Garibaldi Express: Hair and Fur Plugin [Commercial]

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Comments

  • GoneGone Posts: 833
    edited December 1969

    Here is the link to the beta site:

    Garibaldi beta site

    This version was originally supposed to be released in the store back in January. I don't know for certain, but I believe there was some work that had to be done to make it DIM compatible but, unfortunately, Futurebiscuit got tied up in more pressing work and didn't have time to finish up what DAZ needed.

    The plugin works just fine for me - it uses an installer so you need to be sure you point it to the right place.

  • patience55patience55 Posts: 7,006
    edited December 1969

    Gone said:
    Here is the link to the beta site:

    Garibaldi beta site

    This version was originally supposed to be released in the store back in January. I don't know for certain, but I believe there was some work that had to be done to make it DIM compatible but, unfortunately, Futurebiscuit got tied up in more pressing work and didn't have time to finish up what DAZ needed.

    The plugin works just fine for me - it uses an installer so you need to be sure you point it to the right place.

    Registered and all that, thank you.

  • EmotionalOutlet3DEmotionalOutlet3D Posts: 243
    edited December 1969

    Just got Garibaldi in the flash sale and now playing with it. I have a question, ok many but let's start with this one. I am trying to work on fur for a poodle (dog) in a show clip. I want to put "bracelets" on the front and back legs but want it to be symmetrical. In other words rather than doing the same fur on each leg separately does Garibaldi have some sort of symmetry feature allowing you to paint multiple areas (such as legs) identically? Not sure if that makes sense to anyone ...

  • GoneGone Posts: 833
    edited December 1969

    Version 1.1 (available at the link above) has a symmetry option in the paint panel. The symmetry is based on the UV map - just as it would be for any other app.

    With symmetry turned on, what you paint on one front leg will be mirrored on the other and the same with the rear legs - but there is no way you will be able to do all 4 legs at once.

  • EmotionalOutlet3DEmotionalOutlet3D Posts: 243
    edited December 1969

    Thanks for the reply, Gone. Actually I just need symmetry on pairs of legs for this not all 4 legs so that would be great. I've registered but not downloaded yet. I'm a little leary about installing the beta when I already have GB installed. I've had problems with betas that left me trying to fix things on the computer for days. I'll read through the forum first and see what issues people have had first. :)

  • GoneGone Posts: 833
    edited December 1969

    As I mentioned at the top of the page, 1.1 was supposed to be in the store in January. To my knowledge, it was DIM compatibility issues that needed to be resolved - not functionality.

    The only serious problems I've seen reported are installing to the wrong location.

    If 1.0 is working properly for you, then 1.1 will work properly.

  • EmotionalOutlet3DEmotionalOutlet3D Posts: 243
    edited December 1969

    Thanks Gone, have now installed the beta version. I didn't have time to do more than a quick test but the symmetry feature seems to work great. Also want to have a look at the lion head & mane when I get a chance. Don't know who did it but just love the work. Looks so realistic. Hope to get back to it on the weekend but have to video a horse show so may have to wait for a week or so before I can play. :)

  • EmotionalOutlet3DEmotionalOutlet3D Posts: 243
    edited December 1969

    Is anyone using Garibaldi Express for animal fur? I have a few questions.

    1. Unlike a human animals have a larger area of hair and often patterned and different lengths and textures. How do you put fur on your animals? In other words do you do create new hair area by area over the body where the colour or texture is different or some other trick?

    2. What sort of distribution settings do you use? I find I have to go quite high especially for short fur but then get some sort of odd colouring when I do.

    3. Is there an erase tool???? I keep getting hair on the wrong areas and the only way I can find is to cut it off .... :)

    Any tricks or discussions on creating animal fur greatly appreciated.

  • KeryaKerya Posts: 10,943
    edited December 1969

    Gone's explanation of how to make Lion fur
    http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/17751/P735/#544596

    http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/17751/P1035/#633925


    Erase Tool: Paint in Black
    Set the 'Value' parameter in the 'Paint Brush Settings' of 0.0 will make the brush black.

