Hello!

I'm working on a dynamic cloth hair, and have gotten quite far, until I ran into a really pesky problem while trying it in different poses..   If V4's head is turned or tilted during the simulation, the cloth will continue to collide with something, as if there is an invisible object somewhere.

I've tried a ton of things to solve this, including trying a new, clean project, colliding just with the head, different cloth room settings, longer simulation (The hair will NOT settle, unless it slides past that invisible.. whatever it is), I've tried different parenting options, with no success.

The image included shows what it looks like using a simplified one side only piece of the hair without textures. It's dynamic except by the top of the head which is constrained. I even tried taking a simple piece of cloth, draping it over her head, and it gave the same result.

Anyone have any clue what can be causing this, and how I can fix or work around it?

The cloth uses hex triangles for optimum speed and quality of simulation.

Update: This error occurs in Poser Pro 2012, I just tested this in Poser 7, and the problem did not arise. It also works with Andy in Poser Pro 2012

I see the same problem with a highres clothplane and V4s head. It looks like the original position of the head is not updated during calculation. It does change somewhat if you lower the offsets and  friction, but it will never settle the right way.

Looks like a bug here. Are you going to report this to Smith Micro?

 

I probably should report it. In the mean time though, I wish there was some sort of work around so I can continue with the project. Got some really cool ideas for good cloth hairs, but this kinda puts a damper into it. :)

Not sure if this will help in your situation, but change the Fold resistance to a very low value, this will make the fold go away

 

Tried that.  Seems like there is a -piece- of the head that it collides with, not the whole thing. I made another experiment and made the whole hairpiece constrained. Even then, the portion where the dynamic group would collide with whatever it is in empty space did the same thing to the constrained group, like a stretched out block about the height of her ears...

I set the fold resistance to 0 and it settled to the head, but there still is a fold which looks odd.

Best is to report it and hope a fix will be included in the next SR of full version (whatever comes). If it is not reported, it won't get fixed.

I've started a ticket with Smithmicro, providing them with what we have so far here.

Great, I'll report it as well

 

I think that there can be any JMC magnet. Try craeate phantom head - head shape prop but less resolution. It really helps. V4 head has number of polygons on ears, lashes etc. Their normals have different directions and it can cause simulation errors.

Quote - I think that there can be any JMC magnet. Try craeate phantom head - head shape prop but less resolution. It really helps. V4 head has number of polygons on ears, lashes etc. Their normals have different directions and it can cause simulation errors.

You may be right. It looks like the ears have something to do with it. But P7 ran the simulation ok, so something must have changed in the behaviour of posers clothroom

 

Quote - I probably should report it. In the mean time though, I wish there was some sort of work around so I can continue with the project. Got some really cool ideas for good cloth hairs, but this kinda puts a damper into it. :)

For a workaround, can you just do the sim in Poser 7, spawn a morph, save the scene, and then load in PP 2012 to finish the work?

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PoserPro 2014, PS CS5.5 Ext, Nikon D300. Win 8, i7-4770 @ 3.4 GHz, AMD Radeon 8570, 12 GB RAM.

If I want to continue working with the hair, I'll have to stick to Poser 7.  Saving a morph won't really do much since it's a cloth hair.  Reopening the project again in PP2012 to work on materials and so on would work though.

The idea has been to make something that can eventually be distributed, but it'll be hard to make anything that can be distributed if people are forced to use a certain older version of Poser.

Quote - I think that there can be any JMC magnet. Try craeate phantom head - head shape prop but less resolution. It really helps. V4 head has number of polygons on ears, lashes etc. Their normals have different directions and it can cause simulation errors.

I made a test with this, using the skullcap parented to the head for the simulation. Turns out that the hair's constrained group will not follow the skullcap unless the head is included in the simulation too.

It turns out that JoeBushido's cloth hair doesn't have this issue. It's a conforming item with the hair included as a prop which is then simulated. Why this works is beyond me though.

Ok something really weird happened. I was messing around with turning on and off different collision objects, and suddenly it started working. When I reloaded the project again and did the same type of things, it was back to it's normal weirdness though. Can't for my life figure out what made it suddenly work.

Constrained groups do not works against props. You can make it choreographed.

Maybe it is a bug, but if there is any magnet different Poser version can select different way child props. Default setting should not include magnets o colliding group, but maybe P9 does not recognize it as a magnet.

