dForce Hair Simulation Tools
algovincian
Posts: 2,576
Is anybody else working on dForce simulated hair? If so, please post some animations so we can all check 'em out!
I've been working on developing tools to create the geometry, rigging, morphs, surface settings, etc. necessary for hair from the ground up. A design for the geometry's density/topology has evolved that seems to be stable during simulations and produces plausible movement.
The hair is self-colliding, which helps to give it volume. Up until now, I've been focused on the movement and stability, but the foundation for implementing a form of "digital hairspray" for styling has been laid - we'll see. Obviously work must still be done as far as materials go, too.
Anyway, here's a quick preliminary test animation that presents a pretty good challenge as it includes some rather energetic movement:
The roughly 200 frames took just under 20 minutes to simulate on a modest i5/32GB with a 6GB 1060. I really need to work on the styling to get the hair out of her eyes - poor girl can't see a thing lol
In case anybody missed it, the animations used were all included in the g8f starter essentials update on Halloween for free:
Like I said, feel free to post any dForce hair simulations of your own creation!
- Greg
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Comments
Looks really good. Since I never do animations, I would be more interested in some closeup stills to see how much the mesh gets distorted which has been my issue when trying this out on hair.
EcVh0 -- I think -- is working on a commercial product for this. That's about all I know about it, though. There's a thread in the forum somewhere about it.
True, but the mesh gets pretty distorted from the promos I have seen, so the more people working on this the better IMO.
That looks awesome. Good to see more people working on dforce for hair.
My focus is definitely animation. If it's just a still, I'd much rather use included morphs and dformers, or just export it to a modeling app to create a custom morph. I'll post some stills, too though once I get into working on the mats for the hair.
In this short animation you can see the hair get "tangled" a bit as it's bouncing around (it's only temporary, though). In my past attempts, it would get stuck or locked due to geometry intersection. In this case, the tangling is just caused by friction.
- Greg
Looks like it could make some gorgeous dreads or braids!! I'd love some more afro styles!
Oh well, thanks for the reply. Considering we have all been using morphs and deformers already with less than satisfactory results, hopefully someone else will come out for a dforce product that can be used with hair on stills (and animations). Good luck with the progress!
Didn't mean to imply you couldn't render stills - after all, an animation is nothing more than a series of stills. I just meant that plopping the hair on a figure and running a static drape wasn't really my focus.
It will be interesting to see where this heads. The hair is generated programmatically, so there could end up being way more strands than you see in this video. Or, maybe strands that size will look fine once they're transmapped with finer hair. Or, maybe strands the size you see in the video are just proxies for the movement, which is then translated to other geometry that actually holds textures and gets rendered. Or . . . you get the idea ;)
This isn't even half-baked yet - more like barely baked lol.
- Greg
That's great! Hopefully, they'll pop in and drop some examples/animations on us.
- Greg
Here's a first stab at some simple styling:
Looks like there was some intersection occurring with her nose or lip - doh! At least she could see . . .
- Greg
I can say mine is mostly focusing on still poses (and some works for animations), it's great to see more and more people getting into hair simulation! Good luck and I will definitely be one of the first to try it out!
Do you have any links for us to check out? If so please don't be afraid to post them here.
- Greg
For those interested, I found a couple links regarding @EcVh0's work. Here's the actual product:
https://www.daz3d.com/dforce-master-hair-simulation-presets-for-dforce-cloth-engine
And here's a thread discussing the product:
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/211261/dforce-master-hairforce-mega-thread-commerical#latest
Awesome work - the advantages of working on existing hairs are obvious!
- Greg
Haha sorry I only found out about your reply now XD
Thanks for the links and everything
I'm finding that the dForce simulation on hair to be extremely CPU intensive. I can't use the GPU, I've tried and it crashes Daz Studio, and now it's still using the CPU but there's been no screen refresh in almost two (2) days. The CPU activity shows Daz Studio still active and using the CPU to do work, but that's the only thing I can find to see that it's still working.
Looks nice! I can't wait to see those tools!
It took me quite a while to arrive at the topology and properties used for the hair in the videos. It's a delicate balance as there are many considerations - including simulation stability.
The in-escapable fact is that most hair available for purchase is not designed for use in simulations. This is why DAZ has specifically said dForce is not meant for use on hair.
That being said, creative people like EcVh0 have managed to squeeze some simulation into it.
- Greg
Thanks, @Imago. Designing a topology that produces decent motion and a stabile simulation is only the first step. As briefly alluded to in a previous post, I have a feeling that setting up the mats so it looks like nice hair, or transferring the motion to alternative geometry which has the actual hair mats applied, is going to be challenging!
- Greg