Hello folks,

You may know, you may not, but my main character, Annette, uses Alfaseed's Desir Hair most of the time (and often Alfaseed's Caprice Hair with Annie's light blond materials, which seem to work ok). I'm so pleased with how these hairs work for most standing/upright poses, but they're difficult to work with when attempting laying or upside down poses.

I'm wondering how to go about making these props, more importantly the former, more manageable in these situations. I've tried to make the prop dynamic cloth a few times but it keeps failing and I've also tried bullet physics, but I've no idea where to start with that side of things really.

Does anyone else have this hair? If so, could you perhaps giude me on the best way to deal with this, please? The Desir Hair is part of Annie's character. I haven't yet found another which keeps her as Annie and I've tried until I've almost collapsed in a heap of misery with the hair room, lol.

Thanks,

Glen.

Which version of Poser do you have?

If you have Pro 2014, perhaps you can try some of the new morphing brushes (the one in particular that I'm thinking of is the "Sag" brush, which might help with laying down poses. I will confess though that I've never tried it on hair. It's worth a shot.

However, upside down poses are a different matter ... most hair models are modeled with relatively normal poses in mind, and modeled hair doesn't have "roots." I'm pretty confident in saying it would probably be difficult if not next to impossible to morph most regular hair models into a suitable upside-down pose. So, you would either have to start with hair that is already pointing upward (Valea's "Fire Goddess" hair comes to mind), or you'd have to use dynamic hair which would somewhat fall naturally. 

Those are my initial thoughts. 

Hey,

I do use PP2014 yes, I could try the morphing tool, though I've had lots of unsatisfactory results with clothing, I'll say that much. I think I'm right in saying that the Desir Hair does seem to have 'roots' in so far as the hair planes appear to poke through the cap. if I could set the cap to stay with Annie's head, then set those small areas of hair to stay with the cap, I would think that the  rerest would, pardon the pun, 'fall into place', but I'm not sure how to go about it.

Thanks,

Glen.

Just taking a look at the product, it is a very high polycount item which would mean that trying to make it cooperate with the morph brush will take some time and effort.  Importing it into a modelling program might be the only option to achieve an upside down look.  However, manipulation might drastically change the vertex count and order; this would render the changes as a morph target useless, in which case, it may need to be converted to a one-time hair prop.

Another long shot is to take it into the cloth room and clothify the hair.  I've had it work for some older prop hair that had no movement morphs but the results were inconsistent.

Mitsu or Sylphiad hair has a morph for lying down.  I can't check as I'm not at my home system.

Pretty3D's Fantasy Warrior Hair has internal bones that allow for some extreme posing.

Kaposer sell TotalHairCntrl here in the marketplace.  It's a magnet based system that can be used on any hair.  It mainly designed for prop hair that lacks movement morphs. 

You can also try applying your own magnets if you don't want to spend any more money.

The only 3D software I have that could possibly do that is C4D and I've only just got it, so I've not got a clue as to where to start. Also, I'd really need it to move with the poses and animations, so really it should be dynamic in some way.

I've tried clothifying it but it fails straight away. I've also tried making it soft dynamic in bullet physics but I've no idea what I'm doing there either and it keeps exploding.

The Mitsu hair is for A3 and it's very anime themed. The Sylphiad hair isn't too bad, but it's a bit long and fairytale looking really. The Fantasy Warrior hair is good, but it's a tail and it's too bold and fantasy like (name says it all really).

I've tried the hair room, someone on the forums even tried, but it's apparently incredibly difficult to create straight, shoulder length, centre parted hair that looks even slightly convincing.

Thanks for all your input folks, but this looks like a troublesome one. I'm basically after a dynamic Desir hair. :(

[EDIT]

Do you have a link to the Total Hair Control, please? I've looked but I'm not seeing it.

Magnets :)

Not where I have poser and my links to products I have purchased, but I do have a product called something like "Hair Control" which adds a series of magnets to hair that I use to create morphs in hair and have used in lay down poses.

Upside down netfis I think was the merchant has a ponytail for V4 that I have used for gymnastic poses where the character was upside down.

I can supply the info later tonight unless somebody else chimes in on these two products.

Sounds good Gary, thanks!

I've looked into it and C4D has a rather interesting hair tool. I wonder if I could create hair in there and have it work in Poser with dynamics...

Quote - I've tried the hair room, someone on the forums even tried, but it's apparently incredibly difficult to create straight, shoulder length, centre parted hair that looks even slightly convincing.

