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I think the strand hair is so far from finished RC 4.11 might not happen until December or later. It's an excellent start though and better than the two existing released plugins yet earnestly being able to style hair with it is mostly a non-starter.
I disagree - have you seen some of the hair that some of the users have been able to create with the strand based hair in this thread? :) Many of them look great, imo.
I know I'm really impressed with what I've seen in this thread, (and I'm not counting the PA offerings in the pipeline.) My own efforts have been far less ambitious, yet I've done much better with this than I was ever able to do with LAMH. (Nothing against LAMH. I use LAMH presets, and I've been successful with minor mods, too. But I could never get the hang of creating my own.)
I suspect it will be like many of the features of Daz Studio, where some users will quickly become adept, some users will struggle to "get it" and most users will fall somewhere in between. (I've got my fingers crossed that my "somewhere in between" will be closer to adept than struggle!)
That's got little to do with the stability of the build or the hair plugin; I really hope Daz do not release a buggy DS - its so frustrating when the do that.
I didn't say it did. I was disagreeing with the: "being able to style hair with it is mostly a non-starter".
I have a computer where the newest parts are already 5yrs old.....and I use the hair system alot now (trying to make all the furry character I have been dieing to for years)...and I have run into no stability issues.
I suspect that alot of what people are calling stability issues are more about simply learning to use the program in the way that it was built (rather than trying to make it work in the way they want)
Yes, I have seen them. I didn't say they what one 'could manage to style with the very limited tools was bad', I said the styling tools were too limited to release.
Well, I think the prime concern for Daz whether the PAs can make products that can be used by the customers in a good way.
Less whether the customers can create items of their own. Daz Studio is made as a tool for rendering your content - not primarily building your own. You have many tools within Daz Studio who are not easy to use by regular customers.
That is just your personal opinion and not a fact. The strand based hair editor is an improvement over what the original Garibaldi Express Hair plugin was and did not take away from its function or stability.
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The editor has definitely changed. I'm not sure about the shader, but the Strand-Based Hair now has two surfaces instead of one. As I read the change log, one is for RSL and one for other engines (like Iray). The change log is linked from the first post in the Beta thread. Scroll all the way to the end for the latest entries.
The "basic" editor was already there, and it's used primarily by PAs to create morphs without changing anything that would mess up the process. At least that's how I understood what we were told. You accessed it by holding down the Ctrl key when clicking on the Edit Strand-Based Hair... menu item. I stumbled across it when I tried adding a keyboard shortcut that included the Ctrl key. I haven't tested it yet, but I suspect using the Ctrl key won't invoke the basic view anymore.
The multiple surfaces is for a reason. The main developer explained to me that the 3DL requirements and Iray requirements to render the hair is different. So the strand based hair material surface is there strickly for 3DL. If you are using 3DL, that is what you modify. If you are using Iray, you can ignor the 3DL surface and just use the other surfaces instead.
Well this is a beta folks. Your going to see changes here and there! LOL
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Please tell me the recommended Hair Shader. I am using OOT iRay Pair Hair Shader now.
When comparing a painted texture to generated hairs/fibers, it's best to remember that that realistic fibers both transmit and reflect color in addition to specularity. Since hairs/fibers overlay and combine to obstruct transmitted light that moves through the fibers as well as bounce off. When several fibers pile together, they will make a darker color because they will block more light moving through them. Think about what happens if you pile several layers of lightly shaded glass on top of each other--the appearance will become progressively darker with each pane of glass piled on top of the other. Also, the skin of animals (when their fur is shaved off or molted) is not always the same color as the fur, often a lighter color (though polar bears have black skin under their white fur,) The setting in the iray shader set the propertes of an "average hair" at a paticular position which will be cloned with varation and piled with other hairs. To get the right color, I would lighten the animal's skin color and then work with a lighter texture for the transmitted color of the hairs which will combine to form darker clusters of hair.
When starting with a 2d color map for a non-fiber model, I usually take the base 2D textures, blur them and then lighten them to serve as guide colors for the tansmission and reflection of the hairs in the hair shading node. I'll make the underlying skin a lighter and de-saturated version of the fur colors as a starting point. It takes some experimentation to get the right mix of settings to get the right final colors, but the results will usually become more realistic. You may also need to fiddle with the thickness of hairs to see the right level of light transmission al the edges of the model.
HTH,
-K
Thank you, I will try it.
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@Joepingleton great work, the fur looks terrific.
I think the market for what the styling tools can currently manage by even the most experienced and talented PA using them is very limited.
"very limited"? The things being created with the styling tools by the community already (and it's still in beta) shows how the styling tools can create a wide range of things from hair, fur, thatched roofs, grass, stuffed animals, etc etc.
These are incredible tools. And we have only scratched the surface in exploring these tools and what they're capable of. I think your definition of "very limited" might be hugely different than what "very limited" is generally defined as. lol :P I suspect we'll be seeing gorgeous inventions and creations with these tools being used in ways we haven't even considered yet.
And the tool is still in development. Even after 4.11 is released, I expect to see improvements to the Strand-Based Editor, as well as dForce in general, (as Daz has been doing all along since dForce was released.)
That is fantastic work Phil! I'm super excited to see not only what the community at large can do with this tool but what our PA's can do with the Dforce when all is finalized. I export my figures out of DAZ and render in Octane. I think I read somewhere that you will be able to export the strand based hair as an .obj?
Joepingleton I've sent you a message. This is awesome... what critter figure are they? Thought i had all of them....
@Siciliano1969 Yes I believe that you can export the full hair - be prepared for some huge files though as the fully tesselated hair (ie. turned into polygons) probably has tens of millions of polygons. That is why Strand Base and dForce Hair is so good, you can save and manipulate the strands at a much lower load on your system and it then converts that to polys for render. So it is a very efficient system. If you have the Octane plugin for Daz Studio, I understand that it works with that too.
Is there any way to have strand based hair interworking with other applications as strand based hair?