Garabaldi vs Look at My Hair..... Please Clarify

Rashad CarterRashad Carter Posts: 1,798
edited December 1969 in The Commons

Hello all. So I am just wondering, are these two products the same or do they differ in some way? Is one superior to the other? Do I need both? Any assistance the community can provide is appreciated. Thanks in advance.

«134

Comments

  • RawArtRawArt Posts: 5,731
    edited December 1969

    Different programs
    Similar in function
    LAMH is already in the marketplace and selling well, Garabaldi is in its beta version.
    Both programs are growing very fast

    LAMH also has a free player which will allow it to play any presets made for it.

  • DaWaterRatDaWaterRat Posts: 2,882
    edited December 1969

    I'm curious about the differences between the two as well.

    From what I've seen so far, LAMH works really well for short hair and fur, while Garabaldi looks better for longer head hair, and possibly manes and tails for horses. But that's based strictly on the pictures I've seen, having not worked with either.

    I'm very paranoid about system stress, though, so I generally give any kind of fibermesh hair a wide berth.

  • SickleYieldSickleYield Posts: 7,626
    edited December 1969

    I'm'a get both. Preset functionality is the most important to me, since it's the most useful as far as making products or freebies dependant on the plugin (think of the great strand hairs that have been made for Poser hair room).


    So far I haven't found LAMH very easy to use, but I also have devoted only an hour or so to the tutorials.

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited December 1969

    I'm very paranoid about system stress, though, so I generally give any kind of fibermesh hair a wide berth.

    Then you are in luck...because they are not 'fibermesh'...they are 'curve' based. In other words, they are procedural...with the option to export to geometry. So, the 'system' toll is much lower than the large number of polys a fibermesh product has.

  • MattymanxMattymanx Posts: 6,878
    edited December 1969

    THey both use RiCurves. There is no mesh

  • DaWaterRatDaWaterRat Posts: 2,882
    edited December 1969

    Well, that makes me feel better about them. :)

  • GoneGone Posts: 833
    edited December 1969

    It should be noted that RiCurves can only be rendered in a Renderman engine - eg DS. If you plan on using Lux, Octane, Vue, etc, then you will need to export the curves to an .obj file and you are back to using a mesh.

    I don't know about the LAMH .obj, but in the Garibaldi thread Mec4D noted that the .obj output was similar to Zbrush Fibermesh but lighter in file size.

  • DaWaterRatDaWaterRat Posts: 2,882
    edited December 1969

    Gone said:
    It should be noted that RiCurves can only be rendered in a Renderman engine - eg DS. If you plan on using Lux, Octane, Vue, etc, then you will need to export the curves to an .obj file and you are back to using a mesh.

    I don't know about the LAMH .obj, but in the Garibaldi thread Mec4D noted that the .obj output was similar to Zbrush Fibermesh but lighter in file size.

    That's okay. I like it on this side of the Uncanny valley, and have no plans on trying to figure out how to cross it. :)

  • Kendall SearsKendall Sears Posts: 2,995
    edited December 1969

    Gone said:
    It should be noted that RiCurves can only be rendered in a Renderman engine - eg DS. If you plan on using Lux, Octane, Vue, etc, then you will need to export the curves to an .obj file and you are back to using a mesh.

    I don't know about the LAMH .obj, but in the Garibaldi thread Mec4D noted that the .obj output was similar to Zbrush Fibermesh but lighter in file size.

    LAMH has had OBJ output from the very beginning.

    Kendall

  • GoneGone Posts: 833
    edited December 1969

    Gone said:
    It should be noted that RiCurves can only be rendered in a Renderman engine - eg DS. If you plan on using Lux, Octane, Vue, etc, then you will need to export the curves to an .obj file and you are back to using a mesh.

    I don't know about the LAMH .obj, but in the Garibaldi thread Mec4D noted that the .obj output was similar to Zbrush Fibermesh but lighter in file size.

    LAMH has had OBJ output from the very beginning.

    Kendall

    I guess I wasn't clear in my statement.

    I know that LAMH has had .obj output from the beginning - I just don't know what type of object structure it creates. Like Fibermesh, Garibaldi outputs cylidrical objects. Are LAMH objects cylidrical or flat planes with texture maps like the more traditional prop hair?

    That is what I was saying when I said I didn't know what type of .obj LAMH creates.

  • ReDaveReDave Posts: 815
    edited December 1969

    Yes, LAMH can export true geometry (i.e. cylinders, or at least I think they are cylinders) for each single hair, like fibermesh.

