Sivana opened this issue on Nov 10, 2011 · 130 posts
Sivana posted Thu, 10 November 2011 at 11:54 PM
Well, most of us have great rendersoftware and our Vic looks photoreal at last. Yes, there is good hairs in the shops, but on close-up renders this hair isn´t real at all. So I most use good old Kozaburo-Hair, and I really wonder why these old hairs are such top class products and no one of the vendors from today is abel to make hairs of same quality as Koz did many years ago?
shuy posted Fri, 11 November 2011 at 4:29 AM
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/index.php?vendor=3Dream
Hairs for closeup renders.
dadt posted Fri, 11 November 2011 at 4:58 AM
shuy posted Fri, 11 November 2011 at 5:19 AM
Quote - Dynamic hair is the best way to go for realism.
Dynamic hair does not fit to Poser renders. It looks like made with another software. Please do not find my opinion as a depreciating your work. Hair looks realistic, but does not fit to skin appearance.
I think this is main reason that hair room is not popular.
carodan posted Fri, 11 November 2011 at 5:32 AM
I'm thinking dynamic hair has much, much more going for it now that the speed it renders has improved as it has in PP2012. None of the examples here took more than 30 mins to render, the straighter cut hairs significantly less.
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carodan posted Fri, 11 November 2011 at 5:40 AM
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basicwiz posted Fri, 11 November 2011 at 6:48 AM
Dynamic hair has always appeared too coarse to me. Just a subjective opinion.
JenX posted Fri, 11 November 2011 at 8:03 AM
Carodan, those look better than most of the static hair props I've seen!!
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carodan posted Fri, 11 November 2011 at 8:55 AM
One of the things about prop based hair that's always bugged me is that from certain camera angles you pretty much always 'see' the structure of the polygon strips in one way or another in the final render. However good the textures are this is problematic for me. You've also got the problem of multiple layers of transparency in the more complex arrangements which don't always play well with advanced lighting and shaders. For very simple, close fitting styles you don't run into these issues so much, but it's still one of the things I tend to notice straight off in realistic renders.
Dynamic hair has, for a very long time, suffered from hefty render overheads. The only way we were able to use it without waiting days for it to render (if at all) was to optimise the strand counts & width settings to the point where it just never looked remotely close to realistic except maybe from a distance - hence to a degree the coarsness in appearance. Subsequently the few people who braved the hair room and made some of the hair pieces that fester away in freestuff were probably limited to achieving a certain level of refinement by not being able to effectively test what they were making. These valiant efforts have perhaps been further stunted due to Poser's hair room tools never really having been developed since ther introduction in version 5. There are good (very good) examples of dynamic hair out there but IMO most of them still lack a finesse in their construction.
So, until recently we've never really been able to refine our settings to reveal the full potential of dynamic hair. PP2012 has taken a huge step forward in terms of the speed we can render dynamic hair, so we've now been able to start refining it with the tools that have been there all along. We can lower the root and tip widths to very low values whilst at the same time dramatically increasing strand counts to maintain a full body of hair. I think the results are far better than we've ever been able to achieve in the past.
This isn't to say that there arn't still improvements that can be made to the dynamic hair tools in Poser, but we can at least use the ones that are already there to better effect.
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JenX posted Fri, 11 November 2011 at 8:59 AM
I agree with you on that 100%. The way the hair in the above image plays with the light is just phenomenal, especially that you can see through to scalp, like with REAL hair, lol.
You have a render in your gallery on Wix.com that has a girl with her hair tied back. Is that dynamic hair, too?
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carodan posted Fri, 11 November 2011 at 9:08 AM
Yep. That one's in my gallery here too. It's a more distant shot done in P8 so although it was using coarser settings you don't notice it as easily. The strands down at the base of the neck look a little thick though.
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JenX posted Fri, 11 November 2011 at 9:13 AM
I have just added it to my favorites, it'll be my go-to answer image in response to "no one can make dynamic hair look good in Poser. Because that's b.s. They just didn't try hard enough ;)
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carodan posted Fri, 11 November 2011 at 9:25 AM
lol:) I re-visited dynamic hair with every release of Poser since version 5, and until P8 I just sighed and went back to prop hair. It's not surprising so many folk don't give it a second thought. It's just that now it's really worth it IMO.
What we need now is for someone who knows a little about the structure of real hair to embrace the hair room tools and make some knock-out styles. I'm heading in that direction myself but I have little time and even less appreciation of hairstyles (except the 'messy' kind).
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JenX posted Fri, 11 November 2011 at 10:27 AM
Well, I definitely can't wait until PP2012 is in the budget :) I've always wanted Dynamic Hair to be more than it was, and now it is, lol.
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Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it
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shuy posted Fri, 11 November 2011 at 12:31 PM
Carodan - your dynamic hair reders are best hair Poser which I ever seen. Did you used default hair node setting?
SamTherapy posted Fri, 11 November 2011 at 12:39 PM
Carodan - on a completely unrelated topic - your model looks like a female Matt Smith, the current Doctor Who.
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carodan posted Fri, 11 November 2011 at 12:43 PM
These are the settings I used on the renders in this thread, with slight variances in colour.
Very important: don't leave 'opaque in shadow' un-ticked. It slows the render down to a crawl in the scenes I've been testing.
I'm using IDL with an environment sphere to light my scene plus a couple of standard lights. No AO - use IDL for occlusion, it's cleaner in the tests I've done.
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carodan posted Fri, 11 November 2011 at 12:46 PM
Quote - Carodan - on a completely unrelated topic - your model looks like a female Matt Smith, the current Doctor Who.
Ha! Yes, now I can't get it out of my head!
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carodan posted Fri, 11 November 2011 at 12:49 PM
I'm just in the process of testing what I believe to as 'accurate' a head of hair as is possible (at least in one respect). I'm expecting it to be a long render!!
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shuy posted Fri, 11 November 2011 at 12:51 PM
It is default Poser setting. I do not know how did you do it, but I never was able to render any figure where dynamic hair "cooperate" with skin. I always obtained effect similar to dadt. Moreover that was not only my problem. In Antonia thread more people tried to create dynamic hair for Antonia and had similar results.
I thought that Poser lights affect hair and skin different way. It might be true - I'm using P7 (no IDL) and as I rember most people did not used IDL.
Anyway congratulations :)
carodan posted Fri, 11 November 2011 at 1:02 PM
I think the real trick is in refining the hair. In Poser 9/PP2012 we can start thinking about it in terms of real strand counts and thicknesses. It sounds crazy to even attempt in Poser but the render speed has improved so much and the options are there to optimise the render settings that it is possible, and with half reasonable render times.