Nevertheless I think that transparent prop resolve problem faster and easier then SM fix Poser. Moreover you can join hair strands and head phantom as a 1 prop (choreographed group)

sample

Choreographed didn't do it either. The constraints still won't follow the parented skullcap. :/ It also raises another problem, which is the rest of the body. It's a very long hair, so it needs to drape over arms, chest, back etc. If any V4 bodypart is selected, not just the head, the same weird thing happens.

SM is on the case at the moment trying to help figure out what's going on and finding a workaround, too.

 

Quote - Constrained groups do not works against props. You can make it choreographed.

Maybe it is a bug, but if there is any magnet different Poser version can select different way child props. Default setting should not include magnets o colliding group, but maybe P9 does not recognize it as a magnet.

Nevertheless I think that transparent prop resolve problem faster and easier then SM fix Poser. Moreover you can join hair strands and head phantom as a 1 prop (choreographed group)

sample

try deleting V4's eyebrow bone

Quote - try deleting V4's eyebrow bone

Yeah I tried all sorts of mutilation, but the bug persists even if I disable the head in collisions and only collide it with say the chest.

Ok, revisiting this thread with some updates, and a challenge!

Earlier in June, I spent over a week with SmithMicro, who did all they could to help me test and resolve the issue, but we weren't able to do it. It seems to be an issue specifically with the Generation 4 figures (happens to M4 too), which is what I want to make the hair for.

I've got really nice ideas for this hair, got photo sources made and everything is set, but this issue still persists. One option is to make each "piece" thinner, that way they would probably just slide around the bump, but it wouldn't be a great solution, especially for animation. 

If I can finish the hair, it will be available completely free for the community. I'm making it because I'd like nice, flowing -long- hair that doesn't take 3 hours to pose with handles, or with the really long calculation times in the cloth room.  I am sure there are others who would enjoy it too, if it turns out well..  So is anyone out there interested/willing to help out testing or troubleshooting, figuring out a workaround?  If you are, just lemme know and I will send some test props! It'd be cool to see if we could make some really good dynamic cloth hairs for the Poser community.

 

There have been some improvements in this area done in SR3
The simulations I did with a cloth and a v4 head were better afterwards. Without having the actual item I could not see if it improved this particular problem

Have you tested it with SR3? And has it improved? I am happy to volunteer and help you with this

 

Pardon, but what is the collision offset in inches?  Oh, and I'd be willing to try this out.  I don't like conforming. 

I've tried SR3 and it made no difference. The collision offset hasn't done anything either.  What's the best way to send you the obj files, want to PM me your mail adresses, or is there another method here that works better?

Ok I've emailed it to one person, just drop me a sitemail with your email and I'll send it.

Here is a description of how it's set up:

Two obj files, one with just the base hair, and one with a soft decorated group. It's quicker to just test with the base hair first.  It has the following groups:

 

"constraint" for the hair roots to keep them from falling
SC1_auv for the skullcap, probably works best constrained too

"Hairbase" for the main hair, and "Hairsoft1" for the full hair, a test with soft decorated groups to add thickness to the hair.

 

The skullcap is made in Wings, and the strips were made in MD2 and then attached in wings. I found that the hex triangles that I get from MD are -way- faster than quads.  The full hair with soft decorated groups is 20k polys, and gives no problems as far as simulation speed. Could probably double it and it would still do fine (just might, if it ends up working, with more thickness)

 

The main problem that arises is if you run a simulation where V4 tilts her head or moves to the side, with some sort of invisible bump there. It shows clearly in the image in the first post.

 

Also, please feel free to use the skullcap and hair strips to make your own hairs!  All I ask is that the resulting hair is made freely available for the community.  If you want more hair strips I can make them easily.

At first glance it looks like the inner and outerlayer of the hair strips are mixing with eachother at some areas. This also happens to be the area where the problem occurs. It then looks like that as soon as you tilt the head the simulator gets confused at this point and only calculates the outerlayer at that area, with the result that the inner layer pushes the outer layer out.

You said that you used MD2 to create the strips. MD2 simulates differently as the clothroom in Poser and probably has no problem with the overlapping layers. I wonder if you can get the outer layer not to touch the inner layer would make it work. I tried to create a new group for the outer layer, but that is pretty difficult if not impossible in poser because of the overlap. If I had that group I could have moved it away from the inner layer and test it that way

I am going to do some more experiments tomorrow after I get back

 

 

Hmm, I see what you are saying, but I don't think the probem is in the hair model. The screenshot attached shows what happens with a simple quad cone made in wings, draped over her head, when she moves to the side. It seems to happen to any kind of geometry simulated there, if the character is V4/M4.