How are you defining "shoulder length"? There are some older hair props by Adorana that are actually pretty good (admittedly, I do modifications to them, but she's done the hard stuff: styling). While they may not have been made for your figure, that is a very minor issue. I use older dynamic hair on modern figures all the time—just needs a couple minutes of scaling and translating.

Also look in the legacy content for Poser. There's hair for older figures like Jessi in there too.

Quote - I've looked into it and C4D has a rather interesting hair tool. I wonder if I could create hair in there and have it work in Poser with dynamics...

If you want to use it as Poser dynamic hair using line geometry, you would have to specially construct the object and hack a Poser file to be able to import it properly.  It should be possible, but it needs to be done sort of sideways.  :lol:  For full functionality, Poser dynamic hair seems to require one guide hair for each vertex in the defined hair group.  The base of each guide hair may need to match the location of its associated hair group vertex (but note that this doesn't seem to have been tested by anyone; possibly the location of the guide hair matters less than the count of guide hairs).  All guide hairs should have the same number of vertices per hair.  That is, if you want Poser to fill in the spaces between guide hairs when the hair density is increased.  You can vary the guide hair design a great deal more if you only want to use the guide hairs themselves with the dynamics... apparently.  :unsure:

Polygon-based hair of various designs might work tolerably well with cloth dynamics or Bullet physics dynamics.  That should at least be able to be done without any tinkering on the Poser file level... and with fewer design constraints.

I believe NanetteTredoux has a center-parted V4 hair in freestuff here.

Hi folks,

By 'shoulder length' I mean Desir Hair length, as I basically want that hair to be dynamic and that's it. No alterations to styling, no alterations to colours, length, nothing; Desir Hair that works with dynamics, be it hair, cloth or bullet physics.

Cage, that sounds stressful... the irony of all this is that trying to give Annie such lovely hair (in various places ahem) is making me lose my own in real life, lol! I don't need the stress, I want a big red button I can punch and have it all done, lol! :P

I tried a site search for 'NanetteTredoux' but nothing came up, do you have a link, perhaps? I'm normally very good at searching for stuff online, but this site bugs the crap out of me because I can never find anything. I think the Admins are persuing some kind of vendetta aand blocking my searches, lol!

Aha, I just found Nanette's hair via Google and it's the one I mentioned in my first post; I believe this was made in response to another topic I made ages ago. http://www.renderosity.com/mod/freestuff/?item_id=72119

I don't see where you mentioned an existing dynamic hair in your first post.

So far as dynamic hair props go: the most important thing is to find the right style, because you can get help with pretty much everything else. A hair prop you may not think is usable for your purposes may well be.

Even though I do find the Hair Room frustrating because SM seems reluctant to put a lot of effort into upgrading it, I still render with dynamic hair 90% of the time. Of course, my aim is realism, so my aim may be different than yours.

My mistake, it was further down. :P

Quote - I've tried the hair room, someone on the forums even tried, but it's apparently incredibly difficult to create straight, shoulder length, centre parted hair that looks even slightly convincing.

My aim is realism too, but almost all of the dynamic hair from Poser that I've seen has looked fake. Also, I have to consider that I have a well established character who I don't want to radically alter, where possible. :/

I have never seen a transmapped hair that looked real. Ever. You can certainly get beautiful renders—but they won't be realistic.

Dynamic hair with poor material settings can be awful. But with good material settings, it can look very convincing, far more realistic than anything transmapped hair can do.

Quote - Dynamic hair with poor material settings can be awful. But with good material settings, it can look very convincing, far more realistic than anything transmapped hair can do.

We need to figure out a way to get them to listen to us and improve the hair room and give us accessible hair design tools.  Maybe we can get Rosity to pin a thread, where everyone can chime in, requesting such features.  Like a petition, vaguely.  Get enough posters showing public support, all in one place, and perhaps we'll get their attention.  :unsure:

Or not.  I keep wondering whether they actually can improve the Hair Room at all.  Isn't it some kind of plugin, tacked on to Poser?  If they're using some tool with set and predefined options and they don't have access to modify its source, they may not be able to give us anything better without completely rebuilding Poser hair from scratch.  I thought it was established, back in P5 days, that hair and cloth as well as Firefly were founded on external libraries.  :unsure:  But I may have dreamed it.

By all means, prove me wrong by showing me dynamic hair made in Poser that will blow my mind, I'd love to learn more!