You have to get into the hair room and lower the root & Tip thicknesses on each hair group to around 0.15 or 0.2 (higher for hair groups that are mostly hidden). Then you need to dramatically raise the strand count for each group to ensure you have a full head of hair.
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NanetteTredoux posted Fri, 11 November 2011 at 1:11 PM
Carodan, thank you for showing those renders and the way you set up the hair shader. I need to play now.
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carodan posted Fri, 11 November 2011 at 1:15 PM
You're welcome Nanette. I've been having fun testing with some of your hair pieces - nice.
Remember - it's not just the shaders but the strand thicknesses and count.
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carodan posted Fri, 11 November 2011 at 1:21 PM
Something else: Gamma Correction (what was that groan?). But it is important, to prevent highlights from blowing out and shadows from burning the life out of the hair.
Not much help for P7 users, but important to mention. There's probably a way to GC in P7 using materials to modify the hair node.
I should also add that I'm using the 64-bit PP2012. which will be contributing heavily to the increased render speeds.
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basicwiz posted Fri, 11 November 2011 at 2:18 PM
As the leading opponent of GC in P8, let me assure everyone that the implementation in P9/Pro 2012 is EXTREMELY user friendly. Don't be afraid of it!
And Carodan...
Your hair renders completely blow me away! You could sell those in the market place and there would be buyers right now!
carodan posted Fri, 11 November 2011 at 2:59 PM
Quote - As the leading opponent of GC in P8, let me assure everyone that the implementation in P9/Pro 2012 is EXTREMELY user friendly. Don't be afraid of it!
And Carodan...
Your hair renders completely blow me away! You could sell those in the market place and there would be buyers right now!
Thanks.
But these are all just my refinements of other people's freebie hair pieces, in the main tweaking the strand count and widths. I'm only just now getting aquainted with the process of making my own.
The only thing that's new is the render speed of PP2012.
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carodan posted Fri, 11 November 2011 at 3:13 PM
So, I had to give it a try.
I'm informed by my top ten google results that the average brunette has appoximately 110000 hairs on their head. This is the first time that I personally have been able to get a render out with that kind of hair density.
Hair density 103079
Tip & Root widths 0.15
Render time 2 hours 39 seconds.
I used a hair piece (RDNA Colms 70's tacky perm) that had a single group for ease of adjustment. It's a little rough in places but I'm amazed it came out at all. I lowered my IDL render settings out of fear but I think it would still have rendered at the higher rate, only slower (might try that overnight).
So here it is, a dynamic hair render with an accurate(ish) strand density. Rock on PP2012!
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JohnDoe641 posted Sat, 12 November 2011 at 4:51 AM
That's totally awesome. I've been afraid of using DH due to slow rendering and just not really knowing what I was doing.
You mentioned that there's free dynamic hair out there? Would you mind pointing some out, maybe one for Miki3? :D
carodan posted Sat, 12 November 2011 at 5:18 AM
Most of the ones I've found usable are in the free stuff here (do a search for dynamic hair).
At the moment I'm happy to just play with these and use whatever works (whether they were intended for male or female etc).
What I do is use translation & scaling to roughly fit the hair to different figures and then make better fits to the skullcap using magnets.
You want an ok fit but I've found that it doesn't have to be perfect at all. Usually takes me about 5 mins to get the skullcap with hair attached into a usable position.
There are styles that will require a much closer fit but I haven't explored those much yet.
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carodan posted Sat, 12 November 2011 at 5:30 AM
Attached Link: RDNA thread with a post containing dynamic hair links
Here you go, try this. There's further info in this thread about what I'm doing to refine the hair too.
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RobynsVeil posted Sat, 12 November 2011 at 5:39 AM
I'm working on Antonia WM's shaders, and whilst waiting for renders on the PP2012 system, I'm messing with Adorana's Shena Hair in the PP2010 hair room. I've adjusted her size down to Antonia's head with dial-spins. parented the skullcap to her head in Hierarchy editor.
in the hair room, looks like I'll have to adjust values for all growth groups... tip width/root width: no dramas. Hair density... there's a ...xxx next to the "Hair Density" label. If I type in 5000 into the input field next to the scroll wheel, I get 107804. Was that how it's meant to be done?
And no, not to be rendered on this lappie in PP2010: my lappie would curl up its toes and start smoking. I'm just setting up this hair to render on our new girl later on the desktop.
Wow, real hair on a real girl: what a coup-de-grace! :biggrin:
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carodan posted Sat, 12 November 2011 at 6:51 AM
Yes, for hair density you're inputing a lower figure into the box provided and seeing how this affects the overall density.
In the case of Shena Hair you'd need to do the calculation over all the groups to arrive at the total hair density. Also it's worth considering that a physically accurate density is only going to yield good results if the structure of the hair is close to the distribution of strands on a real human scalp (I'm not sure if that's the case with Shena Hair). I used the 70's Tacky Hair for my test of a physically accurate density because the strands were distributed evenly over the entire scalp.
I wouldn't necessarily advise going for a physically accurate result straight off, and it's really a case of striking a balance between the hair density and the root/tip widths. For my tests that run under a half hour I was using 0.2 for both root and tip widths, and then scaling the density by a factor of 4 from what they were originally (if I remember correctly - I had messed with this previously so that may be way off). Trial and error.
I've only been getting these better times in PP2012 (64bit version). Not sure how P9 or the 32 bit version would cope. Dynamic hair was still very sluggish in PP2010
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carodan posted Sat, 12 November 2011 at 6:56 AM
Just as a note of caution, I can't say whether any changes were made between PP2010 and PP2012 relating to hair density settings. It'd be worth checking the numbers on a setup made in 2010 and opened in 2012, just to be sure.
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RobynsVeil posted Sat, 12 November 2011 at 7:05 AM
Good point! Oh, and so the ...
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Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
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carodan posted Sat, 12 November 2011 at 7:43 AM
Quote - Good point! Oh, and so the ...
is the total number on the head, supposedly. Might try for 50,000 and work my way up, just so my PC doesn't choke - 64 bit PP2012, but only 4 gig ram. :blink:
That number is the total per hair group, so you need to add up the numbers across all the groups attached to a skullcap.
There are 11 groups I think on Shena hair: Unten, HintenMitte, RechtsUnten etc. You need to increase the density of each of these so that together they add up to your total desired density.
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carodan posted Sat, 12 November 2011 at 8:44 AM
I don't know why they have one number that represents another like this. It's pretty confusing.
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randym77 posted Sat, 12 November 2011 at 11:07 AM
One thing I've always wanted to try with dynamic hair (but don't have the modeling skills for): a skullcap that is higher-res along the front, and maybe along the part, if there is one. That way, the hair could be thicker where the roots are visible, without having to make the entire skullcap high-res.
