Is there a way to make a hair better...?

iDiru

Glyn Hair works pretty good on this character, but there's a certain set of quality I require in my works and Glyn hair isn't doing it for me, quality wise. It looks too much like plastic. I can get around it for the moment by drawing in most of the hair around Glyn Hair but I don't want to keep doing this.

I used the hair texture from the hair he used previously which, quality wise, was really good, and posted it over some of the original textures in photoshop because I don't know how to do anything properly.

Made it slightly better but not good enough unfortunately...Still looks like plastic.

Is there anything I can do to imrpove the realism?

I'm using Poser Pro 2014.

TheKD

You might get better results putting this in the poser forum section.

iDiru

TheKD said:

You might get better results putting this in the poser forum section.

Most of the stuff I post though I post here, because it seems to be the most active place and you get other people asking general questions

Richard Haseltine

iDiru said:

TheKD said:

You might get better results putting this in the poser forum section.

Most of the stuff I post though I post here, because it seems to be the most active place and you get other people asking general questions

But it's also the most active, so your post gets buried sooner - and more viewers will not be using Poser and so won't have advice.

Are there any add-on texture packs for the hair? April generally doesn't add painted on specularity to her hair, which I like, but that does then depend on the lighting to make up with real specular highlights. You could also trying saving a material file (I can't recall the Poser name - the ones that are not Material Collections) from a hair you like, apply that to all surfaces on the hair, then manually switch the maps back to those for Glyn (if the copied textures don't work - most hair is mapped much the same).

scorpio

There's a thread over at the Smith Micro forums about hair maybe that could help.

JOdel

Surreality did a texture package for that hair. It was a long time ago, so I don't know whether it can still be found. I think it was at Rendo, so it may have gone clearance/disappearance by now.

iDiru

JOdel said:

Surreality did a texture package for that hair. It was a long time ago, so I don't know whether it can still be found. I think it was at Rendo, so it may have gone clearance/disappearance by now.

I have that, but it still just looks..odd half the time.

But it's an old hair, really so maybe that's why

 

Richard Haseltine said:

iDiru said:

TheKD said:

You might get better results putting this in the poser forum section.

Most of the stuff I post though I post here, because it seems to be the most active place and you get other people asking general questions

But it's also the most active, so your post gets buried sooner - and more viewers will not be using Poser and so won't have advice.

Are there any add-on texture packs for the hair? April generally doesn't add painted on specularity to her hair, which I like, but that does then depend on the lighting to make up with real specular highlights. You could also trying saving a material file (I can't recall the Poser name - the ones that are not Material Collections) from a hair you like, apply that to all surfaces on the hair, then manually switch the maps back to those for Glyn (if the copied textures don't work - most hair is mapped much the same).

There are, as I said above, I was using surreality.

As an example, this is, though slightly edited, what I used and what my problem is.

Now that lighting in general caused me trouble with things but this happened with every light set I used except one and it wasn't much better then either.

So I had to draw in most of the hair from this scene, around Glyn using it as a base:

But here in lies a problme with just putting back in glynn hair. It looks like this:

Image removed

and there's a lack of realism in it.

now this was after editing it:

Image removed

yeah I know the scalp is weird looking but there was only like, one map..and you can't tell in the render actually.

But even AFTER editing it, it only really half way works on one lighting and my issue is still that the ends of the hair are very plastic looking too. That there is no clear strand seperation, and I was wondering if I could, at all, fix that, by maybe editing the transperancy map or something?

Richard Haseltine

Please don't post texture images (unless they are your own - from the text I don't think that was the case here).

Fisty

You could try hooking up the grey texture map to the specular channel if there's not one there already and up the specular strength.. maybe increase the bump strength?  It might be old enough that it doesn't even have specular maps.  From your render it looks like it doesn't have one and the bump, if it has one, is very low.