  • SickleYieldSickleYield Posts: 7,626
    edited December 1969

    Okay, I bought Garibaldi today, and now I have both plugins. Here are my thoughts:


    1. Both have good tutorials on Youtube.
    2. Garibaldi was much easier to get good "groomed" results with in my total noob, just-started-the-plugin attempts. See pic.
    3. My attempt at a hair that's pretty impossible to find - the Bela Lugosi widow's peak short hair - met with no success at all in LAMH but was pretty quick and easy in Garibaldi (though not perfect, it worked without bizarre visual errors). With LAMH I couldn't get things to lie down below "fluffy afro" levels.
    4. The Garibaldi hair can be saved right back to library, just as if it were a prop or clothing item, and works on reload once it is conformed to Genesis. I never figured out how to do this with LAMH hair. I assume the base program is required to use saved hairs for either (although I hear LAMH has a free player coming out that will allow hairs to be used but not edited by those without the plugin).
    5. I haven't tried to do fur with either yet, so I may be missing an advantage of LAMH there. It sure has some gorgeous previews with fur out there.
    6. The interfaces are not dissimilar. Both are dark, use similar buttons and sliders, and pop up when activated from the DS4.5 menus. Again, I preferred Garibaldi's grooming tools and length control features, but that's subjective. Both are easier to use than Poser's Hair room in my highly subjective opinion. Neither was significantly laggy on my 64 bit Win 7 system (16 gb RAM) and their render times were comparable to the geometry strand hairs I own (i.e., still slightly faster than a transmap hair the same size).
    7. They are similar in price right now.


    My advice is: If you can only get one, and you want it for groomed human hair, get Garibaldi. If you want mostly fur, get LAMH. If you can afford it, and have one but are considering the other, get both.


    Again, totally subjective, and I hope others will share their experiences.

    GaribaldiTest.png
    600 x 600 - 255K
  • ZelrothZelroth Posts: 910
    edited December 1969

    SickleYield, thank you for the comparison. I was wondering about how they compared and if there would be a problem having both on my system. Right now I don't know that I can afford both, but that is what the wishlist is for. ;D

  • RawArtRawArt Posts: 5,731
    edited December 1969

    You should also keep in mind that LAMH is coming out with a new version very soon that will more advanced tools, that should help with styling.

  • DisparateDreamerDisparateDreamer Posts: 2,487
    edited December 1969

    t totally depends on user! Just like some say that Poser is easier/more intuitve vs DS.... LOL.

    For me, I thought that LAMH was easier and more intuitive, and I have done long hair styles with it too.

    2sm.jpg
    1000 x 800 - 701K
    EnchantingLadyMd3.jpg
    1150 x 1150 - 944K
  • SickleYieldSickleYield Posts: 7,626
    edited December 1969

    Oh wow, those look gorgeous! I seriously thought neither program could get that much length (the sliders don't seem to allow it).


    I'll certainly look forward to the update, too.

  • FusionLAFusionLA Posts: 249
    edited December 1969

    Okay, I bought Garibaldi today, and now I have both plugins. Here are my thoughts:


    1. Both have good tutorials on Youtube.
    2. Garibaldi was much easier to get good "groomed" results with in my total noob, just-started-the-plugin attempts. See pic.
    3. My attempt at a hair that's pretty impossible to find - the Bela Lugosi widow's peak short hair - met with no success at all in LAMH but was pretty quick and easy in Garibaldi (though not perfect, it worked without bizarre visual errors). With LAMH I couldn't get things to lie down below "fluffy afro" levels.
    4. The Garibaldi hair can be saved right back to library, just as if it were a prop or clothing item, and works on reload once it is conformed to Genesis. I never figured out how to do this with LAMH hair. I assume the base program is required to use saved hairs for either (although I hear LAMH has a free player coming out that will allow hairs to be used but not edited by those without the plugin).
    5. I haven't tried to do fur with either yet, so I may be missing an advantage of LAMH there. It sure has some gorgeous previews with fur out there.
    6. The interfaces are not dissimilar. Both are dark, use similar buttons and sliders, and pop up when activated from the DS4.5 menus. Again, I preferred Garibaldi's grooming tools and length control features, but that's subjective. Both are easier to use than Poser's Hair room in my highly subjective opinion. Neither was significantly laggy on my 64 bit Win 7 system (16 gb RAM) and their render times were comparable to the geometry strand hairs I own (i.e., still slightly faster than a transmap hair the same size).
    7. They are similar in price right now.