Eric Walters posted Sat, 12 November 2011 at 11:24 AM
Carodan!
There she is again- the most realistic poser lady! Could you please post a screen shot of your hair settings. I'm already a convert to your version of SSS skin! I tried dynamic hair with Ppro2010 and it just took too long to render. Now with 2012 I'm eager to revisit this.
Quote - Thanks Jen.
One of the things about prop based hair that's always bugged me is that from certain camera angles you pretty much always 'see' the structure of the polygon strips in one way or another in the final render. However good the textures are this is problematic for me. You've also got the problem of multiple layers of transparency in the more complex arrangements which don't always play well with advanced lighting and shaders. For very simple, close fitting styles you don't run into these issues so much, but it's still one of the things I tend to notice straight off in realistic renders.
Dynamic hair has, for a very long time, suffered from hefty render overheads. The only way we were able to use it without waiting days for it to render (if at all) was to optimise the strand counts & width settings to the point where it just never looked remotely close to realistic except maybe from a distance - hence to a degree the coarsness in appearance. Subsequently the few people who braved the hair room and made some of the hair pieces that fester away in freestuff were probably limited to achieving a certain level of refinement by not being able to effectively test what they were making. These valiant efforts have perhaps been further stunted due to Poser's hair room tools never really having been developed since ther introduction in version 5. There are good (very good) examples of dynamic hair out there but IMO most of them still lack a finesse in their construction.
So, until recently we've never really been able to refine our settings to reveal the full potential of dynamic hair. PP2012 has taken a huge step forward in terms of the speed we can render dynamic hair, so we've now been able to start refining it with the tools that have been there all along. We can lower the root and tip widths to very low values whilst at the same time dramatically increasing strand counts to maintain a full body of hair. I think the results are far better than we've ever been able to achieve in the past.
This isn't to say that there arn't still improvements that can be made to the dynamic hair tools in Poser, but we can at least use the ones that are already there to better effect.
carodan posted Sat, 12 November 2011 at 11:53 AM
Hi Eric
I have to say that the SSS skin shaders I use are the ones posted by BB over at RDNA so I can't really accept any credit for those (well, maybe some minor tweaks). They are good though arn't they!
I think I should really start a new thread going through this methodically - I've kinda hijacked three threads now here & at RDNA with this dynamic hair refinement.
There's not a one-size-fits-all explanation. All the dynamic hair setups I've adapted like this have been different in one way or another, although the concept is straightforward enough.
Maybe I sould pick a freebie hair piece and go through the process as a mini tut. I wish Adoradas Shena hair was still avalable because that's one of the nicest I've used so far - it shows in freestuff but the site it links to no longer has it. If anyone knows a location where it can still be found it's be very useful.
I'm quite busy over the next few days but I'll try to put something together next week.
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hemi426 posted Sat, 12 November 2011 at 12:25 PM
Maybe I missed it and it was said already, but I would also recommend to increase the verts per hair value to get smoother bends especially for the parting. In my example here I forgot that...thats Triora hair from Adorana btw.
Carodan: Thank you for your tips. Do you know if the root and tip width values are influenced by the units selected in the General Preferences dialog?
hemi426 posted Sat, 12 November 2011 at 12:44 PM
Render time 7min (SSS and IDL).
carodan posted Sat, 12 November 2011 at 1:28 PM
Nice renders facehugger.
I hadn't mentioned the verts per hair yet but yes, you can increase these where needed.
The root & tip widths don't seem affected by different units, but hair density is for some reason. This seems an arbitrary figure anyway (although I could be wrong). The input figure changes from e.g. 250 to 36000 when I change from inches to feet, but the hair density remains the same.
I have my units set to inches in any case.
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carodan posted Sat, 12 November 2011 at 2:56 PM
Quote - One thing I've always wanted to try with dynamic hair (but don't have the modeling skills for): a skullcap that is higher-res along the front, and maybe along the part, if there is one. That way, the hair could be thicker where the roots are visible, without having to make the entire skullcap high-res.
I haven't looked into the implications of mesh resolution on dynamic hair construction at all yet. Most of the examples I've been playing with have a relatively low poly count, evenly spread across the skullcap.
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carodan posted Sat, 12 November 2011 at 3:45 PM
I was just searching around for more info on dynamic hair and found this very nice example by vincebagna.
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randym77 posted Sat, 12 November 2011 at 3:52 PM
It was meant for the Poser 5/6 era, or thereabouts, and worked really well for animation. I did end up using a painted skullcap with it for closeups, though.
I really like that hair, and still use it, but it doesn't work as well in Poser 9. Both collisions and rendering are buggy, probably due to memory issues. I've got 12 Gb of RAM, but apparently, that's not enough with Poser 9. (Genesis Hair used to work beautifully with 1.5 Gb of RAM in Poser 5.)
I wish someone would make dynamic hair skullcaps. The skullcaps available for prop hair are too high-res. I'd like lower-res skullcaps, with high-quality textures (like 3Dream's universal skullcaps, only without that many polys). Maybe different resolutions for different uses (animation vs. closeups). And, like I said, with more polys along the hairline.
lover3d posted Sat, 12 November 2011 at 8:25 PM
lover3d posted Sat, 12 November 2011 at 10:53 PM
NanetteTredoux posted Sun, 13 November 2011 at 2:02 AM
I use PhilC's hair designer to ceate a fitted skullcap. Then I take it into Blender and edit the hairline. I usually need to cut away a few rows of polys from the forehead. I also group it in Blender, though you can do that in Poser. I like to subdivide the polys around the hairline and along the parting, usually around double density, it depends on how I intend the hair to fall eventually. I use centimeters for my Poser units so it is difficult to compare density figures, I am not sure how they work anyway. For me it is still trial and error. I have found that if the hair is too dense, it starts to look like plastic.
I don't like the hair exactly the same colour all over, so I often plug in a texture or a shader node to create some variation. The wood node is surprisingly useful to make highlights. Granite works. Or you can use a stone or fur texture. I used to use Adorana's hair colours a lot but now I prefer to play around and make my own.
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lover3d posted Sun, 13 November 2011 at 2:09 AM
Actually, the roots on someones head are darker than the tips. The hair on top of the head is lighter than the hair underneath it. That what i did in the posts above.
If you use IDL and opaque on, the highlights will be generated for you, so not really a wood node necessary.
hemi426 posted Sun, 13 November 2011 at 7:28 AM
carodan posted Sun, 13 November 2011 at 9:11 AM
lover3d - those look nice. Did you make them yourself?
facehugger - can't be a bad idea. I'm just starting to experiment with the differences between high & low poly skullcaps, specifically how the resulting hair structure looks when run in dynamic simulation and then rendered at high resolutions.