  • EmotionalOutlet3DEmotionalOutlet3D Posts: 243
    edited December 1969

    Hi and thanks. That is ever so helpful. I tried searching this thread for info but kept coming back no results. I have both of Gone's explanations up on my other computer and will try to follow it through. Especially thanks for the erase tip. I was starting to find cutting off the hair very annoying. :)

  • SpyroRueSpyroRue Posts: 5,020
    edited July 2014

    It's far safer and much more accurate to paint black to remove unwanted hair. Cutting hair curves to remove it is not a good idea as it is both difficult to get those curves back later, and it has unpredictable affect over how much hair is removed and what control you are left with over the clumping and styling of the remaining hair surrounding it.

    Unintentionally, cutting styling curves too short may also result in the removal of curves, this is common when working with short hair with the scissors tool, particularly beards/facial hair. I always undo when ever this happens. I think once Undo is no longer an option, the only way to retrieve missing curves is to extrude all the hair with nothing selected. - When I work with very short hair (Facial hair, Brows etc) I would use selection to choose the curves I want shorter and use the extrude tool to make it very short, this used correctly wont cause missing styling curves.

    Post edited by SpyroRue on
  • GoneGone Posts: 833
    edited December 1969

    As Spyro mentioned, the extrude tool is your friend. The only time I will use the scissors is to trim long hair to have the same length. I never use scissors on short hair. If there is only one segment length on the hair you cut, then it will remove the hair guide completely. Better to be safe than sorry and use the extrude.

    For hair colour with subtle - or not so subtle - colour patterns, you can either paint a colour texture map for use in the base/tip colour blocks or you can import a diffuse texture map for use in base/tip. In the lion post Kerya linked to, you will notice that I used texture maps to drive the body fur colour.

    How many hair nodes you use will depend on what you want to accomplish and your patience level. I tend to use separate nodes for head and body just because I find it easier to manage. When hair needs to be built up, like a lion's mane or fancy clipping for a show poodle, then it is easier to work with separate hair nodes for the variety of lengths that will be used.

    The drawback to multiple nodes is that you can only work with one at a time and you can't see how they interact with each other until you do a test render. Experience and good visualization can go a long way to making this process faster. :)

    Another consideration, if you have a single hair node with long hair on one end and short hair on the other, the generated hair will have a gradient fall off from long to short. With separate hair nodes, you can have a sharp divide between long and short hair.

  • EmotionalOutlet3DEmotionalOutlet3D Posts: 243
    edited December 1969

    Thanks Spyro and Gone. I am now totally at the frustrated stage and have just deleted about an hour's worth of work. I will have to go back to it when I am in a more Zen mood. :) The unwanted hair was in places where I didn't want any hair like the feet. I'm not even sure why it was getting there. But even when erasing it it kept appearing later on. I will try using the extrude tool instead. I thought I'd start with something easy like Siamese cat fur because it is basically short and only two main colours. I managed to get an ok tail but the body coat was crap. It looked like the cat had radiation therapy. :) I don't mind multiple nodes if you get a better result. For the Siamese I'd planned on nodes each for the tail, the body, legs and feet, muzzle and ears. The problem I'm finding is I don't seem to be able to get any sort of decent preview so have to render to see what I'm doing. I'm using AoA lights, setting a flag and primitive hit mode but still the renders are taking ages just to see a preview. Hence the frustration - wait all that time to see crap. :) Maybe I'll just try a black cat with one node until I know what I'm doing .... and look into the texture maps for colouration.

  • GoneGone Posts: 833
    edited December 1969

    Painting on the model can, sometimes, be quite challenging. It only takes a tiny spot of paint to generate hair and if the paint is hiding between the toes, for instance, it can be a real pain to try and erase.

    You will want to eliminate the falloff zone for the brush, zoom in real close to the offending area, and scrub in all directions to erase every bit of paint when that happens.

    In cases like that, it's usually less frustrating to just paint the map in a paint app and import.

    When painting in areas that you do want, you need to be careful to paint only on the front facing surfaces. If you paint to the edge of the front facing surface, the paint can "spill" around the curve of the model and paint unexpected areas. You also need to watch that some other part of the model isn't peeking out from behind the area being painted and catching the edge of the brush.