    My advice is: If you can only get one, and you want it for groomed human hair, get Garibaldi. If you want mostly fur, get LAMH. If you can afford it, and have one but are considering the other, get both.


    Again, totally subjective, and I hope others will share their experiences.


    Thanks for the feed back SickleYield (have to say, like your products alot all the morphs you put in your clothes)
    I also have the LAMH plugin but don' use it, was not able to figure out how to get any good results with the limited timed I used it.
    So just gave up on it.
    Have tried the beta of Garibaldi and in just a short test seemed easier to get results.
    Going to go ahead and buy it.

  • DisparateDreamerDisparateDreamer Posts: 2,487
    edited December 1969

    A couple more hair styles I've done with LAMH:

    Most of them only took me about 20 minutes to make.
    <3</p>

    JulieRubyHair.jpg
    634 x 870 - 669K
    Kuruhair.jpg
    714 x 873 - 628K
    CharlieHairSM.jpg
    927 x 1000 - 563K
    RavenHairA_sm.jpg
    733 x 1100 - 775K
  • DisparateDreamerDisparateDreamer Posts: 2,487
    edited February 2013

    Oh wow, those look gorgeous! I seriously thought neither program could get that much length (the sliders don't seem to allow it).


    I'll certainly look forward to the update, too.

    Heh.... you didn't realize you can move the slider multiple times? just slide, release, slide again. unlimited! :P

    Also thought I would mention that I use Fisty's velvet sparkle shaders on the hair rather than the actual hair shaders. I know it may make it look less *real* but I really like it..... ^_^ i couldn't figure out stuff like that as easily with Garibaldi....

    Post edited by DisparateDreamer on
  • HellboyHellboy Posts: 1,437
    edited December 1969

    Both are great.
    Only real problem I had with Garibaldi during the Beta was that hair would be invisible if you set the Render Engine to the Scripted 3Delight: Point-Based Occlusion. Since that's what I use to render I'll stick with Look At My Hair.
    Otherwise both are really cool and even similar.

  • SickleYieldSickleYield Posts: 7,626
    edited February 2013

    Oh wow, those look gorgeous! I seriously thought neither program could get that much length (the sliders don't seem to allow it).


    I'll certainly look forward to the update, too.

    Heh.... you didn't realize you can move the slider multiple times? just slide, release, slide again. unlimited! :P

    Also thought I would mention that I use Fisty's velvet sparkle shaders on the hair rather than the actual hair shaders. I know it may make it look less *real* but I really like it..... ^_^ i couldn't figure out stuff like that as easily with Garibaldi....

    No, I did not, 'cause it's not in the YouTube tutorial. I'll look forward to trying it though. Do you mind my asking - how did you pull things down in the Style section without causing them to vanish into the head? How did you do tails? Are they a separate hair piece extruded from a smaller section of the head?

    EDIT: Aha, I found the Long Smooth Hair tutorial. Let's see if I can do better with more use of Spherize.

    Post edited by SickleYield on
  • DisparateDreamerDisparateDreamer Posts: 2,487
    edited December 1969


    No, I did not, 'cause it's not in the YouTube tutorial. I'll look forward to trying it though. Do you mind my asking - how did you pull things down in the Style section without causing them to vanish into the head? How did you do tails? Are they a separate hair piece extruded from a smaller section of the head?

    hm.... i kind of thought moving the length slider like that was intuitive! Different strokes I guess!

    Let's see, different questions...
    1. two different ways to fix style. One is ultra fast, and I just brush all the hair straight down, turn off occlusion, hold down space bar, make the brush very large, and gently pull the roots up and out a little bit. if you over lift, just pull down on the hair tips a bit. Also some folks don't realize that you can brush UP the hair as well as down. Sometimes when i dont want to disturb the top hair but want to change something in the middle, i brush up from a lower section. Second, i start the hair short, and usually in "mirror" or symmetry mode, make sure you have occlusion on, and apply small amounts of spherize and small amounts of length and shape it as i grow it.

    Tails also have more than one method. :) Some have one group of hair for the gather, and some for the tail, such as with anime hair style Kuru. That has the benefit of letting other people restyle the tail quickly and easily without changing the rest of the style (tho they can if they wish).