I'd love to hear any and all thoughts about experiments and approaches people may have used in creating DH. It's all new to me.
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lover3d posted Sun, 13 November 2011 at 9:23 AM
Carodan, the first one is kates hair piece. the second one, is the dynamic hair piece of Jessi. I changed it a bit, yanked up the hairs and also the vert count( between 45-80) and used on the roots a dark brown, and a much lighter one( in the same color scheme) on the tips. For the hair on the top i used a lighter brown than the hair underneath it. It works great with blonde hair too.
For rendering i used IDL with an HDRI light, just 2 simple lights thats all. Ive set the idl to 8. You can set it higher, but the calculating will take much longer then with almost same results. It's not the rendering that takes a long time at all, its only the calculation of the idl on the hair.
lover3d posted Sun, 13 November 2011 at 9:29 AM
Miki looks good with a bob.
hemi426 posted Sun, 13 November 2011 at 9:34 AM
Quote - Carodan, the first one is kates hair piece. the second one, is the dynamic hair piece of Jessi. I changed it a bit, yanked up the hairs and also the vert count( between 45-80) and used on the roots a dark brown, and a much lighter one( in the same color scheme) on the tips. For the hair on the top i used a lighter brown than the hair underneath it. It works great with blonde hair too.
runs off and installs Poser Pro 2012 hair
Thank you!
lover3d posted Sun, 13 November 2011 at 9:39 AM
The supplied hair pieces arent that bad, only the settings and the shader is wrong thats all.
lover3d posted Sun, 13 November 2011 at 9:42 AM
facehugger
**
**
This should also work in pp2010:) only a bit slower, i tested it already and looks good too.
carodan posted Sun, 13 November 2011 at 10:10 AM
My memory's getting bad. I've used both those hair pieces and still I didn't recognise them.
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carodan posted Sun, 13 November 2011 at 10:13 AM
What I'm also quite keen to get to grips with are the dynamic settings - how to set them up so as not to lose all the styling in a hair piece but still get some variation in draping for different poses. The defaults seem to mess most styles up.
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carodan posted Sun, 13 November 2011 at 10:15 AM
Also, can you use dynamics to set up a style? I was playing with a simple setup for very long hair and got a nice drape using dynamics but as soon as I changed any other settings the dynamics were lost. I really have a lot to learn here.
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lover3d posted Sun, 13 November 2011 at 10:26 AM
If you want to change the hair a bit, dont use the dials but use the hair tool icon, select the hair part you want, click on the hair tool item, use twist or curl or something else, and you also see root and tip, you can change teh slider to where you want for instance the curls, and a bit lower you see a slider with length. you can grow the hair there, without losing the style. Works much better.
And yes you can drape it also a bit. I nice trick is to use a pose on frame 1 and a different pose on frame 30, then calculate the hair dynamics. Then slide from frame 1 till a frame where you like the hair ( for instance if she bends a bit over the hair should be in her face more) if you like it then hit render and you have a nice dynamic hair wich follows all the poses, in animation but also in still images.
NanetteTredoux posted Sun, 13 November 2011 at 1:14 PM
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lover3d posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 9:32 AM
I made a very bright light and now you can see for yourself very well the hair contains lowlights and highlights just like in real life.
carodan posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 9:51 AM
I've done a similar trick here for a different effect, to give the hair a mix of grey hairs. You can plug all kinds of procedural or image map nodes into the hair node to vary colour, create streaks etc.
There were some good threads a year or so ago detailing some of these variations.
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carodan posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 10:09 AM
I'm not sure the hair room is supposed to be used quite like this as the strands do crazy stuff during simulation and arn't very controllable, but I really like how it creates a frizzy look in the final render without using kink settings which can tend to look a little uniform.
The hi res skullcap seems to lean toward a slightly more naturalistic hair for some reason - not great for dynamics or animation though (the simulation took ages).
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ThunderStone posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 10:16 AM
carodan! Oh wow! That looks more realistic. I mean when does people ever have a good hair day (except in fantasy, TV shows or movies). Could you please do a tut on hair room settings. I've tried almost every tut but could never get it to be as good as the ones shown here. Pretty please!!!
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carodan posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 10:17 AM
Actuallly, what would be really useful would be to have the option of driving hair length using image maps. I'm assuming we can't already do this.
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carodan posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 10:21 AM
Hi Thunderstone - I'm definitely going to do a mini-tut on adapting and refining existing hairs, including some of the hair room settings.This isn't going to happen quickly though as I'm very busy this week and really shouldn't even be online right now. As soon as I can.
As for creating new hair, it's all new to me. I'm just playing at the moment and learning from other peoples tuts. There's a lot to take in.
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NanetteTredoux posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 10:24 AM
Please bear with me, English is not my first language, and my true meaning may be getting lost in translation.
Lover3d, sorry I don't see the highlights you are talking about, or for me that is not what I mean by highlights. If you mean that bright, desaturated area that looks as if it is a semi-transparent object lying on top of the hair obscuring the strand detail, that is not what I want to achieve in my renders, that is what I want to avoid. The streaked look that Carodan shows is closer to what I am after, and I think he exaggerated the effect in order to demonstrate - what I want is more subtle. I would really like to be able to have hair that appears naturally shiny, but doesn't look like a flat polished surface. I think the specular colour needs to be somehow modulated.
Carodan, I really like that "successful failure of yours", I don't think it is a failure at all. I would love to know how you achieved the combination of relatively straight hair with slight frizz - it looks very natural. The hairline also looks very convincing. I always have a problem with the hairline looking too obvious.
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lover3d posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 10:34 AM
no the white thing is cuz of the light that is wrong setting of the light, its only a test render, you see the white patch is cuz i didnt block it from teh render with a mask, due to HDRI lightning thats all.
carodan posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 10:42 AM
Quote - Carodan, I really like that "successful failure of yours", I don't think it is a failure at all. I would love to know how you achieved the combination of relatively straight hair with slight frizz - it looks very natural. The hairline also looks very convincing. I always have a problem with the hairline looking too obvious.
Thanks Nanette.
What I did was really simple. I used a high res skullcap and grew a single group of guide hairs with 60 verts per hair, which I pulled fully back and also down a little. I also selected each half of the group and slightly parted them for a very rough centre parting.
I used a transition between two poses on the animation time-line, starting with the head looking up and ending with the final pose you see in the render. I then ran the dynamic simulation, setting bend resistance quite low, spring strength & position and root stiffness to zero. The simulation took hours (with collisions on) while I was out so it isn't a very practical technique. you also can't then go back and do any more styling or you lose the dynamic draping.