    For test renders, I don't normally use any lights - just the default headlamp. This will render fast and give a good idea of how the hair is being generated. Just keep in mind that the headlamp will not have any occlusion so the hair will seem to be too thin and sparse - but you will be able to see where it is being generated and how it is laying on the model - and that's all you are interested in at this point of the process. :)

  • EmotionalOutlet3DEmotionalOutlet3D Posts: 243
    edited December 1969

    Sounds just like me when I'm painting. Drops everywhere! OK so here's my stupid question. What is required to import a texture map? I've read the Garibaldi Wiki and have a fur image which I made into a png and sized correctly. But Garibaldi Express is not finding the file which I stuck on my desktop. I'm not sure if I'm missing something as it seemed straightforward. Is there some sort of special naming convention I'm missing or does it have to be somewhere special?

  • GoneGone Posts: 833
    edited December 1969

    The file must have the same name as the surface it is being applied to. If you are using the mil cat, it has to be named Fur.png. If there is more than one surface being used, then you would have to have a copy of the file for each surface named accordingly.

    Import and Export are handled at the FOLDER level, so you need to have the file(s) inside a named folder - like Siamese for example.

    In Garibaldi, when you select import, navigate to the folder (Siamese) and not to the file (Fur.png). Make sure you select "colour" as the import type. If all went well, you should get a message saying the files were imported successfully. You can now select the imported file for the base/tip colour in the distribution pane.

    Here's a crappy cat I threw together in about 20 minutes from load to final render.

    Maybe later I will do it up right - if anyone cares. :)

    CrappySiamese.jpg
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  • EmotionalOutlet3DEmotionalOutlet3D Posts: 243
    edited December 1969

    Well your "crappy" cat that you did in 20 mins looks better than my 3 tries for most of today. By a mile!!!!! :) I was just about to give up entirely but you have proved to me it is possible.... I will persevere. Thanks for the info re the import. Will work on it again tomorrow.

  • EmotionalOutlet3DEmotionalOutlet3D Posts: 243
    edited December 1969

    Gone said:
    The file must have the same name as the surface it is being applied to. If you are using the mil cat, it has to be named Fur.png. If there is more than one surface being used, then you would have to have a copy of the file for each surface named accordingly.

    Import and Export are handled at the FOLDER level, so you need to have the file(s) inside a named folder - like Siamese for example.

    In Garibaldi, when you select import, navigate to the folder (Siamese) and not to the file (Fur.png). Make sure you select "colour" as the import type. If all went well, you should get a message saying the files were imported successfully. You can now select the imported file for the base/tip colour in the distribution pane.

    Here's a crappy cat I threw together in about 20 minutes from load to final render.

    Maybe later I will do it up right - if anyone cares. :)

    Hi Gone,

    Well I managed to get the fur surface texture imported with your instructions but can't get the fur to look like anything. If I try to use the comb to shape it ends up looking like lumps and bumps, worse that just using bump and displacement maps. I tried to use some of the other tools to shape and it ended up looking like someone stuck its tail in an electric socket. What tools do you use to shape your fur? Your cat's fur looks detailed and plush down to individual hairs. Very much like the way a Siamese coat would lay and I know as I've owned one. :)

  • GoneGone Posts: 833
    edited July 2014

    I tend to use different tools depending on the look I'm going for. In this case, I used the comb to comb all the hair flat to the body and shape directionality along the body and legs. Once I have the general shape I like, I use the surface attract tool to pull the hair slightly away from the body to give it volume. Then some minor combing to the ears and tail to pull the hair out a bit further in the right direction.

    The detailing comes from playing with the clump and tweak panes.

    In clump, I pushed all the clump 1 sliders to max. Clump 2 has strength and bias maxed with amount set low - tweak this to suit.

    In the tweak pane, I gave a bit of random length. For the cat it was 0.5 but, again, you will want to play with this. Under root angle, I gave a bit of pitch and yaw to give a thicker looking coat and turned up the base frizz.

    Since the hair is supposed to be straight, I didn't use any scraggle, although most of the time I will use some to provide a very slight wavey effect - or not so slight if the style requires it. :)

    The clump and tweak panes are where all the magic happens. You need to play with these settings to get a proper feel for what they do. Once you understand what they are doing, you can quickly set them up for the effect you want.

    Then there's the shader settings.... :)

    EDIT: Forgot to mention, In this case I set the hair base/tip width to 0.6/0.1. This helps to make it look like a thicker coat without having to ramp up the amount.