    I also used ponytails on my YoungTeen hairstyle JulieRuby hair, 5 gathers.... but these were each actually styled. I started growing them long, spherizing on the Z axis (TIP: when you spherize, there are tiny little 'xyz' and by default only Y is orange highlighted... this means it will pull hair DOWN on the Y axis, so you can pull hair up, by reversing the slider, back by only selecting z , forward by reversing, and all combinations). Then i'd hold spacebar, make the brush small, and gather the hairs into a point. Each ponytail has its own group. You are welcome to try it though of course it is as lopsided as my hair looks in real life. :)

    Other things: I like to to overlap groups sometimes. I like to use a separate group for fine detail like wind. Why? easier to change in a scene than to change a style. i try to set up the hair styles, since i make them for people to use, to be changed and altered conveniently.

  • SickleYieldSickleYield Posts: 7,626
    edited December 1969


    No, I did not, 'cause it's not in the YouTube tutorial. I'll look forward to trying it though. Do you mind my asking - how did you pull things down in the Style section without causing them to vanish into the head? How did you do tails? Are they a separate hair piece extruded from a smaller section of the head?

    hm.... i kind of thought moving the length slider like that was intuitive! Different strokes I guess!

    Let's see, different questions...
    1. two different ways to fix style. One is ultra fast, and I just brush all the hair straight down, turn off occlusion, hold down space bar, make the brush very large, and gently pull the roots up and out a little bit. if you over lift, just pull down on the hair tips a bit. Also some folks don't realize that you can brush UP the hair as well as down. Sometimes when i dont want to disturb the top hair but want to change something in the middle, i brush up from a lower section. Second, i start the hair short, and usually in "mirror" or symmetry mode, make sure you have occlusion on, and apply small amounts of spherize and small amounts of length and shape it as i grow it.

    Tails also have more than one method. :) Some have one group of hair for the gather, and some for the tail, such as with anime hair style Kuru. That has the benefit of letting other people restyle the tail quickly and easily without changing the rest of the style (tho they can if they wish).

    I also used ponytails on my YoungTeen hairstyle JulieRuby hair, 5 gathers.... but these were each actually styled. I started growing them long, spherizing on the Z axis (TIP: when you spherize, there are tiny little 'xyz' and by default only Y is orange highlighted... this means it will pull hair DOWN on the Y axis, so you can pull hair up, by reversing the slider, back by only selecting z , forward by reversing, and all combinations). Then i'd hold spacebar, make the brush small, and gather the hairs into a point. Each ponytail has its own group. You are welcome to try it though of course it is as lopsided as my hair looks in real life. :)

    Other things: I like to to overlap groups sometimes. I like to use a separate group for fine detail like wind. Why? easier to change in a scene than to change a style. i try to set up the hair styles, since i make them for people to use, to be changed and altered conveniently.

    Thank you, I really appreciate the tips!

  • SickleYieldSickleYield Posts: 7,626
    edited December 1969

    Part of the problem with LAMH is that it's very hotkey dependant so the controls are inherently less intuitive. I'm fine with this in Blender, because Blender has hotkey charts out the wazoo for me to look at. Is there one for LAMH anywhere? I can't find where in all the video tutorials it says, for instance, how to scale the brush.

  • DisparateDreamerDisparateDreamer Posts: 2,487
    edited December 1969

    The hot key shortcuts are all listed in the beginning of the LAMH pdf manual.

  • SickleYieldSickleYield Posts: 7,626
    edited December 1969

    The hot key shortcuts are all listed in the beginning of the LAMH pdf manual.

    Where is the manual installed, or is it only from the web site? I can't find any reference to it.

  • Sal UKSal UK Posts: 432
    edited December 1969

    The hot key shortcuts are all listed in the beginning of the LAMH pdf manual.

    Where is the manual installed, or is it only from the web site? I can't find any reference to it.

    The brush scale can be accessed using the Spacebar... :)

    Steve

  • HeatherleeaHeatherleea Posts: 247
    edited December 1969

    I thought I had read somewhere that there was a problem if you had both plug ins installed, but by the sounds of it both can be installed at the same time? If so I think I will get LAMH as well.

  • DisparateDreamerDisparateDreamer Posts: 2,487
    edited December 1969

    last i knew you can have both installed. But i think you can only use one at a time in Daz Studio....

  • SickleYieldSickleYield Posts: 7,626
    edited December 1969

    last i knew you can have both installed. But i think you can only use one at a time in Daz Studio....

    I played with them both on and off all day today. You just can't have both windows up at once, I think.

Sign In or Register to comment.