I think the higher res skullcap has something to do with the final effect, contributing to the sheer density and randomness of the resulting strand positions.
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NanetteTredoux posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 10:49 AM
It would be nice if one could "freeze" the positions of the dynamically draped hair. Personally I have had better results with medium to high resolution skullcaps, and with higher resolutions around the parting and hairline. It is easy enough to customise the skullcap for the style.
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randym77 posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 11:39 AM
I think "highlight" is the right word, Nanette. Here in the US, women (and some men) often pay a lot of money to have their hair "highlighted." That means coloring small sections of the hair to give a more natural look, add depth, etc. It has nothing to do with lighting.
In real life, most people don't have every strand of hair the same color.
NanetteTredoux posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 12:11 PM
Randym77: Getting to the age where nature does the "highlighting" for me (albeit in a nasty dishwater shade), I am only too aware of that!
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hemi426 posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 12:29 PM
Attached Link: V42Skullcap LowRes
Here's the link to the skullcap...
carodan posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 12:40 PM
Thanks facehugger.
I don't suppose I can be cheeky & ask if there's any chance of getting you to sub-divide this for a medium & a high res version?
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carodan posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 12:56 PM
Facehugger - did you uv map the skullcap? It's useful for using textures to drive hair effects.
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hemi426 posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 1:02 PM
I just updated the ZIP with a mid res and high res version. These are not yet UV mapped. The link is the same...
hemi426 posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 1:18 PM
Attached Link: V42SkullcapsUV
Ok, here's a new link:In the Runtime structure you'll find 3 UV-mapped Skullcaps (Low, Mid, High Resolution) in PropsV42Skullcaps. Can someone please check if the mapping is alright??? How can the texture influence the hair color?
carodan posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 1:33 PM
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hemi426 posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 1:47 PM
Did I mention I hate UV mapping with Hexagon? :blink: I will check if I can improve it. If someone wants to help, you're welcome....
ThunderStone posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 2:10 PM
facehugger, have you tried using UVmapper. It's free and can be found here
===========================================================
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Poser: Poser 11.3 ...... Units: inches or meters depends on mood
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Image Editing: Corel Paintshop Pro
Renderer: Superfly, Firefly
9/11/2001: Never forget...
Smiles are contagious... Pass it on!
Today is the tomorrow you worried about yesterday
Blackhearted posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 2:47 PM
Quote -
Another try with another haircut. I used less verts count this time, because the hair is longer and thicker. It is better to yank up the verts count( its around 50 in this one),to get it a bit smoother.
very cool!
gives me hope that well actually be able to get decent results with the hair room :)
regarding transmapped hair: the declining quality is likely a result of the massive oversaturation of hair products in the MP. the last transmapped hair to actually impress me was the Sapphire Fox hair by Quarker.
Cage posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 3:12 PM
Quote - It would be nice if one could "freeze" the positions of the dynamically draped hair.
This should be possible, using Python. Python has no problem positioning the hairs, so a script could read the worldspace vertex information and bake that into the geometry. I do something similar with a script for the clothroom, converting the dynamic cloth deformations into a series of morphs.
===========================sigline======================================================
Cage can be an opinionated jerk who posts without thinking. He apologizes for this. He's honestly not trying to be a turkeyhead.
Cage had some freebies, compatible with Poser 11 and below. His Python scripts were saved at archive.org, along with the rest of the Morphography site, where they were hosted.
Cage posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 3:39 PM
The attached script worked in my quick test, to bake the dynamics into a dynamic hair prop. It should also work to bake deformations into any other actor.
The script works on the currently selected actor, and will embed a geomCustom reference into that actor. The script isn't compensating for parenting when it handles worldvertex positions, so it will work best if the skull cap to which the hair prop is attached is in its default position.
The script can also be used to bake a morphed shape into a skullcap if, for instance, you've had to shape the skullcap for a character morph which affects the scalp. In such a case, I've found that the guide hairs still want to appear at the un-morphed locations of the skull cap vertices, in which case baking the morphs into the cap can be useful.
===========================sigline======================================================
Cage can be an opinionated jerk who posts without thinking. He apologizes for this. He's honestly not trying to be a turkeyhead.
Cage had some freebies, compatible with Poser 11 and below. His Python scripts were saved at archive.org, along with the rest of the Morphography site, where they were hosted.
Blackhearted posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 3:43 PM
"the last transmapped hair to actually impress me was the Sapphire Fox hair by Quarker."
actually i take that back, this is pretty damned cool:
http://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/alanis-hair/86047
carodan posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 5:59 PM
Cage - Cool script, I was just trying it out. I assume I'm not able to edit the growth controls after using it though - it re-set the hair when I did a moment ago.
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carodan posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 6:00 PM
btw, thanks for those skullcaps facehugger.
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Cage posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 7:33 PM
Quote - Cage - Cool script, I was just trying it out. I assume I'm not able to edit the growth controls after using it though - it re-set the hair when I did a moment ago.
Which tools were you using? I think the Grow Guide Hairs tools will always break any existing styling, but the tools (oh, those dreaded tools! :lol:) on the Hair Style Tool palette can be used without problems. The Styling Controls settings can also be altered.
===========================sigline======================================================
Cage can be an opinionated jerk who posts without thinking. He apologizes for this. He's honestly not trying to be a turkeyhead.
Cage had some freebies, compatible with Poser 11 and below. His Python scripts were saved at archive.org, along with the rest of the Morphography site, where they were hosted.
NanetteTredoux posted Mon, 14 November 2011 at 11:25 PM
Cage, thank you ever so much for that script!
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Cage posted Wed, 16 November 2011 at 12:32 PM
You may be able to deform or shape the hairs with magnets or the Morphing Tool, then bake the shape using the script. I'm not sure how well that would work, since the hair vertices could end up with wildly uneven spacing along the hair. But it should be possible. :unsure:
===========================sigline======================================================
Cage can be an opinionated jerk who posts without thinking. He apologizes for this. He's honestly not trying to be a turkeyhead.
Cage had some freebies, compatible with Poser 11 and below. His Python scripts were saved at archive.org, along with the rest of the Morphography site, where they were hosted.
Cage posted Sat, 19 November 2011 at 4:48 PM
I hope I haven't killed your thread. 
I wanted to note that I've tested a working process for editing Poser dynamic hair in an external application.
That process seems to work. Unfortunately, Blender's toolset doesn't make the process much easier, so I've only performed a proof-of-concept test and don't have any results to show. Other programs may offer more flexible tools for handling imported line geometries.
===========================sigline======================================================
Cage can be an opinionated jerk who posts without thinking. He apologizes for this. He's honestly not trying to be a turkeyhead.
