Digital Art Zone

Razor 42 - 20 January 2013 10:58 PM

Hi using beta 12, Mac 64bit

Did a little more testing today tried exporting the Hair placement maps.

Not sure if this is a noted bug.

Everything seemed to work okay until I imported onto a new hair piece and a split appeared
Seems to only happen when applied to a new hair piece. It could be to do with the seams as well.

I have attached some samples of the event.

Everything else I used seemed to be stable and working great.

I also attached a Mohawk hair style.

Looks like a UV issue perhaps... has your character got a different UV set from the character you painted the distribution map on? I once had that issue... then I worked out I had painted it on M4, and was trying to import an m4 distribution map on an M5 Uv character.

I absolutely love that Mohawk render! Beautiful detail

Gone - 20 January 2013 06:24 PM

More hair.

Well done man! I like the look of him Some great personality coming from this piece

------------------------------------------------------

Question for anyone in the know...

I'm using a prop hair tie, in which hair is distributed from to form the ponytail (Which hugely cuts down render time, and is much more manageable that using the hair on the head of the character) Anyway - I'm finding I cant get enough hair strands count (Count of max 500 is half what it needs) I certainly have enough verts for hair curves to create and style the pony tail... but not a large enough scale for GH to give me enough hairs :(

I hoped sub dividing the hair-tie model would allow more hairs to generate, but it doesn't :( How can I get a higher hair count beyond the max 500 count? Two/multiple hair nodes can be used, but its difficult to control and match up accurately with every hair node on the tie. (Especially when your styling it for movement)

Tried a few more things, again OS X 64 bit B.V12

Save, open, merge - OK
Genesis - Extreme Morph Figure, Changing UV Set, Changing Texture OK
Uber Environment, Daz Lights, Shadows OK
Apply create an instance on Hair - No Crash Just empty node created - OK
Load a new Genesis and change FIT TO from orginal Genesis to New(Transfer Hair Piece) OK
Used all translation, Scale and rotation settings in Daz Parameters - OK
Delete and Undo - OK
Pushed, prodded poked lots of in plugin settings OK

So looking pretty stable at this point

Spyro - 20 January 2013 11:54 PM

Razor 42 - 20 January 2013 10:58 PM

Hi using beta 12, Mac 64bit

Did a little more testing today tried exporting the Hair placement maps.

Not sure if this is a noted bug.

Everything seemed to work okay until I imported onto a new hair piece and a split appeared
Seems to only happen when applied to a new hair piece. It could be to do with the seams as well.

I have attached some samples of the event.

Everything else I used seemed to be stable and working great.

I also attached a Mohawk hair style.

Looks like a UV issue perhaps... has your character got a different UV set from the character you painted the distribution map on? I once had that issue... then I worked out I had painted it on M4, and was trying to import an m4 distribution map on an M5 Uv character.

I absolutely love that Mohawk render! Beautiful detail

I think your spot on did a little experimenting with changing the UV map and that seems to be creating the issue. I'll edit the above post
Thanks mate!

PS You've got some cool renders through this thread!

Spyro - 20 January 2013 11:56 PM

Question for anyone in the know...

I'm using a prop hair tie, in which hair is distributed from to form the ponytail (Which hugely cuts down render time, and is much more manageable that using the hair on the head of the character) Anyway - I'm finding I cant get enough hair strands count (Count of max 500 is half what it needs) I certainly have enough verts for hair curves to create and style the pony tail... but not a large enough scale for GH to give me enough hairs :(

According to Futurebiscuit in post 921 on page 62 the distribution amount is number of follicles per square centimeter. So if your tie only has 4 square cm of surface, for exmple, you won't get more than 2,000 hairs if the max count is 500.

Looks like you will either have to find more surface area or use multiple nodes - unless you can talk him into upping the follicle count in a future release. But I expect there is a limit on how much you can cram into a square centimeter without blowing something up.