    Post edited by Gone on
  • EmotionalOutlet3DEmotionalOutlet3D Posts: 243
    edited December 1969

    Oh thank you, thank you!!! I was starting to despair that I would never get it. Following your directions my latest try wasn't great but at least it slightly resembled hair. :) Where I was going wrong was I was avoiding the clumps and tweaks. Only applying the bare minimums. Once I started to max them up it made all the difference. A long way to go before I get something passable but at least I now know where I was going wrong.

  • GoneGone Posts: 833
    edited December 1969

    The cat that sat.

    So I redid the cat a little better. This time, I made a bunch of screen grabs so the next few messages will be a bit of a tutorial for how I made this - so bear with me - it’s going to be a long set of posts. :)

    The work flow is not definitive, it’s just how I did it this time. Hopefully, it will provide some insight on hair building.

    CatThatSat.jpg
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  • GoneGone Posts: 833
    edited December 1969

    OK, so, obviously, I started by loading up the milcat LE, applied the texture, and created a Garibaldi hair.

    In the editor setup pane, I selected the fur surface --- moving on...

    PAINT PANE
    In the paint pane, I painted the body distribution map. Symmetry and broad strokes quickly fill most of the map, but I moved in close for the legs to make sure I didn’t paint the feet. The UV map isn’t quite symmetrical so I turned off symmetry for the final painting just above the feet so there wasn’t any splash over in the wrong place on the opposite foot. Naturally, I needed to pay attention to the model orientation as I painted to make sure I didn’t inadvertently paint some other part. It wouldn’t do to paint a foot when painting the top of the model! :)

    Here’s the final body map. Now, to create new and paint a map for the face! Patience, Grasshopper - all will be revealed! :)

    Cat05.jpg
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    Cat04.jpg
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    Cat03.jpg
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    Cat02.jpg
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    Cat01.jpg
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  • GoneGone Posts: 833
    edited December 1969

    So, here’s the map painted for the face. Finally, import the colour texture map and done with painting.

    DISTRIBUTE PANE
    Aside from the texture map under amount, all the settings will remain the same no matter what map is selected here so I will go through all the settings used.

    First, I selected the face map for distribution.

    -Amount. This is always going to be a guess. There will need to be a few test renders to determine what the best amount will be for the particular hair being made. In this case, I went with 20 (generated hairs/sq cm). This resulted in generating approx 350K hairs for the body map I made.

    -Width settings. Here, you can see I set base/tip to 0.6/0.1. Since I’m trying to keep the generated hair count down, I used a wide base setting to “fill in” space so there won’t be much model texture showing through. If I used a narrower base, I would have to increase the number of generated hairs to over 600K in order to provide better coverage. Working in conjunction with other settings, this also helps to provide the illusion of a thick coat of hair. The narrow tip helps to sell the fine hair look.

    -Colour settings. The imported colour map is used to drive the colour so there is no need to change the base/tip colours. Since I am using a map to drive the colour, I set the salt and pepper amounts to 0 so only the map will drive the colour.

    STYLE PANE
    The first thing I did was to select the scale tool and scale the guides down to 0.6. Face hair is generally shorted that body hair and, using a face map, it is easy to scale the face hair without having to use selection tools and grabbing guides that I don’t want.

    See - there was a reason for the face map! :) But wait! There’s more! :) :)

    The next step is to reduce the length around the eyes, mouth and front of muzzle. I use the base selection tool because it is easy to select the guides you want even though other hairs you don’t want pass over the ones that are to be selected. The drawback to this tool is that it will select the base hair from the front or the back of the surface.

    In this case, if the selection marquee passes over the open eye socket when multiple guides are being selected, then it will select the guides visible through the eye socket. I didn’t pay attention to this with crappy cat, so I ended up with bald spots on the back of the head that would have needed to be repaired if it wasn’t crappy cat. :)

    By using a face only map, there is no danger of selecting guides on other parts of the body inadvertently. Yes, I could have simply not painted this area so no hair would be generated - but, this way, I still have short hairs around the eyes, mouth and front of muzzle.

    Here’s the final map.

