Reiss Studio just updated their hair beta tonight for the BodyStudio plugin, and I just want to say 'well done'. The hair is now looking quite good.

Damn! That is looking awesome! You know, I am STILL looking for some independent feedback on this product before I take the plunge. Have there been any 3rd party reviews yet (magazines/web pages)? A few people here have stated they would write up reviews, but to date none have done so. - Ray

Attached Link: Reiss Studio, home of BodyStudio

There's about to be a review in japanese... :) actually I think we're going to be having a number of reviews soon. We had a lot of interest at Siggraph. Ray... send us an e-mail at service@reiss-studio.com, I'll fill you in. Toolstech... Cool image! dang your fast... we just uploaded the thing 2 hours ago 8-) and thanks for the "Well done!" it's appreciated. cheers! -Josh

I'll add to that, the product ROCKS. Well done, well done :)

toolstech, can you make a larger image with light asting shadows, please? josh & co. converted me to use p5, maybe they'll even make use p5 hair! ;) josh, did you get my mail conceirning that "comma and point"-bug?

"josh, did you get my mail conceirning that "comma and point"-bug? " yeah! We found a related issue, and put in a fix in the latest version. give it a shot, and then mail us back at service@reiss-studio.com cheers! -Josh

do you mean in this last hair beta?

Hi Aleks. Not sure what you were asking about regarding the shadows...The lighting in this pick is one of the DAZ complex global lighting sets, using raytraced lights in max. But here is a larger pic. In this beta they have added some parameters to adjust the hair thickness a bit, as I understand it. I haven't tried that yet, but if I understand correctly I could make the hair a bit thicker with just a few parameter tweaks. I may have to try that next.

oops, the image would help.

thanks a lot, toolstech. i wanted to see how those strands look like when they cast or receive shadows, since poser tends to ignore them most of the time. no offence, but they don't look better in max either, wiry and angular... i don't see shadows at all, btw. which light is supposed to cast raytraced shadows?

Ive tried a strand based solution for poser hair using Cinema 4DXL's hair plugin Ive since gone back to transmaps :-) and no Offense but the hair you depict here has a wirey "hair transplant" look to it not realisitc at all as my attemps were nt

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YouTube Channel

Um, wolf, were you implying that your attempts look more realistic or were you agreeing that yours did not look realistic either... The wording is a tad bit confusing. - Ray

My attempts were NOT realistic :-) and frankly neither are the ones posted by toolstech no offense intended but tha hearline looks like bad hair Transplants

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YouTube Channel

lol, none taken. But it didn't look any better in Poser5 either. Partly the hair width. Partly the number of strands. Partly the fact that the skull cap for that hair piece doesn't fit the models head (hence the hair plug look to the forehead). It was just a quickie. The entire point is that p5 dynamic hair, with textures, is now working in Max.

Oh, and for comparison, this is what I was comparing against when I got so excited. From an earlier beta...

I think another point I should make is that it can be tough to judge the quality of the plugin based on the quality of my renders. I, frankly, stink! :) For a fair comparison, here is the Poser 5 firefly render of the same scene, with raytraced shadows. And yeah, Aleks, I see what you mean by the shadows bit. I have always had a bit of trouble with the lighting in Max. It is much brighter than the same light set in Poser, and I think it just washes the shadows out.

Hi Toolstech! Great images... based on this we went back and found the hair roots are shading wrong! :) we will have a fix in the next beta. (Wolf359, you were right... it is getting that pincushion look, but we're going to get rid of it.) cheers! -Josh

isn't it possible to turn those hair angles in curves?

Attached Link: Reiss Studio, home of BodyStudio professional Poser Plug-ins

Hi Guys! Toolstech, based on your render, we tracked down the issue with the "pincushion" look and fixed it! we're uploading a new beta to the server. (2_0_9k_hair_beta). it should be there in the next 15 minutes. cheers! -Josh

Thanks Josh. And here is the updated render. The others have a point. In Poser, the hair seems more curved where the Max render has some rather sharp angles. But the hair plug effect is gone. And I still can't seem to get shadows to render, no matter what I do.

Attached Link: Reiss Studio, home of BodyStudio professional Poser Plug-ins

Hi Toolstech! for the curveness of the hair, have you tried adding a "smooth mesh" modifier in max? We didn't want to put the overhead on all the hairs automatically, but I'd love to see if this handles the issue when you get close. cheers! -Josh

ps, also grab the new "m" beta :)

I don't know.. I look and look at renders of the Poser 5 hair and I just don't like it. For all the time it takes to render and so forth it just looks crummy. Usually, it's so bright that it doesn't even match the lighting of the rest of the picture, or it's so crinkly it either looks burned or made of hay. I'll stick to the traditional hair models for now.

hi milla! we're not talking about the hair inside p5 here (as seen in render from message 16, which is bright) we're talking about the hair which is translated into max throught the bodystudio plugin. Render from message 20 shows that, and in max it's integrated with the color of the scene, using the same lights. cheers! -Josh

Josh, I know what you mean, but it still doesn't look all that great to me. The simulation of strands running down her forehead look more like wires to me than actual strands of hair. Hair should appear delicate and this looks like that bendy wire you can buy at the art supply store. It doesn't match to the delicate look of her eyelash or eyebrow hair.

Hey Josh, I'll put some updated images up here when the renders are done. But I think I'll state for right now that the mesh smooth modifier does not appear to be an option for the hair curvature in max, at least not with beta M. Once that is applied, only the guide hairs render. BTW, I am getting some nice ray traced shadows now. Images pending, the renders are taking a bit of time :)

Cool on the renders! we'll take a look at the smooth modifier here, I bet I know what it's doing. we can see if we can make the modifications to have it work! cheers, -J

Here is the render showing the result with mesh smooth on the hair objects that I mentioned before. If you can get this modifier to work, I think that will go a long way.

Hah! ok, I know what the problem is... when you put the smooth on, you're getting our reduced display geom, so it's not showing correctly. We should have a fix for this shortly :)

Thanks. And while I am thinking of it, lol ... While you are working on the fix for the mesh smooth modifier, you might want to look at this change that took place in beta M. All other textures loaded fine, but something happened with how the skullcap loads in the latest beta, as seen here. That didn't show in the last render with the mesh smooth modifier because I manually changed the texture to a skullcap texture prior to rendering.

BTW, I think I found the cause of the skullcap texture problem. The skullcap has the texture group name skinhead, which is the same as the texture group name for the face. Thus, it is loading the face texture. It was this way in the previous images, too, but was loading the texture actually applied to the object before beta M.

You might want to consider adding more hairs to increase realism, if that is feasable (I don't actually have P5 or Max, but I'm interested in the whole dynamic hair idea). I haven't looked closely at others (I'm going to be staring weirdly at everybody's scalps now, thanks a LOT :-) and maybe it varies from person to person, but when I look at my own in the mirror, the hairs are noticeably closer together (and that's at the top where I'm starting to go bald!). I can see my scalp through most of them much like the renders above there, but along the sides the scalp is only visible on the very edge.