three hair groups, but only ran a simulation on one of them.  You can see that if you look closely.  When the dancer turns her back to the camera, you see a chunk of the hair in back going through her body.  It's dynamic hair, used statically.  With most renders, it wouldn't be noticeable.

ive just watched it, 65 hours to run the sim, but 1600 frames mind you, amazing the effect though, but that length of sim for most people will have them running to conforming hair and staying there lol

I think you nailed it right at the end. Everyone would need several version for different styles.

my thought was though, that initially one template could suit many needs, it would just be a matter of styling each growth growth to your desired style, the idea being that all hair grows pretty much the same way, it's just styling that alters most

That would be fine if the process of styling in the Hair Room was the same as styling real hair. :)

Interesting idea, mysticeagle!

Any 'standard' sections or groups we can agree on would work, or maybe a standard skull cap with morphs to suit the various figures. Definition of the hair groups should be more or less standard for a hair style irrespective of the figure it is applied to. The hair room uses a different process than a hairdresser, but it is a process nevertheless, and at least the hair room process has a universal basis does not need to deal with differences in natural characteristics of hair.  

It doesn't have to be perfect for every situation.  Basically, anything would be an improvement over current options. 

And you could make other versions later.  Maybe higher and lower res versions.  Middle part vs. side part.  A skullcap meant for styling hair vs. one meant for dynamics. 

Maybe even skullcaps meant to be used together.  Kirwyn did that with one version of his Genesis hair.  He had two skullcaps, one inside the other.  For a distance render,  you could use just one for faster processing.  For a close up, you'd use both.

Quote - I have used nothing but dynamic hair since it was first introduced, but I very seldom drape it. For shorter styles it is not needed and if used the hair droops and loses the styling.

This is a typical hair of mine.

 dadt ----

Is this the Elizabeth Warden character from "Keeping up Appearances" ? .... sure does look like her.

Quote - About the best I can do using Shena Hair.

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 - most of the dynamic hair images in this thread look very thin. Yours is an exception, it looks fantastic.

I use the same basic groups for most of my hairstyles. Top left and right, Middle left and right, Bottom left and right,top back bottom back, and bangs. It works for most handing down styles. Styles pulled in other way, such as a ponytail might need other groups.  I had toyed with the idea of having a starter base hair with short hair already grown on it that I could lengthen and style but I've never used the one I made.

Mathman---Right first time!

RedPhantom, I've tried various options (tho with less success than you so far as styling goes), and I have become less than enamoured with having a whole bunch of groups. They're just too hard to manage cooperatively, for me. I'm leaning more and more toward having 2-3 groups per hairstyle, on a low-poly skullcap.

Believable, I use more because my mind gets overwelmed and confused by larger groups. I am intrigued by the low poly cap. I've been using ones at about 1000 polys. I reduced one to around 200 and have not seen much differrence except the sim time dropped from 2:46 to 0:46 (this is minutes not seconds) on a single, simple group. It might be easier for me to handle larger groups if I have less strands to look at.

The dynamic hair tutorials that used to be at Studio Verite used a skullcap with only 8 polys.  That might be taking it a little too far, but it didn't look bad.

60-100 polys sounds right to me. Leave them unpopulated for styling, and it's easy to work with.

Quote - Mathman---Right first time!

 

That is brilliant. Don't suppose you have the morph, do you ? :):)

Sorry, like all my characters I use a lot of custom made morphs (Morph-brush,magnets,modelling program) plus custom textures including bump and displacement.

 

While browsing through this thread again I noticed that on many of the hairs shown the lower edge of the hairstyle faded away, spoiling the realism in my opinion. This set me wondering how much effect the tip width setting had.

Some tests with a few hairs on a sphere showed that the hair was evenly tapered from root to tip which is ok if you are using the hair room to grow a grass prop but hair does not taper, and even the tips are cut off square by the hairdressers scissors.

 In the past I had just accepted that the tip width would be less than the root width, probably because that is the default when you create a new hair, but a few test renders have convinced me that the root and tip should be the same.

 

These renders all have root width of .8 with tip widths of .2, .5 and .8 from left to right, and show the effect I am talking about.

I now have a lot of work ahead going through all my character and hair libraries resetting the values, doing test renders and new thumbnails

dadt, thanks anyway.

Maybe you should do an animation of Elizabeth spilling tea on Hyacinth's Grade 1 Axminster carpet .... :)

...or maybe breaking one of Hyacinth's Royal Doultons with the hand-painted periwinkles !!

LOL--- I have enough problems getting good renders without venturing into the extra problems of animation.

Perhaps when I get a faster rig, going to knock together a 8 processor set-up in the new year to replace my twin set-up.

Quote - While browsing through this thread again I noticed that on many of the hairs shown the lower edge of the hairstyle faded away, spoiling the realism in my opinion. This set me wondering how much effect the tip width setting had.

Some tests with a few hairs on a sphere showed that the hair was evenly tapered from root to tip which is ok if you are using the hair room to grow a grass prop but hair does not taper, and even the tips are cut off square by the hairdressers scissors.

 In the past I had just accepted that the tip width would be less than the root width, probably because that is the default when you create a new hair, but a few test renders have convinced me that the root and tip should be the same.

 

That's a very interesting point. I'll have to try that.

Quote -  In the past I had just accepted that the tip width would be less than the root width, probably because that is the default when you create a new hair, but a few test renders have convinced me that the root and tip should be the same.

Good observation, dadt. I've been wondering along those lines myself. I'm not sure there should be no taper whatsoever, but I've slowly been bringing the root and tip widths into closer relation to one another too.

If you look at hair under a microscope (we all have one of those right ) you'll see each strand is tapered. How much in relation to the root, I can't say. The problem isn't the tapering one the strands. It is becaues the hair does not all end at the same spot. When you create hair each strand it the exact same length as the rest (unless you set the length variance) so when you bend the strands down the strands on the top of the head don't reach as far as the ones down near the bottom edge. So there is in all reality less hair strand at the bottom on the hair than at the top so it should look thinner. You can use the styling tool to lengthen the strands higher up i you are wanting a more consistant thickness. In the image you can see the difference in the think ness of the 2 styles. Both have the same hair density and the same strand thickness at root and tip. In the second row of images I've selected all the strands in one group so you can see the ends. As you can see some ends only come half way down to where the others do.

We need a scissors tool. :)

The root-tip ratio depends on the haircut. If my hair is 20 cm with tip/root ratio 0.4, and I cut it to 10 cm, the root/tip ratio will be 0.7, assuming smooth taper. The follicle just pushes out hair at a constant rate and diameter. I think there is natural wear/aging that  makes older hair, i.e hair further away from the follicle, thinner than newer hair.

As for length variation: this of couse entirly is down to haircut. If the hair is uncut, (Tyler as Simson) the natural process of breaking will take care of a sort of logaritmic? (not sure here without having done the math) distribution of hair length. 

Are there any long dynamic hair sets available for v4?  purchase or not? I cannot find any (other than the california one)

I always thought the reason hair strands were tapered in the hair room is because it's impossible to get realistic hair density without choking Poser.  So to get decent scalp coverage, you make the strand wide at the top.

But that makes the hair look like a bad wig.  Making it thinner at the ends makes it looks less fake. 

templargfx, I'm hoping to have one available with in the next few days as a freebie. I need to get it packaged up and approved. You can check my first post on page one of this thread for a preview.