Digital Art Zone

This process absolutely does not change the UV’s so not sure what’s going on with that Barbult.  I’m working on mats for the Ruff from AprilYSH’s Lyon set and hair, hat and ruff all load up their respective PZ2 matt files just fine.

I just tried another one - Jai hair from AprilYSH. The PZ2 hair colors work fine on that one. Maybe I’ll redo my first one and see if I did something wrong along the way. Thanks again for this great tutorial. It is very well written.

I try to always write my tutorials like I’m the one learning it from a newbie’s perspective.  So if I leave out steps I usually figure it out pretty fast and add those in.  I’ve not gotten it perfect every time in my tutorials but I try.  I’m glad it was easy enough to understand!  Have fun! 

I commented on your other thread, to clarify a couple of the steps.  The process works nicely, thank you.

Yes, I noticed.  If folks use menus rather than the bar and icons I will add that to the tutorial then to satisfy everyone.  THANKS! 

RAMWolff - 08 September 2012 09:14 AM

Yes, I noticed.  If folks use menus rather than the bar and icons I will add that to the tutorial then to satisfy everyone.  THANKS! 

The main ‘problem’ is that with all the various styles and layouts, plus the customisation it can be a real pain to be sure that everyone has things in the same place.  I’d be inclined to use the ‘fixed’ things, such as menu trees for the ‘formal description’, and add a ‘hint’ about where else and how a short-cut can be found

barbult - 07 September 2012 11:52 PM

Thanks for such detailed instructions. That is what I need to learn these tools. I was able to fit the hair and save the DUF just fine and the morphs work, but the PZ2 material presets for hair color do not work. Any suggestions?

Load original hair. Apply pz2. Save as material preset. This material works fine with converted hair.

gilikshe - 15 September 2012 08:07 PM

barbult - 07 September 2012 11:52 PM

Thanks for such detailed instructions. That is what I need to learn these tools. I was able to fit the hair and save the DUF just fine and the morphs work, but the PZ2 material presets for hair color do not work. Any suggestions?

Load original hair. Apply pz2. Save as material preset. This material works fine with converted hair.

Correct but keep in mind PZ2 files are actually created for Poser so you may want to get in there and tweak the Surfaces a bit. 

I usually hit the Specular area and set that between 67 to 85%, depending.  Leave the Specular Strength at 100% for the most gloss but lower it if you have allot of lights in the scene as it will blow out the color too much.  I usually make sure there if there is a bump map file to add more detail to the hair.  It’s pretty easy.  First click on the Diffuse drop down showing all the texture maps for the scene.  Find the main one used for the hair in the Diffuse channel and set that as your Bump map as well.  Now go back in there and select Browse.  It will take you right to the correct folder containing all the textures for that pack and look for a Bump map (should say *bump* or *b* at the end or beginning of the .jpg file name) if not then just leave Diffuse map you originally loaded as the bump map and set it to 100%.  I sometimes will do the same for the Displacement map but I set that around 48%, sometimes lower. 

Make good use of your Spot Render tool. 

When you get the hair looking the way you want it then select the hair name title to select all the surfaces of the hair and save it out as a new hair color preset in your “My Library”.  If you only have a few to do it won’t take long and you will have native presets. 

Also, If you have your Poser runtime in another directory other than the My Library/Runtime/Textures/ area I would suggest copying the folder(s) over (make sure you bring over all the parent folders that go with that hair or it won’t load up right) to My Library/Runtime/Textures/ so that it’s all native.

Also don’t forget to back up your My Library for safe keeping. 

Best.

Unfortunately, I tried to bring over the Mitsu Hair included with the old Aiko 3 bundle, and it hasn’t seemed to have kept its morphs.  At least its a cheating way to fit on Genesis, but its useless without the posing morphs.  Any clues?

Is Mitus hair a CR2 or an HR2 file?  I’m assuming it’s an HR2 file but it SHOULD retain the morphs.  I just loaded it up.  I don’t have the time tonight to try messing with it but the morphs are there so they SHOULD transfer… oh what the hell.. now I’m going to wonder about it… Be right back…..

OK, just ran my tutorial and it works fine and the morphs are there.  Make sure you followed the tutorial to the letter except choose Aiko 3 as your morph target (number #6 in the tutorial). 

Suggestion, make sure, before you save it out as a .duf file to Convert to Sub-D since the conversion does tend to kink up the area where the shoulders are in the hair.  Sub-D smooths that out just fine. 

Have fun! 

RAMWolff - 17 September 2012 11:26 PM

Is Mitus hair a CR2 or an HR2 file?

It’s an HR2 file.

XD Keeping people awake since ever.

See my post above… works fine!

I’ve been playing around a little with some hair using this tutorial. 

One of my favorite hairs to use for ‘something quick’ is the old classic Koz_Messy.  Well, it was originally for Gen3 (maybe even Gen2?) and there is no ‘clone’ option in the basic transfer utility (don’t they get added if you get the Gen3 Shapes package?)...but I thought I’d try it by adding a ‘fitting pose’ to it before the conversion.

The ‘fit’ that was easiest to find (in my very disorganized DS3 content folders) was a K4 fit.  I applied it, after following steps 1 through 3 (sort of a 3a.), but before converting it to a figure.  Then when running the Transfer Utility, Kids4 was the ‘clone’...

This should work for any convertable hair that doesn’t come for a figure you have a clone shape for, but does have a ‘fitting’ pose to one of those figures (lots of Gen3 hair has Gen4 fit poses).

Just did Mitsu…with a V4 fit and it came out great. 

So, if you don’t have the Gen3 shapes, then using commonly available fit poses is a viable workaround.

That’s interesting.  Good to know.  I have all the shapes with their fitting templates so never thought to do it that way.