Cage had some freebies, compatible with Poser 11 and below. His Python scripts were saved at archive.org, along with the rest of the Morphography site, where they were hosted.
Eric Walters posted Sun, 20 November 2011 at 3:26 PM
FaceHugger, Carodan, and all-
Thanks! I am going to revisit dynamic hair and join the thread
Photopium posted Sat, 26 November 2011 at 1:21 PM
Blackhearted posted Sat, 26 November 2011 at 1:24 PM
what is it about poser hair that always makes it look way too shiny - like its made of plastic. any way to tone down the specularity a bit?
Photopium posted Sat, 26 November 2011 at 1:27 PM
That is toned down from the default. I could go further with it. I think part of the problem is that the hair color is plugged into the alternate diffuse chanel, which makes it hyper bright in the first place. Just a guess though
Blackhearted posted Sat, 26 November 2011 at 1:31 PM
it might not even be about the highlights, but rather how 'un-diffused' they are.
dont get me wrong you guys are getting awesome results with poser hair. but there is still a distinct 'poser hair' look to it.
maybe it just needs some sortof blur and a way to diffuse the highlights a bit.
Blackhearted posted Sat, 26 November 2011 at 1:38 PM
it seems to me that poser dynamic hair highlights look like they are trying to emulate THIS, no matter what hair/hair color you use.
but the only time hair highlights look like this is when some fake blonde hollywood actress just stepped out of the makeup studio, and it looks just as jarringly unrealistic in poser as it does on a real person.
just trying to help.
Photopium posted Sat, 26 November 2011 at 1:45 PM
Blackhearted posted Sat, 26 November 2011 at 1:53 PM
its an improvement on the first.
it still seems to be a wee bit glowy and low-contrast - it may be your gamma settings or lighting. or a complete lack of hair highlights?
http://shortlonghairstyles.com/images/2009/06/Mila-Kunis-hairstyle-for-round-face1.jpg
http://0.tqn.com/d/beauty/1/0/Z/p/82169515.jpg
http://s.tidebuy.com/images/product/1/1714/1714992_1.jpg
http://0.tqn.com/d/beauty/1/0/t/x/Leighton_Meester.jpg
i would possibly suggest starting with a brunette base, and once you have that looking right then modify it into a redhead. getting a proper redhead look is tricky and might be easier once you have all the other variables worked out.
Photopium posted Sat, 26 November 2011 at 2:29 PM
Well, down the road. For me, it's rig first, texture later. I need to run some more experiments to see if I'm creating too much work for myself by having too many hair groups.
Photopium posted Sat, 26 November 2011 at 2:42 PM
carodan posted Sat, 26 November 2011 at 3:45 PM
DH needs to be optimised so it will drape and render quickly. What this means is that one growth hair is used to represent many rendered hairs via the strand density setting. One of the problems with this is that all those rendered hairs tend to follow their guide hairs rather uniformly - in real life there would be a much greater degree of randomness. We see this particularly clearly when a high kink setting is used. All those hairs clumped together form a mass that react as a single entity to the material properties assigned via the hair node. This is increased by the use of high root/tip widths that effectively mean that each hair has a larger surface area to react to light. This is why I think DH usually looks unrealistic - because we can 'see' the way it has been (over) optimised.
This is particularly the case when a very low poly skullcap has been used as a base - few growth hairs representing very many rendered hairs. Very little room for randomness.
One way to lessen the perception of the way DH is optimised is to use much higher poly skullcaps - more growth hairs that can 'do their own thing' and don't necessarily have to represent so many rendered hairs. The result is an overall more randomised effect, where hairs don't act so much as uniform clumped groups.
In one of the examples that I posted earlier (posted again above) I used a moderately high poly skullcap and forced a randomisation of the growth hairs by allowing them to dynamically drape and collide with each other. I also used a realistic overall strand density of about 100000 hairs with very low root & tip widths. The result is an extreme 'messy' style but it's interesting because I used a hair node setting with quite a high level of shine. This shine hardly registers at all because the clumps of hair are so much more randomly positioned than in a normal DH piece. It far more accurately represents what I think happens in a real head of hair where there is a much higher degree of randomness, even where the hair falls in curls or clumps. It doesn't attempt to look like the photos you posted but hopefully you can see some correlation in the appearance of this rendered result to what you are looking for.
Now, in terms of the problem with shine, we can just tone down the specular in the hair node - easy - but I don't think this necessarily solves the whole problem. IMO only by using higher res skullcaps with much highre strand densities and lower root/tip thicknesses can we start to achieve the randomness and fineness of real hair. The improved speed of the 64 bit PP2012 has at least allowed the possibility of exploring this with reasonable render times. The draping is still painfully slow so of no use to animators, but I'm loving the results and the freedom to play with this more freely.
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carodan posted Sat, 26 November 2011 at 3:54 PM
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carodan posted Sat, 26 November 2011 at 3:58 PM
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carodan posted Sat, 26 November 2011 at 4:43 PM
I'm starting to think that the collision dynamics in the hair room could do with an overhaul. Seems very prone to explosive reactions compared to cloth dynamics.
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RobynsVeil posted Sat, 26 November 2011 at 8:36 PM
Quote - its an improvement on the first.
it still seems to be a wee bit glowy and low-contrast - it may be your gamma settings or lighting. or a complete lack of hair highlights?
http://shortlonghairstyles.com/images/2009/06/Mila-Kunis-hairstyle-for-round-face1.jpg
http://0.tqn.com/d/beauty/1/0/Z/p/82169515.jpg
http://s.tidebuy.com/images/product/1/1714/1714992_1.jpg
http://0.tqn.com/d/beauty/1/0/t/x/Leighton_Meester.jpg
i would possibly suggest starting with a brunette base, and once you have that looking right then modify it into a redhead. getting a proper redhead look is tricky and might be easier once you have all the other variables worked out.
No question that polygon hair is a bit like the RSR in other discussions :biggrin: - yesterday's technology. Here's the best I can do:
... and this strategy ...
...doesn't work for all kinds of hair. It's polygon hair. Looking forward to getting Antonia WM to bed so I can play with dynamic hair! 
Monterey/Mint21.x/Win10 - Blender3.x - PP11.3(cm) - Musescore3.6.2
Wir sind gewohnt, daß die Menschen verhöhnen was sie nicht verstehen
[it is clear that humans have contempt for that which they do not understand]
carodan posted Sun, 27 November 2011 at 10:37 AM
It's still a little more messy than I'd like but I was able to bake the dynamic drape using Cage's clever script, then go back and increase the hair vertice count and tweak using the styling tools. This is getting closer to what I'm trying to achieve in randomising the hair to give it a more natural density and look. I'm finding longer styles are much harder to achieve, but this is still just messing about really. I'm thinking out loud with what I'm posting here. I don't know the ins and outs of the hair room too well, and I'm approaching it somewhat from a rendering point of view, sort of trying to reverse engineer the effects I want.