 

When the simulation continued, it stretched too far, and kind of 'snapped', like a rubberband. I am guessing that has something to do with the cloth room's stretch parameters.

Very interesting.  I want to say that I haven't had this problem with hoods, but I can't remember because the other problems I've had with hoods trumped everything else.    Easy enough to check...

Yep, same problem.  I have to suspect that this is a fairly new development, considering the large number of dynamic cloak products I know of and have seen used. 

edit:  Just to clarify, I mean cloaks for V4 specifically.

It's really strange.   It tends to work better in a bit older versions of Poser.  I just tested it in Poser 7, and it works fine, so like you are saying, it's probably fairly new. I recall it being problematic in P8/2010 as well.

OK, now this is interesting to me.  I had the same problem with V4 WM.  Who does not have as many or the same magnets as V4, and doesn't have the same rigging (obviously).  I'm checking now to see if the pure obj has the same problem.

Quote - It's really strange.   It tends to work better in a bit older versions of Poser.  I just tested it in Poser 7, and it works fine, so like you are saying, it's probably fairly new. I recall it being problematic in P8/2010 as well.

It's ironic you say this, because I just refrained from commenting in the thread asking for release dates to say how relevant they are.  This is a prime example.  I know of some dynamic cloaks for V4.  Their promo renders wouldn't have been possible with this problem.  If we knew when they came out, we might be able to hazard a guess about P8/2010 without testing it there.

Edited to add: The sim using the imported obj didn't go very well, but it seemed to not go well in a correct fashion.  If that makes sense.  Trying something else...

I think I found the solution for the problem

What you need to do is to make the eyebrows visible then run the simulation but with the eyebrows excluded from the collision targets. After the sim you can turn off the eyebrow again.

It looks like the sim collides with the eyebrows in its original position even when invisible and not a collision target. Making it visible and excluding it makes the sim work.

This is a weird bug

Can someone confirm it is working this way?

A picture show show how it looks now after draping

 

 

I had my project up just now, so tested right away. Making the eyebrow visible and running the simulation did the trick, very funny bug to be sure!

Well, now it's at least possible to make this hair, even though it needs some special treatment in the clothroom!  Maybe it's possible to get this issue fixed in the next version of poser, since we know what it is.

I still have the ticket open with SM, so I can send this information to it, so they have it.

Quote - I had my project up just now, so tested right away. Making the eyebrow visible and running the simulation did the trick, very funny bug to be sure!

Well, now it's at least possible to make this hair, even though it needs some special treatment in the clothroom!  Maybe it's possible to get this issue fixed in the next version of poser, since we know what it is.

I still have the ticket open with SM, so I can send this information to it, so they have it.

Yes, send it in. Please do as soon as possible.

Do you have a texture or template for the hair?

It's still be cool to keep this thread open and juggle ideas for making good cloth hairs. The community would benefit a lot from them. I need two hairs for my own projects, a long, wavy female hair and a long pony tail. I'm going to start there and see how it goes.

One issue is when the dynamic hair intersects with itself, creating render artifacts. The one to the right has no soft decorated group, only a bunch of cloth segments. The one to the left has a soft decorated group over it, a first layer of thickness which does look a bit better! 

If I have too many layers, they may cut into each other, if I have too few, they may create too many gaps. There's also the issue of when the character tilts her head. More than one layer is kinda necessary, like up at the top, some that begins down at the ear and so on, otherwise she will look very bald underneath when she moves her head in any unusual position. The textures is a first rough, just to get a general feel how it works, with a really rough trans map too.

I know it has a ton of potential, just need a smart method to do it.

Quote - Yes, send it in. Please do as soon as possible.

Do you have a texture or template for the hair?

Responding to the ticket now!

I just corrected the UV maps in the latest version, the one I sent didn't have much work there, and has some UVs all over the place. Just starting this, it's our first hair. Got some photosources to work with. Done a ton of dynamic clothes, so I understand the basics of hair, too.

One suggestion. Parent the hair to the head and exclude the cap from both constraint and dynamic. It makes draping faster and avoids some crumbling effects if it does not fit 100%

 

 

Im soo glad i found this thread, im currently also making a dynamic cloth hair,but ive paused to perfect my hair shader that currently works with most transmapped hair. my aim is to make dynamic cloth hair that is 100% node based with no images,including no transparency maps,(this shader does currently exist but is being tweeked).im also putting in a few little tricks which im keeping under my hat for the moment.....i will post info on my dynamic cloth hair if people want when im back in the cloth room.....oh and dont try windforce with the hair in sr3 it is also broken, you have to use a pre sr3 poser 2012/9  or an earlier version of poser

Getting old and still making "art" without soiling myself, now that's success.