For examples of how realistic better artists can get dynamic hair, check Carodan's gallery, especially these:

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2015392&user_id=201439&member&np

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2015955&user_id=201439&member&np

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2274054&user_id=201439&member&np

You can't get this level of believability with transmapped hair, plain and simple.

Those examples don't look bad at all, I'd like to know of a tutorial to show how to get to that level!

The example in your image is... well... I don't like to criticise others work, but it just looks about as fake as dynamic hair has ever looked, there's no life to it, it looks flat, there's no shimmer, no depth and it looks like it's caked with hair spray; it'd hang much more loosely.

I hate being a critical bitch like that but it needs saying. :(

Re hanging loosely: remember that I did NOTHING to this hair dynamically or styling-wise. I just planted it on the head in roughly the right place and added my materials.

Re shimmer and depth. Meh. I suspect you're not really after realism, but faux glamour shots. Real hair is not that shiny except in lighting that is nothing light what is present in the setting of the render. At any rate, I deliberately keep my specular highlights relatively low and my materials relatively desaturated. Most real hair just is not as saturated and bright as artists like to make it. Were I going for the faux glamour look, of course, I wouldn't worry about that. :)

Either way, increasing specular and saturating the colours more are minor things to accomplish in the material settings.

I've looked at the Desir hair. It doesn't look real at all, although it's better than some models.

Edit: That's not a criticism. Most people really aren't after realism.

Well, I'm looking for more than a flat looking hair cake, so whether that's vamped up glamour shots or realistic looking renders is entirely open to interpretation. All I can say with complete and utter certainty is this:

Dynamic hair that looks like Desir Hair, if not more lifelike (the colours fade at the ends which is something I've been meaning to address) is what I'm looking for. If I could make this hair dynamic, I would. The hair above is, to my mind, nothing even close to this and I've no idea where to start to get it there. It comes straight out of the head then kinks at an odd angle, then continues practically straight down like a shed roof.

Also, with most dynamic hair I've seen, it's been possible to see right through to the scalp, so it looks thin and... fake. I'm just yet to be sold on it all, and anyone saying it's really awesome but unable to show how they, themselves, have made it awesome just isn't going to sell it to me.

Now I really don't know what you think you're after. Your example renders have pretty much no shimmer whatsoever.

Anyway, I'm out. Clearly you're not interested in anything other than what you've already got.

Look, now I'm getting annoyed.

I clearly stated what was wrong with your example, yet all you've done is told me "Desir Hair doesn't look realistic at all!"! Well, how? I've seen lots of real hair in lots of different lights and I've seen lots of didifferent hair in lots of different lights in Poser, but I'm yyet to see anything that looks as real as this from dynamics, except for two examples which you've given. How is it not realistic? My two renders are old ones and they don't use IDL, I'm yet to produce one that does, but when you look at the product preview f rom AS himself, , I think it looks close enough.

Obviously I AM interested in something other than what I already have, otherwise I'd have never started this topic. I'm after the LOOK of this hair WITH DYNAMICS! I pretty much put it into single syllables earlier, what's not to understand?!

Looks like this: http://www.runtimedna.com/DesirHair.html

Behaves like this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6D0KUL6xRCo

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2554333 Do you see the scalp there? Is the hair too thin?

FWIW—you only see through to the scalp either because the skullcap is misplaced, or because you don't have enough hair density. Those are both things that you always have in your control yourself. Unlike transmapped hair, you can make the hair as thin or as thick as you like. The issue is that unlike figure hair, you're going to have a bit of a learning curve. If it's not exactly as you want from the get-go, there are things to tweak and yes, it does take a bit of time to learn those sorts of settings.

Styling is a bit harder, but if you're starting off with a well-made hairstyle like Nanette's, it shouldn't be too hard if you know the shortcuts (e.g. to start with, deselect "show populated" and lower the density way down. The hair is way easier to style if you're only moving 10 hairs around at a time).

I understand that this sort of learning curve isn't for everyone. Poser's hair room is not as refined or intuitive as it should be. But for me the final result is well worth it.

Look at the last three images in this thread and tell me exactly how the first is anything close to what I'm looking for, besides the hair going two separate ways in the middle.

I'm just not convinced that Nannette's hair is going to get even remotely close.

There's no reason to be annoyed. You said you wanted realistic ... but then you say Desir actually is realistic. That sounds to me like you have what you want; you just can't turn it inside out and upside down.