This rendered in almost exactly one hour btw. Not bad for 70000 hairs, IDL and RT shadows.
The problem for me now is one of control. The dynamics are hit and miss in the hair room with individual hairs often flying off uncontrollably, collisions failing such that hairs end up in the body etc. We could use some extra fine tuning control over the influence of the dynamic sims, rather like that we find in the cloth room.
It might be easier to have some kind of feature to handle randomisation of the rendered hair density rather than having to use more guide hairs to achieve the same thing. It'd certainly mean simulations would run faster.
Anyway, I'm hoping to put together some kind of report on dynamic hair over Christmas to send to SM in the hope of getting some more development for future versions. If anyone would like to contribute or do the same I think it'd be well worth the effort. I'm really seeing a potential that I'd personally love to see moved forward.
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Photopium posted Sun, 27 November 2011 at 1:32 PM
Same problem I'm having, the shadows the hair casts at the bottom are obnoxious and blotchy.
How to iron those out, I wonder?
richardson posted Sun, 27 November 2011 at 2:13 PM
carodan,
Your last test render is getting quite nice. Is there a hair thread with some settings posted?
,r
carodan posted Sun, 27 November 2011 at 3:18 PM
Attached Link: RDNA dynamic hair thread
This was a thread at RDNA that started off with an issue a user was having with dynamic hair apparently locking up Poser. We solved that and I posted a few of the refinement tips I've been using.I've just been having fun with it in PP2012, converting freebie hair pieces made by others and dabbling with simple stuff in the hair room, so there's nothing really comprehensive. I was intending to do a mini tut with what I have been doing, including a sample setup, but haven't had a clear run yet to get it together.
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carodan posted Sun, 27 November 2011 at 3:26 PM
William_the_bloody - just a guess but some of that shadow blotchyness may be IDL or SSS related due to hairs that are intersecting the figure mesh. May lessen with higher IDL render settings.
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Michael314 posted Sun, 27 November 2011 at 3:53 PM
>
> I wanted to note that I've tested a working process for editing Poser dynamic hair in an external application.
>
> - Export the guide hairs. Poser is able to export line .obj files.
> - Edit the hair in a 3D modeler which supports line geometries. I was able to test this using Blender 2.48. Blender 2.60 no longer seems to support line .obj import, out of the box, although there may be an add-on script for that.
> - While editing, do not move the root vertices for the hairs.
> - Export the shaped guide hairs.
> - Load the new shape as a morph target on the original hair prop in Poser.
> - Set the morph to 1.0 and bake the morph into the geometry, using the bake script.
>
> That process seems to work. Unfortunately, Blender's toolset doesn't make the process much easier, so I've only performed a proof-of-concept test and don't have any results to show. Other programs may offer more flexible tools for handling imported line geometries.
Hello cage,
I tried this approach, exported the guide hair vertices, edited them in blender, exported as .obj again, but I fail loading the morph target. I cannot load it for the hair parent prop (a subdivided square here), because that one expects a morphed square, and I cannot load it for the hair itself, because I have no "load morph target" button there at all. What do I do wrong?
Best regards,
Michael
richardson posted Sun, 27 November 2011 at 4:08 PM
Thanks
Might get more people into it.
TooL_PePe posted Fri, 02 December 2011 at 6:24 PM
I just wanted to say thank you to everyone involved in this post. I avoided the Hair Room like the plague since forever, and this thread helped me learn about some of the do's and don'ts. I will say, that Dynamic hair can be truely daunting, but if you have the patience it can produce wonders!
Feel free to stop by my gallery to see what I've learned. The images 'Rough Patch' and 'Milk' use what I have learned (Nudity Advise). I didn't want to post the pics here as this has been an 'advisory' free thread, and I'm not one to muck that up!
Anyway, I am still learning the ropes, and check this thread daily as it has been envaluable! So thanks again!
-Jeremy
Cage posted Fri, 02 December 2011 at 9:01 PM
Quote - Hello cage,
I tried this approach, exported the guide hair vertices, edited them in blender, exported as .obj again, but I fail loading the morph target. I cannot load it for the hair parent prop (a subdivided square here), because that one expects a morphed square, and I cannot load it for the hair itself, because I have no "load morph target" button there at all. What do I do wrong?
Best regards,
Michael
The morph must be loaded onto the hair itself, if you exported the guide hairs and that was what you edited in Blender. I was able to import the morph target using the "Load Morph Target" option from the "Object" menu, at the top of the screen. It does look like a dynamic hair prop has no morph loading option on its Properties tab, which perhaps suggests that the Poser dev team doesn't want us doing this sort of thing. :blink: (I'm sure they've just never considered the value of loading morphs onto dynamic hair. After all, they've apparently felt the Hair Room design tools were perfectly fine, since 2002. :lol: :unusre:)
===========================sigline======================================================
Cage can be an opinionated jerk who posts without thinking. He apologizes for this. He's honestly not trying to be a turkeyhead.
Cage had some freebies, compatible with Poser 11 and below. His Python scripts were saved at archive.org, along with the rest of the Morphography site, where they were hosted.
TooL_PePe posted Fri, 09 December 2011 at 12:28 PM
It's amazing what this Hair Room can do, it's just so dang frustrating sometimes! lol
Take care everyone!
-Jeremy
Photopium posted Fri, 09 December 2011 at 7:05 PM
I feel confident in the hair room now, as long as I'm not simulating (:-S)
unrealblue posted Sat, 10 December 2011 at 2:08 AM
So i tried playing around with the dynamic hair styling tools. It was one of those things i keep track of with each version, hoping (like with dynamic clothing) that they've improved it.
Mostly i care about dynamic since i enjoy animation. For obvious reasons, dynamic cloth and hair makes this easier :)
The latest poser pro does a great job of improving rendering times. However, the dynamics engine is brutally slow. once i have a long hair style, one that drapes down the back and shoulders, it takes an hour (dual core Mac Book Pro with 6GB RAM) to drape the hair. And the drape effect is a mess. The hair becomes spastic when it hits the shoulders. And I styled the hair so it should drape nicely over the body. What gives?
I'm really hoping that dynamic cloth and hair are high up on the dev team's list (thickness and elasticity, please).