Ah yes, I was aware the surface space had effect of how many hairs... and I totally understand why the 500 limit is in place... if you went too high by accident, the computer would certainly have a fit. (A bit like accidentally changing interpolation widths to extremes in fast movement... Freezes my computer instantly (If music is playing at the time, the music instantly gets frozen too like a scratched CD stuck on one frequency) Only way out is to force shut down computer) So yeah, it must have the limit of hair count.

Wasnt sure if there was any other way that could increase the hair amount. I recall a post that mentioned sub division... but it did nothing to the object in garibaldi... And rescaling the hair tie just looks wrong. Hair ties are tight lol.

Not to worry. Multiple nodes it is

mjc1016 - 08 January 2013 11:32 AM

I posted a render using that technique a couple of weeks ago...

And yeah, you either need to subdivide the heck out of it or use a couple of nodes. On of the things I found is that if you make a filled circle, in Blender, by extruding the outer edge in, several times, before having them all meet in the center and then subdividing that in Blender, you can get a better/more faces to use. I can't remember, exactly how many...but I was getting the best results, for a single node, starting with a couple of hundred faces...I'll run a couple of more tests.

Quoted from Post #846 - Sounds like MJC was getting more surface area by indenting the hair distribution area of the model inside the hair tie... He'd get more hair out of it but I dont think it's enough surface to warrant only one node. My tests with SD didn't change the nodes OR Amount of hair.

futurebiscuit i have donre wat u sugested wat u said to do on the global part and its still the same nice name by the way also u lost me on the first part tlking ab ot the graphics card lol all to tech for me so im stuck at the mo on wat to do

Spyro - 21 January 2013 01:23 AM

Quoted from Post #846 - Sounds like MJC was getting more surface area by indenting the hair distribution area of the model inside the hair tie... He'd get more hair out of it but I dont think it's enough surface to warrant only one node. My tests with SD didn't change the nodes OR Amount of hair.

If I understand correctly, FB says that subdivision will give you more guide hairs but has no effect on generated hairs (follicles). That's a function of distribution count/sq cm regardless of how dense the poly count.

fairy_37 - 21 January 2013 05:26 AM

futurebiscuit i have donre wat u sugested wat u said to do on the global part and its still the same nice name by the way also u lost me on the first part tlking ab ot the graphics card lol all to tech for me so im stuck at the mo on wat to do

I belive he is saying there is a problem with your graphics chip. He has ordered a motherboard with that chipset and will be testing if it is possible to support it - but the functionality will likely be reduced.

thnk u gone for yr reply i will wait patiently for the resuslts as i cant wait to have a play on garabaldi

Spyro - 21 January 2013 01:23 AM

Ah yes, I was aware the surface space had effect of how many hairs... and I totally understand why the 500 limit is in place... if you went too high by accident, the computer would certainly have a fit. (A bit like accidentally changing interpolation widths to extremes in fast movement... Freezes my computer instantly (If music is playing at the time, the music instantly gets frozen too like a scratched CD stuck on one frequency) Only way out is to force shut down computer) So yeah, it must have the limit of hair count.

Wasnt sure if there was any other way that could increase the hair amount. I recall a post that mentioned sub division... but it did nothing to the object in garibaldi... And rescaling the hair tie just looks wrong. Hair ties are tight lol.

Not to worry. Multiple nodes it is

mjc1016 - 08 January 2013 11:32 AM

I posted a render using that technique a couple of weeks ago...

And yeah, you either need to subdivide the heck out of it or use a couple of nodes. On of the things I found is that if you make a filled circle, in Blender, by extruding the outer edge in, several times, before having them all meet in the center and then subdividing that in Blender, you can get a better/more faces to use. I can't remember, exactly how many...but I was getting the best results, for a single node, starting with a couple of hundred faces...I'll run a couple of more tests.

Quoted from Post #846 - Sounds like MJC was getting more surface area by indenting the hair distribution area of the model inside the hair tie... He'd get more hair out of it but I dont think it's enough surface to warrant only one node. My tests with SD didn't change the nodes OR Amount of hair.

