So. I have both Poser (PP2014 and 11 Pro) and Daz Studio. Render the same charact in both programs and the hair looks VASTLY different. The Poser Firefly Render - the hair is... darker. Less life like. Daz Studio IRAY, simple import of the character from poser, no adjust ment of materials, and the hair looks much more realistic. I know the main difference come down to the render engines. Is there a way to get the hair more realistic looking in Poser? Like D3D's perfect hair?

In Poser 11 yes. Superfly can do much more realistic hair. Mat-room guru bagginsbill did a wonderful shader to help it along.

Here is a quick (excuse the graininess) render of Biscuit's Bibi hair using BB's superfly shader:

and HERE is the SmithMicro forum thread on the development of the shaer and links to the set up.

Thanks for the link. This issue is, Superfly takes entirely too long for it to be used for production of my webcomic. I render in Firefly. Is there anything I can do in that render engine?

Check out this thread and you can set up your shader accordingly. https://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2889551

Kalypso posted at 5:10PM Tue, 30 October 2018 - #4338537

Check out this thread and you can set up your shader accordingly. https://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/?thread_id=2889551

Thanks! I found some interesting options on this link as well: https://forum.smithmicro.com/topic/1580/we-need-a-hair-shader-like-this-for-poser-shader-gurus/112

I think thats mostly what I'm looking for.

Well, I am a cotton headed ninny mugging. I had Poser set to render in the back ground. I can MAYBE use Superfly after all.... Still pretty slow....

Knyght, are you working with trans-mapped hair or dynamic strand hair? What model(s)? And, may we ask that you post a render, from any setup, that represents your ideal goal hair render. Thanks.

The prop for this render is "Wild Hair" Firefly, with high settings. It's about a 7-minute render with DOF turned on, probably a few minutes with it off.

::::: Opera ::::

I'll post a render of the current shader on the GraceLion hair tomorrow morning. I'm fairly happy with it currently

@ operaguy:

This is also "Wild Hair", but with my own shader applied, and all bells & whistles switched on (raytrace, cast shadows, light emitter).

Of course this put a heavy toll on my rendering time: Almost three hours! [1]

But you can't have quality for nothing. The only consolation is that the smaller the render (unlike this full-blown portrait) is, the faster it will render.

So it's up to you to decide what you want: A few hair strings hung on a skull, or a nice looking hair. You must weigh the pro's and con's. And I even know of some people who let such a portrait render cook for a day!

The meme "having a bad hair day" is certainly applicable to Poser if you set it up wrong..

K

FOOTNOTE [1]:

Don't despair! The "Wild Hair" is a beast to render even with the lowest settings, just because of it's amount of strands and their very high polycount (almost 47,000 polys altogether)

ADDENDUM: Why does it take so long to render?

Think of a tennis ball that you throw at the nearest wood. Let's presume you are Superman and can throw that ball with indefinite energy.

• If there are only a very few trees, the ball might hit one, bounce off this, then hit the next and bounce off to hit the next, until it has, by a few bounces, passed the tree line after a few moments.

• But if there are MANY trees in the wood, the ball would bounce off again and again and again because there are just so many trees. One tree is always in the way of the straight trajectory. So it will take a whole lot longer for the ball to bounce off all those many trees before it finally has passed the wood.

Those "trees" are your hair strands, and the ball's "bounces" multiply your render time. You can reduce this (partially) by reducing the "Raytrace Bounces" in the render settings to 1 or 2.

However, it comes with a decrease of quality. And if your character is wearing spectacles, or you have a glass (or a mirror) in your scene, you MUST set the Raytrace bounces higher than 3 (even 5 or 6!) - with disastrous results to your render time.

There are other factors too which have an effect on a hair's "realistic look", but discussing this here would be way to complicated for this clumsy forum with it's limited ability to upload files and screenshots.

...But at least it now supports "Emojis"... XD

Hope that helped

K

Hi KarinaKiev, good to meet another WildHair fan! I've been using it for years and years, and never found a hair model as good as it. I wish I had the WildHair model with the part down the left or right.