Now, if you really want realism, compare your Desir renders (or for that matter, the vendor's own promo renders) to photographs, or better, real hair on people around you. There is no comparison, even though this is, as I said, a good hairstyle so far as transmapped hair goes. Heck, a very good one.

But.

The hair strands have movement, and that's great, but they don't look like real hairstrands. (This is particularly obvious when you look at the last few inches of the hair.) It looks like the work of someone really skilled with a quality Photoshop brush.

Likewise, it has some realistic colours painted into the texture (kudos for not choosing oversaturated colours that a lot of people do), but it doesn't interact with light the way real hair does. (Strictly, neither does Poser dynamic hair, but it's far superior to this, given good material settings, which is why Carodan's gallery images look so realistic.)

The bottom line is that transmapped hair serves its purpose, and is an easy way to get to a certain point. Beyond that level, however, it really cannot take you any further in terms of realism.

Well ok, but I can't see how the hair strands look so unrealistic.

http://i.huffpost.com/gen/1253475/thumbs/o-HAIR-facebook.jpg

http://www.runtimedna.com/files/alfaseed/DesirHair/mainpromo.jpg

Besides that, unless someone can show me the aforementioned dynamic hair looking like either of these two images, I just can't, honestly, for the life of me, believe that Poser's dynamic hair can look like it, especially with a complete novice at the controls and with no hint of a tutorial to tell him what the heck he's supposed to be doing.

It seems to me that most Poser users have the same problems and that Poser's hair room is so far outdated that it may as well be scrapped from future releases if it's not going to be upgraded. Heck, even DS has Geribaldi! I'd love that for Poser, but it's not available, neither are any other decent hair plugins and it seems like such a hardship to import decent hair into Poser that if I hadn't grown to love it so much, I might just turn my back on the software completely.

So, perhaps I'm looking for wildly unrealistic looking hair in so far as DH is concerned, but fine, I'm beyond caring about explaining what I'm looking for with words because the images have done the talking. To my mind, DH is pretty much as realistic as I'd want, bar the obvvious 'ribbons' that can become visible and a few kinks here and there. Besides that, I'm after the ability to put my character into poses that aren't always bolt upright or with wind blowing without having the hair look crap.

The example dynamic hair (I'm not talking about the gallery examples, as they're, to my mind, not available for purchase) is absolutely lightyears away from the examples I've posted, in a bad way. Too fine, looks matted, shaders aren't even close, styling is akin to a hayrick, no bangs; hair goes from forehead to below the chin... it's just not 'it'. and I've no idea how else to say it.

I will be happy to sit through a start to finish tutorial on how to create 100% realistic looking dynamic hair in Poser's hair room, I'll need that kind of instruction, as I'm sure many would. If the hair room continues to be so outdated, other software continues to provide far better alternatives and Poser users who create remarkable hair in the hair room refrain from explaining how they did it, I believe many users will switch to other software. It's not just about SM making good software, it's about the community sharing their knowledge and if people keep making lovely stuff and flashing it about, while the rest of us sit in a desert with nothing in the form of tutorials, things are going to take a dive fast.

Hell, I can't even make eyebrows in the damn thing!

The hair room continues to be a sticky topic on these forums and it's becoming clear why... perhaps I'll stay away from discussing it in future because it's rare that anything good comes of it. I just wish things were different, it's sad that such an awesome piece of software seems so terribly limited by one comparatively minor feature. DS is absolutely rubbish in comparison to Poser, yet it has this add-on... WHY?! Stick that into PP2014 and you've got a woop! -.-

Actually, IIRC, Carodan used free hairstyles for his gallery renders. I believe he just added his own materials and settings. May have done very moderate styling, but if he did it was minimal. He just knew what to do with it. The one in my gallery was my own, but I'm awful at styling, so I wouldn't distribute hairstyles I create.

I do concede that I had assumed there would be lots of center parted styles, since it's probably close to the easiest to create. But when I went looking for one for you, I only found Nanette's. Adorana liked to do side parts.

So far as the photo goes (and aside from how far or not DH's strands may be from looking like real hair strands), remember again what dynamic hair is. It's not a morph based system. If you want that blown/blowing look, you can indeed achieve it—by using Poser's wind force settings. For stiller settings where you want the hair a bit less clingy to itself, you would keep the clump settings low and probably have to do a bit of styling "by hand."

