Hello,

I've been using Alfaseed's Desir Hair for ages now and it has become a defining part of my favourite character, Annette. While Desir Hair is really awesome and I love it to bits, it has real limitations with regards to upside-down, laying down or other such poses and I find myself tweaking camera angles and the available morphs to get the render looking right, then photoshopping any faulty areas; this can take forever.

I've tried and tried and tried to create dynamic hair like this, but I just keep failing, constantly. I'm looking for something as close as possible to the look the Desir Hair gives, but which can easily adapt to the poses I want to create; be it conforming or dynamic, free or payware.

 

Can anyone recommend anything, please? Really, it needs to be able to match pretty much seamlessly with the Desir Hair, as it's such a fundamental part of my character, but I know that's a tall order.

 

Here's a link to a render of Annie on my DA page: http://glen85.deviantart.com/art/Annette-Summer-Breeze-371703893

Many thanks,

 

Glen.

That doesn't look difficult to do with dynamic hair - the style seems perfect for dynamic. Where are you having problems in creating this style dynamically - the hair colour, the parting? Can you show one of your efforts that you were not happy with?

Not really, I ditched it, lol. I have problems with pretty much everything in the hair room and my dyscalculia doesn't help, all those numbers and what not. I get as far as generating the hair straight out and that's it really... I'm using Pro 2014 by the way.

If I made it dynamic, would I be able to create different styles pretty quickly; like a side parting, an 'out of bed' look and a half up/half down look, or would that require a lot of work? Also, can textures be applied to this? All the dynamic hair I've seen has this metallic, glossy sheen to it that doesn't really look right.

Thank you for your reply! :)

 

Glen.

I don't think it will work.  Dynamic hair looks too different from prop hair. 

I think you'd be better off using magnets to make the Alfaseed hair do what you want.  Or maybe some merchant with the skills will do it, and offer it as an add-on pack.

I'll make a centre parted hair style and upload it as a freebie, then at least you can play with it and other people can use it too.

This is what I uploaded, it will be available in freestuff as soon as it is approved.

Hey, thank you! That doesn't look bad at all and that's very kind of you! Let's see what we can make with that! :)

Super cool of you, that, thanks so much! :D

You are most welcome, I enjoy playing in the hair room.

I'm having some problems getting it to look right, as it seems a bit like there's a lot of static in it... My main problems with the hair room come when having to select areas in the 3D window and edit them, so styling is a pain. I wonder if dynamic cloth hair would work better perhaps? I've tried 'clothifying' the Desir hair but it doesn't work, probably due to intersecting areas, of which there are many.

A tip on selecting and styling, thou might find it easier to make several small groups rather than use  one or two big ones. I often use six or more groups.

It's going to be pretty tough using the styling controls for what you want (lying down and upside down poses).  Generally, you have to pick either styling or dynamics with the Poser Hair Room.  While you can change the settings so that the hair is somewhat resistant to dynamics - a sort of "hair spray" that lets the hair move a little, without losing the styling - it's not going to look natural lying down or upside down when you do that.

I'm not even attempting lying down or anything at the moment, it's just the default pose... I really wish there was a comprehensive guide to this stuff; I've looked and never found anything.

NanetteTredoux - Thanks so much for the free dynamic hair!  I tried using Adorana's hair on Roxie and found it worked amazingly in PP 2014.  Simmed fast, rendered much more finely than mesh hair with transmaps.  I've been searching for dynamic hair ever since. There's not even much to buy.

I think I'd prefer fewer parts than 6, in general.  It's a PITA to duplicate the same numbers over and over and over just to get the hair to sim properly.  And simming is the whole point of dynamic hair, IMHO.  But that's just my impression from a very preliminary use.

charly_hayze - I'd definitely see what simming did before deciding that dynamic hair wasn't the answer.  I mean,  you're talking about dynamic cloth hair.  The initial shape of dynamic cloth is only part of the final look.  You have to consider cloth topology, figure scaling and morphing over the sim, and other environmental effects.  If you make a gathered skirt that's modeled as gathered and draped, it will sim like a cylinder that tends towards being smooth.  If you make a gathered skirt that's modeled as a circle straight out from the hips and has lots of tris at or near the gather point, it will drape and sim properly.

If all you want is center parted hair that moves, in my admitted limited experience, hair like what Nanette made should work.  Could you demonstrate what's not working for you?