Quote - One suggestion. Parent the hair to the head and exclude the cap from both constraint and dynamic. It makes draping faster and avoids some crumbling effects if it does not fit 100%

 

That's a really good idea!

Quote - Im soo glad i found this thread, im currently also making a dynamic cloth hair,but ive paused to perfect my hair shader that currently works with most transmapped hair. my aim is to make dynamic cloth hair that is 100% node based with no images,including no transparency maps,(this shader does currently exist but is being tweeked).im also putting in a few little tricks which im keeping under my hat for the moment.....i will post info on my dynamic cloth hair if people want when im back in the cloth room.....oh and dont try windforce with the hair in sr3 it is also broken, you have to use a pre sr3 poser 2012/9  or an earlier version of poser

Looking forward to see what you come up with!

My biggest challenge right now is to figure out how to give hair thickness without getting weird render artifacts that come when the dynamic segments intersect each other. I am pondering if I should make a lot of small strands, or maybe a single big like hood for the main style with just soft decorated segments over it. A lot of thick layered hair segments doesn't work so well at the moment.

It may be possible to use more than one hair prop though? Self collision usually doesn't work nearly as well as layers of clothing.

You need to make the constraint group a bit wider as well. Some layers start to fly off with the current constraint area

And yes, the UV maps are a bit of a mess in the version I have.

Ah!  That makes sense as a problem.  It was bothering me that it was a problem with the figure and not the prop, even when the figure was completely different.  I'm so glad you guys figured it out!

I think your hair solution depends a lot on your end goal.  For me, hair is a basis more than a finished step.  I have a hair shader I'm pretty happy with at the moment, and I've always used hair that I can pose well.  But the only purely realistic hair I've seen has been custom made for a still, taken from a photo, or painted.  Including pro level dynamic hair.  So for me, as long as it's not in the entirely wrong place or doing something so wrong I need to do a lot of fixing, I really don't care.  For me, a simple hair mesh that worked sort of like a softbody would be preferable to something that was strandy but full of errors. 

Also, I'm pretty sure I've seen someone at CG Society show off dynamic hair styles as theirs that were hair that followed some top Poser hair meshes, including some Kozaburo ones.  If you could use your cloth hair to do for strand hair what skull caps do for regular mesh hair, as well as serving as some sort of guide, that would be really powerful.  I think a lot of what makes dynamic hair so scary is styling.  If it was possible to do a basic style with mesh, get strands to follow each piece, and then just run the dynamics, that might make dynamic hair more usable.

Oh, and as much as this requires a workaround, so do a lot of commercial dynamic cloaks.

 

Okay, this is what i've got....(nudity in animation)

http://jrdonohue.com/clothhair3.mp4

I don't seem to have the (eybrow?) bug.

So, what shader/maps to I put on this, and I wonder if it will look like hair in animation if I do.

It would be great, because the simulation churns at about 2-3 seconds per frame, even with collision.

Any suggestions for making it look like hair?

::::: Opera :::::

 [edited to add: I am not colliding against "head" because it was not giving good results because of ears. So, i have a very low res proxy (you can't see it) parented to the head, and the prop parented to the proxy. you may see a little "whoops' with the nose, that's because I carelessly did not ease the nose inside the proxy!]

 

Quote -  

Okay, this is what i've got....(nudity in animation)

http://jrdonohue.com/clothhair3.mp4

I don't seem to have the (eybrow?) bug.

So, what shader/maps to I put on this, and I wonder if it will look like hair in animation if I do.

It would be great, because the simulation churns at about 2-3 seconds per frame, even with collision.

Any suggestions for making it look like hair?

::::: Opera :::::

 [edited to add: I am not colliding against "head" because it was not giving good results because of ears. So, i have a very low res proxy (you can't see it) parented to the head, and the prop parented to the proxy. you may see a little "whoops' with the nose, that's because I carelessly did not ease the nose inside the proxy!]

 

 

Looks like you have a similar approach like the one I have. A skullcap and then strands attached to the top.

I'm also working on having layers underneath too, so all the hair doesn't come from the top of the head.  The difficulty seems to lay in getting the thickness right. I thino that soft decorated layers is the key, but I haven't quite figured it out yet. Hair props have a long turn around time, it takes a while to make something before testing. :)

As far as making it look like hair, hair textures with trans maps is probably the way to go, (Unless you are really good with the material room)  that's what I'm doing. There is a ton of hair resources around.