I do find it amusing how few realistic hairstyles there are for V4 compared to the outlandish/fantasy/anime styles. I may entertain a different parting for Annie, but I don't want anything too salon styled; she's a simple girl who holds natural beauty, delicacy and elegance in extremely high regard, so no hair dyes (unless she's cosplaying), no fancy bobs or layers, no undercuts or other silly things, just her hair, hanging from her head. Perhaps she'd tie it back, maybe she'd occasionally curl it (I've done renders with both tied back and curled hair) but normally, it's just loose or she has a band around her forehead.

If I'm to go for dynamic hair in Poser though, I really do need a lights to flag tutorial, as there are for many other features and countless other pieces of software. Either that or I'm going to need to work with someone online over a messenger or something because, having been trying to get the hair room for literally years on end and never having anything I'd even want to save, let alone show anyone, I can honestly say I am incapable of getting anything at all from it but heartache, headache and bald spots in my own hair. :(

(To think I want to use dynamic hairall over her body too, from eyebrows and lashes to pubic hair... makes me cringe just thinking of the stress levels involved!)

The upside down ponytail I mentioned I would provide a link to is by neftis and called Kendra and located here  http://market.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=53274

the magnet set I said I would provide a link to is TotalHairCtrl by kaposer and found here  http://market.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?ViewProduct=69913

for details on both products since they are older, click on the editoral tab on the poduct page.

Hope this helps and good luck

Gary

Thanks  Gary! The tail looks interesting. I'm not sure how it would look on Annie and it would definitely need custom materials to match her hair colour, but it's worth a shot. The hair control system looks very useful, I'll have to try that, thank you! I wonder why a marketplace search came up fruitless?

Anyhow, thank you for those links, I'll definitely try the hair control and see what I can come up with, I've put Annie in too many poses where I've just scrapped them and moved on because her hair hasn't been right and it's a shame.

Also, I should apologise for my tone last night, I was getting tired, cranky and fed up. It's not often that it happens, but it does, and I just happened to be discussing dynamic hair on here, which is painful at the best of times. I hope I didn't cause any grievance with Believable3D.

[EDIT] The Kendra Hair Set is no longer available, unfortunately. :/

Thank you. Well, it seems to me that there's something with dynamic hair that makes it look like nylon. Not just in the shaders, but in the geometry itself, it looks too smooth, like it would squeak if you stroked it. I've no idea what it is but the whole thing just looks wrong. It's quite irritating that I can't put my finger on quite what's wrong but it's just... well, it's not there. I am seeing past the fringe, perhaps I could part it and create longer bangs either side, but it just looks almost matted, like a smooth lump oozing over the head.

This one looks less like a lump. It's still king of smooth. I made it that way as part of a request. most dynamic hair doesn't have those stray wispies like real hair does. (think static on the brush)

That looks a bit better and I'm thinking blonde is a hard colour to get right, which is annoying, as Annie's blonde, lol! Most real hair has 'grooves' where it kind of gathers in places, all of these have the hairs evenly spaced so it looks like a cheap wig, at the absolute best.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/gallery/index.php?image_id=2554641

One of the better ones but it still looks like a nylon wig... perhaps it's the shader. Did you make this from the centre parted hair? If so, it's a marked improvement! Perhaps a bit more of a defined parting though. ;)

Can't agree with you on the nylon wig part at all, but oh well. You're free to use whatever materials you want, so it hardly matters whether you like my materials.

The only thing I borrowed from the Center-Parted Hair was the skullcap. Otherwise, I built this from the ground up. Didn't take very long at all.

As I keep saying, you can greatly affect how dynamic looks. Do some subtle styling movements and you get rid the blockiness. Or put a subtle wind force object in the scene (mine was pretty strong, but just to loosen things up you could go a lot weaker).

Hey, now that looks a lot better! I think I see now, perhaps the gloss gave it a nylon look... it still has some sheen, but it's not so obtrusive.

Hmmm, I think a little less volume and a bit of styling to make it straight and give bangs would have that one pretty close actually. Then there's the shader, of course.

Are you able to make a tutorial on how you got here, dadt?

The level of gloss depends pretty much entirely on your lighting and your specularity settings, which are completely in your own control.

So far as workflow, have you read the Poser manual? That's a good starting point, although it doesn't cover all the "gotchas". Artbee and some others also have some tutorials, but a lot of this is just gonna come by experience so you get a sense of things.

Of course, things would get a whole easier if dadt would distribute his (?) hair props. :)

Am gonna experiment and see if I can duplicate the hair props and layer like I mentioned in another thread.