    Cat10.jpg
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    Cat09.jpg
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    Cat08.jpg
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    Cat07.jpg
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    Cat06.jpg
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  • GoneGone Posts: 833
    edited July 2014

    Back to Distribute pane, change the texture map to the full body map and return to the Style pane. As you can see, the changes made to the face are still there. That’s because this is a single hair node - any changes made will be remembered regardless of the map used to make them.

    Now, I turn the cat sideways, select the comb, and comb the hair flat from head to tail. I adjust zoom and angle and comb hair in the direction required (front to back on the body and down the legs for example). The face is also combed to have the hair laying in the proper direction around the eyes and along the cheeks.

    The combing is purely for directionality.

    Once the hair is laying the way I want, it’s time to use the Surface Attract tool to pull the hair slightly away from the body. I also used a bit of curl and extend to adjust the hair a bit more as seen in the final screen grab.

    Cat14.jpg
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    Cat13.jpg
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    Cat12.jpg
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    Cat11.jpg
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    Post edited by Gone on
  • GoneGone Posts: 833
    edited December 1969

    CLUMP PANE
    Clumping can make or break the look of the hair. It is worthwhile playing with the sliders to see just what they are doing to the hair. It is worth paying particular attention to the bias sliders. These are the settings used to get the fluffy look with hairs rather than a plastic helmet look.

    TWEAK PANE
    The Random Length setting is used to break up the uniformity of the hair. In this case, only a small amount of change is needed. The Random Root Angle help to puff up the look of the hair. Here are the settings used for this hair. No scraggle was used because this style requires straight hair but Base Frizz was used to help puff up the hair and “fill in” holes in the fur.

    That’s it for the editor.

    With the hair selected in DS, it’s time to go to the surfaces tab to adjust the shader. In this case, it was only necessary to turn down the overall shine (TRT) so the TRT intensity was set to 0.3 and the TRT colour blend was set to 0.8 to make the hair colour a bit more dominant over the blend colour.

    If you are using Gamma Correction in your render settings (as I am) then you will also also need to set the gamma switch in the shader. It can be found near the bottom of the settings.

    LIGHTING
    I used a simple light set up with AoA’s Ambient light, 2 AoA spotlights and a distant light.

    The ambient light casts specular from the direction of the camera. Since the cat is looking at the camera, this would create bright spots in the middle of the eye. There are a couple of ways to avoid this, but the method I use is to set the ambient light to diffuse only and use a distant light as specular only. Naturally, the distant light is not pointing from the camera. :)

    The last 2 images show the cat posed and framed and the light set up.

    Cat17.jpg
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    Posed.jpg
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    Cat16.jpg
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    Cat15.jpg
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  • GoneGone Posts: 833
    edited July 2014

    All the AoA lights have the same Lighting Control settings. The light settings for each of the lights is also shown. AoA spot 1 is the key light and has the shadow softness set to 250% with 48 samples. The second spot has softness set to 1000% that effectively eliminates the shadow so there is only visible shadows from one direction.

    So, that’s how this cat was done.

    I hope this is helpful to someone.

    Light4.jpg
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    Light3.jpg
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    Light2.jpg
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    Light1.jpg
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    Post edited by Gone on
  • EmotionalOutlet3DEmotionalOutlet3D Posts: 243
    edited December 1969

    Gone, very helpful to me! I've bookmarked this page for reference. Thanks!!!

  • patience55patience55 Posts: 7,006
    edited December 1969

    Oh thank you very much! :-)

  • DarkStarr42DarkStarr42 Posts: 72
    edited December 1969

    Told it may help if i post this here. I recently purchased the Garibaldi Hair System, but when I install it shows on my hard drive but not when I open DAZ. It should ask for ser# when I open Daz after install that shows in my account, but I get nothing also dose not show on list of plug-ins. Next week I will have to ask for a refund because my 30 days will be up. Help Desk could not Help with this. Email to vendor contact for assistance was not replied to. Thanks for any help

  • GoneGone Posts: 833
    edited December 1969

    Garibaldi uses an installer and not DIM so you need to make sure the installer is pointed at the program folder (where DAZStudio.exe is installed) and not at the content folder.

    There are only 2 files installed - one to the plugin sub-folder and one to the shader sub-folder.

    You can also install to a temp folder and then move the files to the correct locations.

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