I recently learned the trick of subdividing hair for final render. Now that blasts the render time. I don't care, I'm an overnight guy.

I like the look of your render. Can you say or hint or indicate the shader you added?

::::: Opera :::::

Hi operaguy,

the hair shader setup (and a few example renders) can be found here: http://sasha-16.forumprofi.de/showthread.php?tid=117&page=1

K

operaguy posted at 4:18PM Fri, 09 November 2018 - #4339451

[...] I wish I had the WildHair model with the part down the left or right. [...]

Why not look here:

http://sasha-16.forumprofi.de/showthread.php?tid=117&pid=713#pid713

Cheers!

K ;)

WOW!!! I wish all my wishes came true like this.

Karina, thank you tremendously for this powerful morph. It not only provides adjustment for the part, it also solves the "fit" issue for V4, and pulls the part itself together in a realistic way, no scalp-peek.

Thank you thank you!

::::: Opera :::::

You're welcome!

Initially the scalp movement L/R was a separate morph, but I decided to combine it with the parting movement for more ease of use.

Making the scalp fit V4 was the first thing I made because it's essential.

As you can see all works quite well.

K

[Whoops! accidental delete...]

Here's a render with SSS and AO injected onto the WildHair model in the Material Room. It does not add much time to the render.

If you're rendering with GC on in Firefly make sure you set your transparency maps (and basically any greyscale maps) to GC 1. If not, they will not render correctly. You can easily do this for everything using greyscale maps in a scene by going to you menu Scripts:MaterialMods:changeGamma Enter a value of 1, OK, select all props and figures, OK, select all of the above, OK and you're set!

Hi Kalypso,

I can't see where to change/set the GC in the material room, on any transparency map or image map. Meanwhile, I've got the GC set to 2.20 in render settings. See below. Please tell me why that is wrong and what will change/improve if I set it to 1.0 when rendering with Global Illumination.

::::: Opera :::::

Did you follow my instructions above? It's easier to do it via the Scripts menu instead of manually doing it for all materials for all figures and props.
Here's a screenshot of the material. You will need to click on Image_Source and get the Texture Management popup. There you can choose between using the gc from the render settings or customizing it.

No, I didn't follow your instructions. With all due respect, my nature is to ask why first. Doctors hate me for this.

It will help to know what the reason is to set GC to 1.0. Why is the default of 2.2 wrong for GI, and what will change/improve when I set the render setting to 1.0.

Meanwhile, thank you for illustrating where to find the setting in the material room. If I undertake to globally change all to 1.0, I'll follow your instructions on how to do it from the script, as I am sure to miss some doing it one at a time.

::::: Opera :::::

Any GC higher than 1 on any greyscale map will mess with the intended effect. In the transparency the result will be thinner and more transparent hair sometimes with visible patches in my experience. This has been discussed extensively on the forums so you can check here and for a more detailed explanation here

Oh and you can find Snarly's scene fixer here to do what I described above even faster :)

This is Juno Hair by Biscuits. Straight out of the library, I spun none of its morph dials. I did not subdivide the hair model. V4 with Lana Elite skin maps from Daz. SSS by EZskin.

The render required 4 hrs 18 minutes with Firefly. Poser Pro 11 on Windows PC Core i5 8400 8GB RAM, no video card.

I applied Karina's SSS shader to the hair with no changes (except plugging in the two image maps.) Normals forward. GC 1.0 on all B-W hair and body transmaps, 2.2 on the color maps. You can see my render settings below.

If anything, I think it is "too" crisp. Makes the hair look dry. I didn't try to fix that (or any other issue) in postprocessing. Perhaps more specular is needed.

It's quite a balancing act to get the lighting of the hair to match the lighting of the skin. If so inclined, I think my next approach would be to export out of Poser .exr and open in a graphics app that can control tone mapping HDR.

::::: Opera :::::

Settings: