Hair doesn't look real close-up

Kenneth_Samarra_88177cf3f6

I’m having trouble finding hair that looks good in close-ups. Certain strands look like gauze or they are fuzzy at the ends. Others look like bent pieces of straw. They just end up looking fake in contrast with the realism of the Genesis V5/M5 figures. (see figure 1)

This is the best looking product that I have found: http://www.daz3d.com/shop/victoria-5-elite-ponytail
It looks different in preview mode than other hair (see figure 2).

So here are my questions:
1. Is there anything I can do to make my existing hair products render better close-up?
2. What is “FiberMesh” and “polygonal morphing” hair?
3. What makes V5 Elite Ponytail so much more realistic than the others?
4. How can I guarantee that the products I buy are going to look good when rendered close-up???

mjc1016

Most hair for DS relies on flat planes, texture maps and transparency maps. The planes are bent/fit to a 'cap' in layers. The maps provide the color/definition.

For the most part that is adequate for most uses. But it fails at close-ups. That said, don't go by how it looks in the viewport...but how it looks rendered. The more attention to detail the maps have the better it will look.

Fibermesh/geometry hair is hair made of an actual mesh of polygons, just like other objects. Traditionally, it was not used much because the number of polygons to get a halfway decent looking head of hair was astronomical. Zbrush with it's 'Fibermesh' hair solves some of that problem...but it still has a pretty high poly count. Fibermesh is a sort of optimized way of generating the geometry of the individual strands.

There's a third type of hair, that hasn't hit the 'store' yet...two plug ins are in development for it. It's known as curve based hair. It uses a function of 3Delight known as a RiCurve to generate hair at render time. You create and style 'guides', set the density and render (well, not quite THAT simple but..as styling can be a rather lengthy proposition).

mark128

KSamarra said:

I’m having trouble finding hair that looks good in close-ups. Certain strands look like gauze or they are fuzzy at the ends. Others look like bent pieces of straw. They just end up looking fake in contrast with the realism of the Genesis V5/M5 figures. (see figure 1)

This is the best looking product that I have found: http://www.daz3d.com/shop/victoria-5-elite-ponytail
It looks different in preview mode than other hair (see figure 2).

So here are my questions:
1. Is there anything I can do to make my existing hair products render better close-up?
2. What is “FiberMesh” and “polygonal morphing” hair?
3. What makes V5 Elite Ponytail so much more realistic than the others?
4. How can I guarantee that the products I buy are going to look good when rendered close-up???

As mjc1016 said, you need to compare renders and not the DAZ previews or low quality renders. Hair is not quite as realistic as the skin textures. Realistic hair has very high polygon counts. The V5 pony tail renders very slowly, I assume because of its high polygon count.

Below are three renders of the same model with different blond hairs and one in brunette. The Reby Sky Hair renders in less than half the time of the V5 Elite Pony Tail. I added a render done with the base color or the Reby Sky hair for comparison.

Kenneth_Samarra_88177cf3f6

I have three very powerful PCs with render queues. Can someone point me to some great hair that’s either high polygon count or Fibermesh that will work with DAZ Studio or Poser Pro?

mark128

I have tried a few different hairs. First I tried Desir Hair by AlfaSeed available at RunTimeDNA.

http://www.runtimedna.com/DesirHair.html

This is a high polygon count hair, and the render times confirm that. The renders below took about 1 hour 45 min each.

This hair is for V4 and has fits for Aiko 4 and Michael 4. All the other other V4 hair that I have can be auto fit to genesis characters, but this hair cannot. The auto fit item does not appear in the right click menu. If I select the Desir hair and do Edit -> Figure -> Fit to it says "You must select a figure in the scene to perform this action."

In spite of that, the character below is a Genesis based character (Reby Sky for Genesis) and I did manage to manually fit the hair to her. I had to adjust the Y position and I used a puff up morph to cover her ear (this hair does not normally cover the ears as you can see in the promo renders).

This is a messy hair style. It probably looks best in action scenes or when being blown by the wind, rather than this kind of a image.

Blond is probably one of the worst hair colors with this kind of lighting to get to look realistic. The darker areas under the ribbons the hair textures are applied to show more easily. This hair seems to have smaller ribbons and more of them. I think the light brownish color looks more natural than the blond.

mark128

Another hair I tried was Sharon Hair:

http://www.daz3d.com/shop/sharon-hairstyle-for-v4-and-genesis

This is a FiberMesh hair for both V4 and Genesis. I'm not sure what the render time was on this, but I think it was over 2 hours.

I think this hair would look better in a darker color. If you like this hair style, I think it looks fairly realistic.

mark128

The 3rd Hair I tried was Actual Hair:

http://www.daz3d.com/shop/actual-hair-genesis

This is for Genesis and there is another version for the generation 4 characters.

This is not a high polygon count or a FiberMesh hair. The claim is that it has more layers of ribbons and that the textures are more detailed so that the hair looks more realistic. The render time on these images were all under 10 minutes.

The bond mats for this hair are very glossy and more high lights than with any other hair, so much it is probably objectionable. I'm not sure if there is some adjustment I can make to reduce that. I did not get the same high lighting problem with the red color.

By the way the lighting for all the images with different hair was identical.

I think this hair looks fairly realistic and the render times are very fast.

Luv Lee

mjc1016 said:

Most hair for DS relies on flat planes, texture maps and transparency maps. The planes are bent/fit to a 'cap' in layers. The maps provide the color/definition.

For the most part that is adequate for most uses. But it fails at close-ups. That said, don't go by how it looks in the viewport...but how it looks rendered. The more attention to detail the maps have the better it will look.

Fibermesh/geometry hair is hair made of an actual mesh of polygons, just like other objects. Traditionally, it was not used much because the number of polygons to get a halfway decent looking head of hair was astronomical. Zbrush with it's 'Fibermesh' hair solves some of that problem...but it still has a pretty high poly count. Fibermesh is a sort of optimized way of generating the geometry of the individual strands.

There's a third type of hair, that hasn't hit the 'store' yet...two plug ins are in development for it. It's known as curve based hair. It uses a function of 3Delight known as a RiCurve to generate hair at render time. You create and style 'guides', set the density and render (well, not quite THAT simple but..as styling can be a rather lengthy proposition).

I noted you mentioned curve based hair--is it still in the works?

Totte

Take a look at Look At My Hair or Garibaldi hair System to make really great looking hair with your own design and style. Some learning curves but the result do look like hair.

Luv Lee

Ah cool, thank you so much

Luv Lee

Totte said:

Take a look at Look At My Hair or Garibaldi hair System to make really great looking hair with your own design and style. Some learning curves but the result do look like hair.

thank you :-)

Jaderail

Before you run off happy be aware of this, both LAMH and Garibaldi only make static hair props. They do not have movement of any type until you edit them yourself, if you can even edit that into them. So no movement morphs at creation and no tools in either program to add movement at this time.

Luv Lee

Jaderail said:

Before you run off happy be aware of this, both LAMH and Garibaldi only make static hair props. They do not have movement of any type until you edit them yourself, if you can even edit that into them. So no movement morphs at creation and no tools in either program to add movement at this time.

Doh! Thanks for the heads up.

Jaderail

Luv Lee said:

Doh! Thanks for the heads up.

I know your an Animator so thought you might like to know that before you buy anything.

Luv Lee

Jaderail said:

Luv Lee said:

Doh! Thanks for the heads up.

I know your an Animator so thought you might like to know that before you buy anything.

Good looking out! *hugs* Yeah, that is why I can't wait for DAZ dynamic hair. One of the things I often get is how ppl think the animation is brought down a bit by static hair--which is why I normally use short styles or updo's.

Jaderail

Luv Lee said:

Good looking out! *hugs* Yeah, that is why I can't wait for DAZ dynamic hair. One of the things I often get is how ppl think the animation is brought down a bit by static hair--which is why I normally use short styles or updo's.

Nod nod, I dabble in Animation some myself. Short or up hair's are the best, a Good ponytail if it has enough morphs but they are a killer to keyframe.