Hello,

I have had 2 questions I received from YouTube and the Forum.

The first one corresponds to the issue you have when you try to import a hair without "SCALP" using the hair assistant. Without the assistant, there is a dropdown list which contains the names of several Daz characters. This allows to easily select the vertices which will be tied to the character. I certainly will add this dropdown list in the assistant of the next version. For now, the solution is not natural but it exists, here it is:

• when you see you cannot select the vertices, Close the VWD program,
• Open VWD again,
• Import the collision actor,
• Import the hair without the assistant and without any rigidifications,
• Select the hair on the character using the dropdown list as usual,
• Press on the "Show hair vertices" to see the selected vertices on the hair,
• In the "Vertices selection", press on the "M+" button.
• Close the VWD program,
• Open VWD again,
• Import the collision actor,
• Import the hair with the assistant and select your simulation settings,
• In the "Vertices selection", move on the "MR" button with the CONTROL key pressed until the caption of the button becomes "Fic" and press this button,
• The recorded selection appears on the hair,
• You can add these vertices, eventually with a soft selection, to tied these vertices to the character's head. This method is far to be perfect but it allows to simulate all hair using the assistant.

The second question corresponds to the time necessary to stabilize a cloth or a hair at the beginning of a dynamic simulation. It should be possible to define some unrecorded frames to stabilize the dynamic actor. There is a function which works fine in VWD which allows to do exactly what you want, the "dynamic deformation". Here is the method:

• Import the collision actor and the dynamic actor and start the simulation,
• If the dynamic actor takes too much time to stabilize in the first recorded frames, you can stop the simulation using the ESC key, you can press on the "Start dynamic simulation" with the ALT key,
• The cloth (or hair) is resetted to its original shape.
• Press on the SHIFT key to start the "dynamic deformation",
• If the cloth is strongly repelled from the collision actor or by the self-collision, You can remove the inertia before to press the SHIFT key.
• You can also use the power of the "dynamic deformation" to deform the cloth as you want.
• With or without the inertia, wait the cloth (hair) finds its stabilized shape.
• If you removed the inertia, check it and check the "Fast move" checkbox.
• You can restart the simulation by pressing the "Start Dynamic simulation" button The simulation will be recorded starting with the new shape.

Please, tell me if my explanations are not clear enough.

I would've another question. Both have the same issue, Dforce and VWD. In a simulated animation when the character basically standing completely still, the hair is still having some subtle uncontrolled jittery movement. Is this somehow completely fixable?

Hello Surody,

Of course, I can answer for VWD. This issue is caused by the high parallelism in GPU. The computation of the springs (Sticks) has to update 2 node positions at the same time. Higher the parallelism, higher these vertices can loose some updates, generation this jittery movement. If you want to reduce this, you can check the "Sticks CPU" checkbox. The program will compute the sticks using the CPU and the parallelism will be reduced for this computation. The result will be better if the head is still.

Just a precision, the simulation will be slower.

VirtualWorldDynamics posted at 8:25PM Tue, 01 September 2020 - #4398265

Hello Surody,

Of course, I can answer for VWD. This issue is caused by the high parallelism in GPU. The computation of the springs (Sticks) has to update 2 node positions at the same time. Higher the parallelism, higher these vertices can loose some updates, generation this jittery movement. If you want to reduce this, you can check the "Sticks CPU" checkbox. The program will compute the sticks using the CPU and the parallelism will be reduced for this computation. The result will be better if the head is still.

Thank you! I actually was always wondering why GPU and CPU sticks is activated when I render with GPU. I assume the best results are achieved with CPU+CPU Sticks?

If the program automatically checks the "Sticks CPU" box, it is because your assets do not have a lot of vertices (and springs). The computation of the Sticks (the springs) is the only part whom the quality is decreased by the high parallelism. If you use the CPU computation, all the parts of the computation will be done using CPU. You can use CPU with multhreading to do the simulation but the computation will be slower. I often do simulations with clothes or hair having a lot of vertices. In this case, the high parallelism is not a problem. I will do some tests with hair having small number of vertices and I will tell you my results.

Hello Gerald, I'm glad to see the forums active a bit more. Last time I was checking regularly you were wanting people to help test new functions for VWD. I never did understand what finally took place with the new functions or new version of VWD. Where are we supposed to check now for the latest version or updates for VWD, in the forums here or on Patreon or on your VWD website? I want to get back up to date and start using the new functions but I don't know where to get the latest additions to VWD. Could you point me in the right direction? Thanks again! Kwan

Hello Kwan,

You are right, I never finalized this new version. I am not rich enough to work on this part of the project without any incomes.

My current work is to find a way to define meshing structures and simulation presets for clothes and hair products I want to do and sale. I hope this will allow me to restart the project.

The 2 products I made were first (bad) tests, I will send others free products here in the coming weeks. These products will be made with the same meshing structures and will have a very close setting values. This will allow to be able to have a very precise behaviour for all the products and this will reduce the work to create these assets.

I hope this way will help to continue VWD. I also hope you understand my aim even though you would have prefered another answer.

Thank you a lot for your support.

 Gérald