What I meant, is subdivide it in the modelling app so you can actually change the number of sides/over all shape...but not using a subdivision modifier or algorithm. An actual 'cut' type division.

But...

What I'm getting is very odd and inconsistent. And not what I expect.

I create a flat disk, in Blender, with any number of polys, UV map it and export it as on obj. I take it into DS and don't scale it or anything and it's 2cm in diameter. I create a hair node on it and leave it at the default distribution (10). I get 52 hairs...

Now, if I up it to say 100...I get 362 hairs (which, is closer to the the 315 it should be, if it is actually hairs/cm2), but if I take it to 500, I get 1545. I can manually type in over 500 (up to 1000...the slider goes to 500). At 1000, I get 3072...

Not too unexpected/outrageous.

Now here's where the oddity starts coming in.

I follow the above steps, but have a 4 cm disk. At 100 you'd expect over 1200 hairs...which I get. Now the really odd thing is, if I take that disk and scale it down, depending on HOW I scale it (this is BEFORE creating hair on it) I can still get over 1200 hairs, if I drop it back to a 2 cm size (scale xz down to 50%). I can create the hair AFTER scaling and end up with 300+ if I use the sliders, but if I use a script, I'll still get 1200+. And if I save it, the count will 'lock' in at that rate...I think that's how I ended up with some items that are giving me over 5 million hairs, when by calculating it out I should be getting right around a million (for the entire object). This behavior, I believe is a bug...but I'm not sure where the bug is, without further testing. I think it's not anything to do with creating the hair, because it works the other way, too...scaling up, using the sliders, works...using the script, it stays the same. Of course if I export the scaled item and reimport it before creating the hair the results are as expected.

Altering the geometry produces differing results...some of which show that either DS or Garibaldi is assuming the item is a square or circle...not necessarily the number of sides the object actually has (tried to make something with 18 sides and it came out as if it was a circle, as far as hair count goes). But things get really weird when making convoluted objects or squashed spheres...like if I take a circle made with 32 segments and pull up every other one, I get over 1900 hairs (4 cm circle)...and with a sphere, I can 'sqaush' it in such a way that I get over 2300 for a 4 cm dome (cut sphere in half before squashing).

So, it's not as if the area calculations are quite simple/straight forward

Here's a quick render (no real styling on it, other than a general 'downward curve') of my 'squashed dome' that in the 4 cm version with 1000 typed in the distribution, was giving around 24000 hairs, in the 2 cm version, it gives about 6000 (as expected)...

My attempt.
Is still far from being cool, but now I believe I'm on the right track.
Thank you, Gone.

mjc1016 - 21 January 2013 02:19 PM

Here's a quick render (no real styling on it, other than a general 'downward curve') of my 'squashed dome' that in the 4 cm version with 1000 typed in the distribution, was giving around 24000 hairs, in the 2 cm version, it gives about 6000 (as expected)...

That's really interesting. I didn't realize that different primitives used to create the part which hair is intended to grow on had an affect on the hair generation. I used The end of a cylinder, in which I edited to form a round plane. I also didn't know you could type in over 500 hair count. (Max of 1000)

With the squished dome, are you using the inside faces or the outside faces? (In max, the dome is made of a sphere primitive, which from memory is not solid. )

And cheers for the confirmation on what you were doing with sub D. It was to do with the verts for curves (Before imported to Daz. Got ya )

Alfinin - 21 January 2013 07:21 PM

My attempt.
Is still far from being cool, but now I believe I'm on the right track.
Thank you, Gone.

The right track is always a good place to be.

In the distribution workspace, you should increase the hair count to thicken the volume. In the style workspace, move the Surface Attract tool to the left to lift the hair slightly off the head and change the autoparting from the default of 180 to 100 and you should see a big improvement.

Have fun playing with this great tool.