Quote - Ah!  That makes sense as a problem.  It was bothering me that it was a problem with the figure and not the prop, even when the figure was completely different.  I'm so glad you guys figured it out!

I think your hair solution depends a lot on your end goal.  For me, hair is a basis more than a finished step.  I have a hair shader I'm pretty happy with at the moment, and I've always used hair that I can pose well.  But the only purely realistic hair I've seen has been custom made for a still, taken from a photo, or painted.  Including pro level dynamic hair.  So for me, as long as it's not in the entirely wrong place or doing something so wrong I need to do a lot of fixing, I really don't care.  For me, a simple hair mesh that worked sort of like a softbody would be preferable to something that was strandy but full of errors. 

Also, I'm pretty sure I've seen someone at CG Society show off dynamic hair styles as theirs that were hair that followed some top Poser hair meshes, including some Kozaburo ones.  If you could use your cloth hair to do for strand hair what skull caps do for regular mesh hair, as well as serving as some sort of guide, that would be really powerful.  I think a lot of what makes dynamic hair so scary is styling.  If it was possible to do a basic style with mesh, get strands to follow each piece, and then just run the dynamics, that might make dynamic hair more usable.

My end goal has for some time to have nice, long wavy hair that doesn't need so much adjusting for a custom figure. My female characters are often more bigger and full bodied, with a ton of morphs, which makes working with conforming hairs challenging. It takes so many rounds with the morph tool and magnets to get them to fit, and then if I move the character in leaning pose, the hair still hangs at the wrong angles.  It -is- doable with a lot of work for stills, but if I want animations or a more "in movement" pose, it's frustrating.

I'd like to get a nice, rich long hair that also gives the illusion of thickness. That's why I am playing around a lot with soft decorated groups.

I am pondering if having fewer layers of dynamic hairs, more like one or two big elements (easier to style too), and then a ton of soft decorated strands over it may do the trick.

The problem with multiple dynamic layers is when they go into each other, some intersects just look really bad in render.

 

Another type of hair I want to make is a version of the same long hair tied up in a pony tail. I gather this is much easier. All I need is a dynamic tail, with a ton of soft decorated hairs layered over it, should do the trick.

With hex triangles, poly count and simulation speed doesn't seem to be much of an issue any more, so the main challenge is to get the styling and layers work right.

Ok I think I am getting somewhere!

I'm making two hair props. One has the lower layer, that starts at ear level and goes down. The thick strands are "sown" together, creating more like a loose cap than strands, giving the hair completeness.  Then I am making another prop on top of it that starts from the parting on top of the head. This will collide with V4 and the underlaying prop. I haven't added any soft decorated strands yet, but I think it could work!

The clothroom likes separate props layered on each other much better than self collision, probably for obvious reasons, since the self collision will have a harder time deciding what goes on top. 2, or even 3 separate props and the top one having soft decorated groups for styling and thickness really could be something. They are layering as they should. Now it's just a matter of refining everything and getting it right. 

MD really is nice for making those strips! They are automatically made as hex triangles, and the strip comes unwrapped straight, easy to texture. They just need to be organized a bit. The screenshot shows with and without test texture, and no transmaps.

The basic thickness is starting to take shape, shown on the right side. After that layer is done, I'm gonna add thinner stray hairs, and under layer thin hairs too to make it look more alive. Nothing is trans mapped yet and the texture is still a rough for testing

It's a a simulation and it actually has volume which is really neat!

Really impressive!

Now another weird issue has reareded its ugly head.  When I run the simulation with soft decorated layers, it goes completely bananas and starts to fold on itself, even though self-collision is off.

I thought the soft decorated group was just supposed to follow the dynamics, and that the dynamics would not try to interact with the soft decorated group? Even though it looks like it is, in this scenario. It even happens if I just run a drape.

Has anyone ran into anything similar?

Meanwhile I am going to explore different venues of multiple dynamic layers.

The trans maps are starting to take shape. The images shown only uses the skullcap and two layers of dynamic cloth. So it looks a bit too flat and thin for my taste. I'd like to make another go at figuring out why the soft groups are acting so weird so I can get some more volume.

I'm just thinking.  If you have no self-collisions on, and soft decorated pieces follow the cloth underneath it, could the soft decorations get confused by other pieces of cloth?

> Quote - I'm just thinking.  If you have no self-collisions on, and soft decorated pieces follow the cloth underneath it, could the soft decorations get confused by other pieces of cloth?