Edit: Just checked, I don't have that hair or the add-on so I can't futz with it for ya.. sorry.

iDiru

Fisty said:

You could try hooking up the grey texture map to the specular channel if there's not one there already and up the specular strength.. maybe increase the bump strength?  It might be old enough that it doesn't even have specular maps.  From your render it looks like it doesn't have one and the bump, if it has one, is very low.

Edit: Just checked, I don't have that hair or the add-on so I can't futz with it for ya.. sorry.

Yeah, I checked the folder for surreality and it's JUST texture maps and nothing for bumps or spec.

and checking the folder for the Glyn alone, all it has is a transperancy map and four colors.

Fisty

Mmmm.. yeah, really old hair.  There should be a grey or greyish texture in april's at least, try plugging that into spec and bump.  You might need to up the contrast of it either by editing the texture map itself or some creative node speghetti.

iDiru

Fisty said:

Mmmm.. yeah, really old hair.  There should be a grey or greyish texture in april's at least, try plugging that into spec and bump.  You might need to up the contrast of it either by editing the texture map itself or some creative node speghetti.

it's not there in april's though, at least the map isn't in the folder.

I'll have to look at what the nodes look like.

Fisty

I meant look for a texture map that's grey, at least since Genesis 2 era she's had a white or grey color available for her hair that you could use in a pinch.  Otherwise a blond texture can be desurated and contrast raised in gimp/photoshop or with node spaghettti.

iDiru

Fisty said:

I meant look for a texture map that's grey, at least since Genesis 2 era she's had a white or grey color available for her hair that you could use in a pinch.  Otherwise a blond texture can be desurated and contrast raised in gimp/photoshop or with node spaghettti.

Okay, so I looked at the nodes, can't quite make heads or tails fo what's loaded here...

I know they said not to post textures but I mean...it's kind of servinv a purpose and it's a pic of the program..?

Fisty

That one looks pretty good.. wonder why it's rendering flat for you.  Do your lights have enough specular?  Just an IBL isn't gonna do it.

iDiru

Fisty said:

That one looks pretty good.. wonder why it's rendering flat for you.  Do your lights have enough specular?  Just an IBL isn't gonna do it.

I don't know, like I said it depends on hte lighting but I've rendered with nearly every light set. It might be because he was on the ground but..

The only one that seemed to work right is i13's 'subtle signfiigance' but it wasn't what I needed for the scene.

I think what I ended up using in the end was something from Syntetic ProLuma 2

Fisty

Hmm..  might be the others used spot lights and they were pointed above his head.

Llynara

I converted it for Superfly a while back using the EZShaders. Here's what I ended up with. This is an old render. I had only been using Poser and DAZ for about two months: 

Here's the same hair in Iray, reshaded with OOT Hair Repair. Did this last fall for redo of my first book cover: 

iDiru

Llynara said:

I converted it for Superfly a while back using the EZShaders. Here's what I ended up with. This is an old render. I had only been using Poser and DAZ for about two months: 

Here's the same hair in Iray, reshaded with OOT Hair Repair. Did this last fall for redo of my first book cover: 

it's kind of hard to see but like I said before I'm using Poser not Iray

Llynara

First picture is Poser with the Surreal Glyn hair colors. Seems like I had to take out some gray for the same reason. Then I used the EZSkin3 script by SnarlyGlibbly for Superfly.

Here's my first try in Superfly. It's a bit grainy because my old computer could barely handle the CUDAs. I think these are the original shaders: 

 

Havos

iDiru said:

Llynara said:

I converted it for Superfly a while back using the EZShaders. Here's what I ended up with. This is an old render. I had only been using Poser and DAZ for about two months: 

Here's the same hair in Iray, reshaded with OOT Hair Repair. Did this last fall for redo of my first book cover: 

it's kind of hard to see but like I said before I'm using Poser not Iray

If you read what Lynara said, she says that the render was done using Superfly, ie in Poser, not Iray in DAZ. However since you are using Poser 2014 then naturally you can not use Superfly which only arrived in Poser 11 and Poser 11 Pro.