I periodically like to post something about Poser's Hair Room, in part because I think it has some great possibilities, and in part because it needs some serious work and I want Smith Micro to know there are a number of us out here using it and it would be worthwhile improving it. It seems everything else gets attention, but not the Hair Room. (I won't repeat the feature requests here; there are numerous threads elsewhere. But more usability would certainly get more users on board, and generate better results.)

Here are a few things of varying quality I've been working on in the past few days.

FWIW, the hairstyles above reflect two different approaches to groups. The shorter bob at the bottom only uses two groups on the skullcap, which is simpler in many ways, although it can have its own challenges. (In this case, I missed working on the lower hair in front of the ears, so it's sticking pretty much straight out. Don't know why it didn't drape more though.)

The upper two share a skullcap base that has ten groups.

These are some great renders and this is a good thread for everyone to share their thoughts and samples for the Hair room!!

You can "style" the hairs with magnets, then spawn morphs from the magnets results. This has been the closest to a comb that I could get. (and it works great)

I believe you can use the Poser wind machine to make an animation of her hair blowing about her face. Has anyone tried that?

I like these images. I found except for a few simple sort styles, multiple groups are easiest to work with, providing you are careful with the sides of each group.

One of the easiest methods I've found is very tedious. It's a good time binge watch your favorite series that doesn't need eyeballs glued to the screen the whole time. Start with very short hair. Using the styling tool, select a few strands at the bottom of the group (or where ever the under side of the style is.) Turn off the constrain length and with the translate tool (on the style tools) drag the end of the hair the direction you want to so you are almost drawing lines. You'll need multiple viewports open and at least one will probably need to be front, back or from the sides to make sure you don't pull the hairs the wrong way.

Here are my settings. Some are affected by poser units. Mine are set to inches. The marked settings are the ones that matter for this. The kink can be changed to something else once the styling is done. Decide on vertexes at the start because in some versions of poser the hair will go haywire if you change the vertexes and you'll have to start over. p11 seems to have fixed this.

Here is a quick group part way done for a sample. Sometimes you can select rows, as shown, other times, you may need to work strand by strand at least until you get the end of strands together. If I were going to finish this, I'd probably make all the strand ends the same length and then work with all of them.

Be careful not to miss any strands. Poser does not like extream length changes. This has one short strand in the middle.

And this is just a populated version of the first sample.

dnstuefloten posted at 6:43AM Wed, 19 July 2017 - #4310124

I believe you can use the Poser wind machine to make an animation of her hair blowing about her face. Has anyone tried that?

Yes you can. Windforce works with hair and cloth.

dnstuefloten posted at 12:20PM Wed, 19 July 2017 - #4310124

I believe you can use the Poser wind machine to make an animation of her hair blowing about her face. Has anyone tried that?

Yes, it works great, although I haven't done it in a while.

RedPhantom, thanks for the technique tips. I always got the impression that using the styling tools was hit or miss, so have been wary of trying to "grow" the hair that way. Am going to have to give that a shot.

RedPhantom, do you have a problem with the Hair Room flyaway bug with that method? I'm really getting frustrated with that issue. I have no apparent flyaways, but save the hair and open it, and there's hair all over. Go back to the original file and it's ruined. It happens repeatedly....

EDIT: Hm, I've never tested this before, but it appears the flyaways may only appear in preview. Which is pretty weird.... May need to test this.

EDIT #2: Double hmm. Doesn't show up in raytrace preview either. Very interesting....

For those who may not know what I'm talking about regarding "flyaways." As you can see in the main preview, there is hair flying off to the left … an issue going back several versions. But as you can see, it's not reflected in the Raytrace Preview, and apparently not the render.

tonyvilters posted at 1:25PM Wed, 19 July 2017 - #4310116

You can "style" the hairs with magnets, then spawn morphs from the magnets results. This has been the closest to a comb that I could get. (and it works great)

Thanks, Tony. I've done very little work with magnets. Do you select the hair group in the Pose room and use the magnet there?

Yes, I do have a problem with the flyaways. And I've reported it. They were stumped and apparently still are. They do show up in renders. That's how I usually discover them because they don't show up if your population isn't checked. I do see them in your raytrace preview. They are faint because of the hair color. If you darken the hair you'll see them more.

dnstuefloten posted at 1:37PM Wed, 19 July 2017 - #4310124

I believe you can use the Poser wind machine to make an animation of her hair blowing about her face. Has anyone tried that?

LINK: Here's a gallery example of using Poser's wind force that I did a few years ago.

Well, this isn't quite what I was hoping to achieve with that long hair. My density at top left section is too high, and the bangs don't satisfy me. And yes, as RedPhantom said, the flyaways do render. :(