Hmm, just tried that. With just one piece with decorated hairs, and nothing else. Self collision on/off. Same thing happens.  In the simulation it looks like the soft decorated group starts shifting a bit, then the dynamic group tries to follow it, and the decorated tries to follow that etc.  If I set a really long simulation time, the hair has pretty much wrapped itself into a crazy mess of knots.

I've seen soft decorated groups go out of sync before, like falling through the clothing and not matching, but this.. this is just weird. Right on par with the eyebrow thing!

The attached picture shows what happens after simulating for 300 frames. It doesn't stop moving, but just keep rolling itself up more and more

No, that wouldn't necessarily be the solution to what I'm talking about, .  I'm not saying put self-collisions on.  I'm just saying that soft decoration follows whatever cloth is underneath it.  I don't know if it only follows the cloth that its next to when the sim starts or it follows whatever cloth its next to while simming.  If it's the latter, and the cloth underneath it gets tangled, it might cause the soft decorations to get confused.  No collisions would mean the cloth would overlap, which might cause the soft decorated groups to behave strangely.

That isn't to say that turning on self-collision would necesssarily stop overlapping.  I'm just saying that without self-collision it will almost definitely overlap, which might cause problems ofr the soft decorations. 

I have no clue what the solution to that would be, but I'd test first to find out.  Which I'd probably do by testing one set of layers. Basically, I'd separate the problem into layers and strands rather than both at once, just to narrow down the problem.

Ok, I've done some more investigating and found out what causes the problem.  If a decorated -edge- goes too far from the underlaying group, it goes completely crazy. Here you can see what happens at 0, 40 and 500 frames.

In this screen are 3 other examples.  In the left screen is a similar hair strip where the edge goes far down beyond, it seems fine.  The second has a decorated strip closer to the underlying fabric, no problem.  The third I modified the second to curl out the hair at the bottom. The moment it got enough distance, it wouldn't work properly in the cloth sim any more.

Now, if I make the distance greater anywhere else, not close to a edge, the whole thing works just fine. It doesn't seem to get problematic later on in the sim either, even if layers overlap and such. As long as it "connects" right at the beginning of the sim, it works fine later.

Unless there's a workaround for this, the only way to do decorated strips is to keep them close enough to the underlying fabric, and if waves are needed, make sure the edges don't lift up too much.. Could always make it curl out towards the bottom, then connect back again, closer, and use trans maps. It's a bit more complicated, but would probably work.

Very interesting, as well as frustrating.  That rather explains part of an experience I had with a dynamic necklace lately.

You don't care about self-collision, right?  Then you can do waves in your displacement.   If you have nice simple flat mapping, like most hair, you can even make your waves procedural.  If you've given your strips several maps (7 or so seems to be the norm), you can even offset them a little so that you automatically have waves that are a bit individual to each strip.  I'm sure there's a way to get the waves to vary in size randomly. 

If you want, if you send me this latest version, I could take a whack at it.  I'm pretty good at materials in general, and I've spent a lot of time on hair.  I've been using my own hair materials and my own diffuse hair texture (blonde- I just adjust that one texture to get the color I want) for several years now.  My latest hair idea involves SSS and (optionally) reflection.  Soft reflections with Fresnel can really help a lot, if the hair mesh is simple enough to render transmapped reflections without taking a millenium.

Quote - Very interesting, as well as frustrating.  That rather explains part of an experience I had with a dynamic necklace lately.

You don't care about self-collision, right?  Then you can do waves in your displacement.   If you have nice simple flat mapping, like most hair, you can even make your waves procedural.  If you've given your strips several maps (7 or so seems to be the norm), you can even offset them a little so that you automatically have waves that are a bit individual to each strip.  I'm sure there's a way to get the waves to vary in size randomly. 

If you want, if you send me this latest version, I could take a whack at it.  I'm pretty good at materials in general, and I've spent a lot of time on hair.  I've been using my own hair materials and my own diffuse hair texture (blonde- I just adjust that one texture to get the color I want) for several years now.  My latest hair idea involves SSS and (optionally) reflection.  Soft reflections with Fresnel can really help a lot, if the hair mesh is simple enough to render transmapped reflections without taking a millenium.

By correcting the bottom of the soft strips, they are starting to behave better, one by one!  Funny that you are talking about displacements, I was thinking too of adding some of that to the top layer.  My texture is currently made with waves, including the trans map. If you give me a day or two to get this part wrapped up and cleaned up, I'll send you the hair!