I too wish there were more tutorials for dynamic hair.  The manual is good for basic information, but the tutorials I've come across from SM and elsewhere are always too broad, too unstructured, and not detailed enough.  It would be nice to see something on just grouping a skullcap for general use, something on just styling a center parted style like this, something on just styling a simple bob, something on just working with kinks and waves, something on just simulation settings, etc.  All I've ever found are tutorials that assume you're going to do everything in Poser and have next to no structure.   Styling, dynamics, and grouping need to be addressed systematically and thoroughly on their own.

Hi, thanks for your reply!

Well, I seem to have troubles with getting anything in the hair room to do what I want it to... I can create the simulation and have the hair look like she's brushed it for too long and has a ton of static in it, but I can't seem to flatten it out and style it closer to the Desir hair so that it works as seemlessly as possible with Annette...

 

I've tried all kinds of things in the hair room, from full hair pieces to body hair props (I'd really like to create a full, grouped set of body hair for both M4 and V4, so as to have the option of hiding certain groups and what not...). I just can't get anything done in there at all. I've never had anything come out of the hair room and I've been trying to get to grips with it on and off since Poser 6; around 2006. I think I'm just allergic to Poser hair as well as cat hair, lol! :P

 

Glen.

Hmmmm.   The image I just posted was only my second time trying dynamic hair.  The first was back with P6 and didn't go so well.   My third try was as satisfactory to me as the one above.   But without seeing a picture of what you mean by " a ton of static in it," I can't say that my results are any closer to what you want than what you have is.  I actually used a frizzy hair style (IIRC, it was called an 80's bad perm style- it's in the RDNA freebies), and changed the parameters to make it less frizzy.  No styling, just changed some settings to make sure it didn't collide with anything on the first frame.  Then I let it sim and drape.  It doesn't look frizzy to me now, but it is still strand hair without much clumpying and probably less shine than very sleek hair would have.  I haven't got much of a handle at all on either strand hair materials or basic hair type settings yet.

What I'm getting is pretty much what appears in the image by Nanette, which appears as though it's full of static. What I'm aiming for is something that looks as close to the Desir hair as possible. As I said, I simply CANNOT get ANYTHING to work in the hair room at all... I know some people get over-dramatic with the words they use, but I mean that 100% literally; NOTHING AT ALL has worked the way I've wanted it to in the hair room, not ONE single movement of a dial, one drag of the mouse, NOTHING! I can have one strand of this hair and try to make it longer and it snaps to a much shorter length. I can get the right side the absolute perfect length after much effort, swearing and pulling out my own hair and try again on the other side, with the exact same numbers, only to find it's gone crazy...

I'm beginning to think the hair room is a waste of time learning, to be honest. User friendliness is sooo NOT it's strong point! :P

You might try Kirwyn's hair proxy:

http://www.morphography.uk.vu/dlkirwyn.html

It's free dynamic hair, along with a "proxy" to help run the simulations faster. 

It comes with a tutorial that helped me a lot with dynamic hair. 

Though Kirwyn's default is a little "staticky," I was able to get to to lie a little flatter by changing the settings. 

I still think it will be quite difficult to make dynamic hair and prop hair match, though.  Probably better to stick with one or the other.
 

 

one trick I have learned for stying hair that sometimes works, but can be very time consuming and monotonous (sp?) is start with very sort hair, like .2 inches length. Set all directions to 0 and kink strength to 0. Then select a strand with the styling tool, uncheck the constrain length and drag the fall off slider all the way to the left. Use the translate tool to "draw" the strand the way you want it to go. The 3 problems I have with this is 1: As I already said, it takes a lot of time because you need to work with either single strands of small groups.  2: I find it very difficult to get a smooth flow between the groups on the side and the groups in the back. 3: It's also difficult to make a strand go in multiple directions, like for a braid.

In the picture, I forgot to turn of the kink so the hair isn't as straight as it was supposed to be.

Very interesting, I'm going to have a look at both, thank you very much!

Yes, I accept the fact that getting a perfect match is pretty much impossible, but I'd like it to look close enough that it wouldn't be noticed much between two sets of renders, where I've used different environments, lighting, clothing and so on. I hope it can be done... Annie's pretty much perfect, apart from her limiting hair, lol!

Thank you both again!

 

Glen.

If you are doing stills, to help match the color, you can take the texture map you are using for Desir Hair and trim it to so that there is only hair color showing (no black or white around the edges). It doesn't matter if it's really small. Then set the hair node colors to white and plug that image map into both the root and tip color. I was thinking you were looking to stitch together an animation and this isn't an exact match so I didn't mention it earlier.

I'm going to be doing both, hopefully... I've only managed to use pre-made animations though, so that'll be a learning curve, lol! Thanks though, that's interesting! :)