Sigh.... Still using ploy hair (i read that U3 uses dynamic poly hair a'la "cloth hair" which i tried and cannot get results that are even remotely realistic looking)
carodan posted Sat, 10 December 2011 at 5:47 AM
Something I've realised just lately is that sims tend to run much more quickly under certain circumstances, one being in a fresh load of Poser.
Also the dynamics are far smoother and quicker if the hair strands (certainly within groups) are not tangled or touching each other at the start of a sim. This is easier said than done if you've styled the hair extensively to start with.
With long hair I've been using fewer verts per hair (20 or 30) for the sim, baking them with Cages script and then increasing the verts. This probably isn't of use to animators unless it can be automated to bake each frame (not even sure if that's possible).
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unrealblue posted Sun, 11 December 2011 at 7:32 PM
Quote - Something I've realised just lately is that sims tend to run much more quickly under certain circumstances, one being in a fresh load of Poser.
Also the dynamics are far smoother and quicker if the hair strands (certainly within groups) are not tangled or touching each other at the start of a sim. This is easier said than done if you've styled the hair extensively to start with.
With long hair I've been using fewer verts per hair (20 or 30) for the sim, baking them with Cages script and then increasing the verts. This probably isn't of use to animators unless it can be automated to bake each frame (not even sure if that's possible).
That makes a lot of sense, but it's really hard to achieve using the limited styling controls. In fact, it makes perfect sense. I've noticed I can lock poser up easily by simply running a hair simulation with collissions and have the hair start inside the body. Locks up, every time (on OSX - says app not responding - maybe it's just super slow?)
If worst comes to worst, couldn't you brute force the baking on a frame by frame? I mean, run the simulation in draft mode, use a script to export each frame of hair as it's own prop running it through cage's script. Then, when it comes time to final render, you run another script that advances the frames, loads the frame hair prop, change the verts, render, rinse repeat :)
The second script loads each frame to render, it loads the correct frame hair prop, makes the vert change, renders, then goes to next frame? It could dump those frames to the queue manager which would still kick them out to different network render nodes a'la a normal animation.
Wait, can we even access the queue manager via python? I though we couldn't, in PP2010. I suppose it's possible to figure out the inputs to the queue manager and call it as an external command.
Or, can you export the hair simulation frame geometry in such a way that you can load that information back into the prop at the correct frame? I haven't looked into what a hair simulation looks like at a file level.
Cage posted Sun, 11 December 2011 at 9:08 PM
Quote - Or, can you export the hair simulation frame geometry in such a way that you can load that information back into the prop at the correct frame? I haven't looked into what a hair simulation looks like at a file level.
The internals of the dynamics file are mysterious and hidden from us. But the geometry of the hair is just .obj format using line geometry. The dynamics file, like that for cloth, seems likely to be like a series of morph deformations, present either as deltas or as actual vertex positions.
What you might be able to do is run the sim using the lower resolution, then spawn a morph target on the hair for each frame. Then to animate, set the vert count to the number of verts compatible with the morph, bake, raise the vert count, and repeat for each frame.
That is, assuming the morphs would still be present and valid after the vertex count has been changed. I think they should be, based on experiments with different methods of geometry switching in Poser.
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Michael314 posted Mon, 12 December 2011 at 2:12 PM
Cage, thanks for the trick how to import the morph target for the strands, it works!
This brings up the idea that for certain "poses", this could be included into the hair, like "bend head back", "turn left", "wind right", as seen a lot in transmapped hair.
Now, these morphs would ideally be set in the scullcap object and then ERC-like apply to all hair groups. I guess that's where the native Poser support ends, because it's not a figure. Maybe some script (like parmatic) could apply a dial change to child hair props (just dreaming).
Actually, also magnets work on strand based hair!
With the morphed strands in blender, I'm getting further to design my first strand based hair for Antonia. I attach a WIP (2 scan lines replaced by a render without the hair, because I suffered from a similar Poser lockup (2 squares never finished rendering, so I had to kill Poser). I'll try the suggestions from the RDNA thread referenced above.)
Best regards,
Michael
Michael314 posted Tue, 13 December 2011 at 12:03 PM
I changed the hair node parameter "opaque in shadows" to "yes". The overall look is changed a lot. It's a lot faster (this image took only 10 minutes to render). The skin in the hair's shadow no longer shows the blueish tint. The back hair is no longer glowing (illuminated by the rim light), but shows much more the desired effect.
My only issue is now the bald spot on the forehead. I just don't remember any more how I got rid of that in the previous picture. I upped the hair density to insane numbers (2 million (a unit "meter"), that's 78000 hairs just for that hair prop), tried to mess with the root softness, no avail. Too bad I have no access to the setting which was active for the crashed render.
Best regards,
Michael
Michael314 posted Tue, 13 December 2011 at 12:56 PM
P.S.: The hair density of 2 mio corresponds to a hair density of 1290 if your units are inches. My default (final render quality) hair density settings never exceed 500000 (320 in unit inches).
MistyLaraCarrara posted Wed, 18 April 2012 at 8:17 AM
is it possible to 'spawn' a morph for a strand group, without the import/export step?
Thanks.
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RedPhantom posted Wed, 18 April 2012 at 10:15 AM Online Now! Site Admin
Are you looking to create an injectable morph or to save a morph to a new hair prop?
I don't know of a way to do the first, sorry.
You can add morphs with the morph tool and then resave the prop with those morphs if that helps.
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MistyLaraCarrara posted Wed, 18 April 2012 at 11:08 AM
thanks RP
i was looking for a way to move strand guide hairs and save it as a morph so i could manually move strand hairs in animations.
the morph idea sounded promising
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ash365 posted Mon, 27 January 2014 at 10:38 PM
Just wanting to keep this thread alive, I'd really love to see more advancement in poser hair :)
This is the luck I've gotten out of it so far:
Does anyone have general styling tips? So far my best results have come from a layering technique, where I do the bottom layers first, almost like styling a wig. I've yet to try the styling script I heard about a while back....
RorrKonn posted Mon, 27 January 2014 at 11:02 PM
Quote - Just wanting to keep this thread alive, I'd really love to see more advancement in poser hair :)
This is the luck I've gotten out of it so far:
Does anyone have general styling tips? So far my best results have come from a layering technique, where I do the bottom layers first, almost like styling a wig. I've yet to try the styling script I heard about a while back....
with dynamic hair make a "skull cap if commercial" with a texture that works with the hair color
and as much hair as ya PC can stand.
conforming hair, 3*'s more strands then ya ever seen.especially at the ends.
I've never thought much of Poser's hair dynamic or conforming.
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Faery_Light posted Wed, 29 January 2014 at 10:51 PM
Well I knew better than to keep viewing this thread, now I am going to have to have a go in the hair room.
But it will have to wait until I finish up two or three other projects. :)
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