I'd love to see what you can do with it, and how you think. Especially if I get a chance to learn more about materials in the process.

Ok, I redid the model from scratch, except the skullcap. Soft decorated groups are completely out of the question, no matter how they are made, they will get tangled up and cause some amazing bugs.

So instead I am going completely with multiple cloth objects, that I can collide with one another (Or not, I am testing which works best)  Initial tests with displacements are going well. Although multiple layers will go through each other when I make waves. An alternative is to only let the top layers have the waves. Initial tests have shown that using displacement waves only for top layers seems to work best.

Another tricky area is the parting, near the forehead, getting that one to look good.

The hair texture and trans map needs some work too. It's my first hair model, so it's taking some work to get it right. But bit by bit I think we're getting somewhere!

Another thing I'd like to do is to make an extra layer that has loose "fly" strands, using displacements, to get a bit of that wild, dynamic look.

Currently I have 4 layers. They each begin lower and the top one start from the parting. That way it will actually appear thick when the head is turned rather than look like it all comes from the parting. This means 4 simulations in the cloth room. And a 5th if I use flying strands, too.

It's not as bad as it seams. Using hex triangles, the simulations go really, really fast even when each layer uses 9-12k polys.

I think it looks great.  I think this is just perfect for what polygon hair should do.  I'd love to learn more about how you made this.  My own thoughts about dynamic cloth hair have been more towards trying to figure out how to make cloth work like a soft body, like in a video I've seen of Hatsune Miku.  I didn't think I could get layers to work.  But you've done an excellent job here.  I'd love to see it in motion or upside down.  It seems exactly like what I'd love to use.

WOw!  I have to say that does look pretty amazing.  great work.

MY ONLINE COMIC IS NOW LIVE

I aim to update it about once a month.  Oh, and it's free!

Glad you like it! Having a very busy week, so it's moving slowly. But I'm currently reworking the trans maps, and will then figure out the displacements and stray hair layer. I have absolutely no experience with hair shaders though, so I'll take any help I can get there.

I have a recent post with a decent quickie hair material.  If you don't use the reflection in it, you can use a broad specular node instead.  Just to say, I don't usually color my HSV nodes like that, and most of my materials have conservation of energy and other features built into them (and are scripted, for that matter).  I also use the Custom_Scatter node a bit differently in general.  But very dark hair can be a bit more work.  Anyway, I can send you that material if you're interested. 

I also have other example renders of my hair materials, if you're interested.  I usually postwork my hair, so you might want to see the originals.

I'd love to see some of the renders of your materials! It would be nice to distribute this hair with some sort of shader. I gather that a shine/specular map should be made for that, too, or?

Quote - I'd love to see some of the renders of your materials! It would be nice to distribute this hair with some sort of shader. I gather that a shine/specular map should be made for that, too, or?

No problem!  I'll gather some together soon.

It depends on what you mean by that.  Hair isn't generally shiny in some places and not in others.  A map controlling specular value specifies exactly that, even though it's generally and completely inaccurately based on diffuse maps and has all sorts of surface detail where there's no difference in shininess of a material at all.  Highlights in hair are should be placed based on the shape of the mesh and the placement of the lights. 

I use textures to tint the color of the highlights, because they look more accurate with a bit of tint.  Technically, that shouldn't be necessary and SSS should take care of softening and spreading highlights.  In practice, I still find it helpful. 

In chronological order, my P7 works...

Quote - No problem!  I'll gather some together soon.

It depends on what you mean by that.  Hair isn't generally shiny in some places and not in others.  A map controlling specular value specifies exactly that, even though it's generally and completely inaccurately based on diffuse maps and has all sorts of surface detail where there's no difference in shininess of a material at all.  Highlights in hair are should be placed based on the shape of the mesh and the placement of the lights. 

I use textures to tint the color of the highlights, because they look more accurate with a bit of tint.  Technically, that shouldn't be necessary and SSS should take care of softening and spreading highlights.  In practice, I still find it helpful. 

Huh, didn't realize it worked like that. Well, that's pretty good and saves the bother to make specular maps. Shinyness can really differ in different hairs too, at least from what I get from reference pictures. Anything from matted barbarian hair to a conditioner commercial... I've used the material room mostly for clothing, and for altering existing hairs and skins to get the results I want.

Those are some really nice highlights!

And my P9 works, with the very latest being last.  Everything except the second hair style in the P7 uses my hair texture.

Those look great too!

If it's alright with you, I'll play around with the materials in that post you linked to get a good starting material for the hair?

Quote - Shinyness can really differ in different hairs too, at least from what I get from reference pictures. Anything from matted barbarian hair to a conditioner commercial... I've used the material room mostly for clothing, and for altering existing hairs and skins to get the results I want.

Oh, definitely.  It's just that you don't generally need to do finer control than to set the shininess for a particular hair material you're working on.  If you have really poofy hair that's pulled back, the pulled back part might be shinier than the poof.  But that's about the only time you'd have different.

I've done quite a lot of work with materials and lights.  I've scripted my main material library (which I sell here) with Matmatic.  That simple hair material I posted to my gallery is me just playing around and experimenting, so that I made by hand.  When I have the basic properties and relationships  in place, I turn it into a script and put all the features it should have into place, in addition to separating out the key parameters.

Quote - Those look great too!

If it's alright with you, I'll play around with the materials in that post you linked to get a good starting material for the hair?

Oh, sure!  You just might want to replace the Reflection node with a Specular node.  The reflection works because that's an older hair by Kozaburo, so it has a great shape and few layers.  Lots of layers and pieces make reflection take way too long.

Oh!  And the one thing that is useful in terms of controlling specular value on hair is the the trans map.  You don't want shine where there's not supposed to be mesh.

Quote - Oh!  And the one thing that is useful in terms of controlling specular value on hair is the the trans map.  You don't want shine where there's not supposed to be mesh.

Ugh, yeah that would not be pretty!

Ok, I've got 4 different layers, and they are working pretty well. Don't be concerned about the parting and how it sticks up, I am working on that. But I have two issues that I am wondering if anyone has some ideas about...

1. All the layers, even though the lower ones start further down on the head, tends to simulate at very similar places, so the hair gets thinner than I want. It would be nice if the innermost layer would actually look like it's closer to the head/shoulder..  I don't know what settings that could solve that in the cloth room, or if I should model the inner layers a bit differently?

2. The second thing is that get sharp shadows and "stringy" looking bits, Do the trans maps need to be stronger, or am I missing something else? If I ad some shine, it gets worse.

It's getting close now, just need to figure out these more subtle issues to really get the final touch!

1. My guess is that you should model it a bit differently, and make sure its got an appropriate density.  Though, really, I'm unclear about how the physics of what you're looking for would work.  This is where I'd start using reference images that specifically matched poses and hair styles to test the simulation settings.

2.  Sharp shadows are generally a lighting issue.  What are you lights like?  I'm not sure about your trans maps, because how fine they get is so much a personal perspective on how many fine strands you should see.  That said, I've found my worst problem with trans maps has been making them too fine and painting them like I do hair.  Most trans maps I've studied have been fairly thick.  The ones that haven't been have needed me to render with the right combination of low shading rate and texture filtering.

 

Yeah I need to rethink a few things with the layers and see what happens. One thing that could make them different, would be to roll and rotate the big strips a bit, that would alter their drape. We'll see!

Ok, making more progress!  The thickness is looking a lot better.

There are probably other improvements that can be done too, especially to trans maps and displacements. It's the first hair I've ever done, so there's a ton to learn, I'm sure. I am going to set up the props, a decent readme and a couple of textures/colors and hopefully put it up on freestuff by the end of this weekend.

I don't have a good shine yet, so I won't include that, but I'd love to see what kind of modifications and improvents other people could make with it!

For making stills, it's probably a good idea to do some post work, as someone mentioned. Are there any good guides or tutorials on how to do postwork on hair? I'd love to see that. :)

A really huge advantage with this kind of hair, which really is my main motivation, is how well it works with custom body shapes and clothing. Long conforming hair is such a pain for this, to get it like it's actually falling over the figure and clothing.

This picture below shows the dynamic hair over the figure I have been testing with. She is much more full figured than V4 with standard morphs. She uses custom breast morphs (NGM and NBM), plus a loose, dynamic shirt. The hair drapes flawlessly over both the figure and the clothing. I really want to see more of this stuff. I would definitely pay for good dynamic cloth hairs, myself. :)

I think I'll probably add an optional forehead bangs prop to this hair, then I am going to move on and see if I can make a pony tail.

Alright, the hair is uploaded!  When it's approved, I think I'll start a new thread where we can discuss dynamic cloth hairs in general rather than the particular problem that started this thread!

Yay!  I can't wait to try out the finished product! 

Been lurking for a while, looking forward to it.

I've also been lurking and will see how it works in animations.

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