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hmmm. Well if the fiber hair is too thick it clearly shows that the artist wanted to make some unfortunate compromise.
There are also a lot of mixed solutions out there. Some thick fiber hair strands that then still add a transparency map on top of it.
- - -
So when I talk about fiber hair I mean either
- curve based fiber hair that is not adding any stress to the RAM or VRAM because the render engine is able to read those curves.
Example LAMH
or
- Fiber mesh hair in the form of .obj that will need a workstation with a lot of RAM or VRAM
- - -
When starting this post I assumed that almost everyone is allready familiar with what fiber hair actually is and how it is created and used.
I added some screenshots to give some further ideas and impressions that may inspire some people to give this a try.
- The example image of Charlie hair shows how the image looks like after 385 samples per pixel are calculated after only 16 seconds.
- In Zbrush you comb fiber mesh hair with the help of colored polygroups.
- In LAMH you work with fiber curves.
- You can transform the fiber curves into a mesh and export the fiber hair as .obj
- One of my early mixed results experiments with fiber hair.
The challenge is that probably all artists at first will create a lot of mixed results experiments when starting to learn how to create fiber based hair.
- at the beginning you may create insane models with 25'000'000 active hair points that hardly any system can handle
- then you may try to create some low quality fiber hair solutions that compromise too much
- then you realize that the solution may not be to create one huge mesh with only one type of fiber hair but different sub meshes for different areas that can be combined for the final result
In any case maybe in 2013 and 2014 it was too early to give fiber mesh hair a real try because a lot of people still would not be able to benefit from it. But now I am under the impression that it would be about time to increase some focus on more realistic solutions.Sorry, but except of the buffalo none of these examples look really convincing to me. That's why I spoke of HUMAN hair. Fur is always looking great with LAMH (I have only the player), but I don't know why human hair is always so... coarse. I must admit that I don't know much about the technique, but it looks as if you need a very fast computer to get good results.
LOL you quoted me but you didn't read what I posted!!
autofollow enabled in parameters will enable it if done before loading the hair that was saved as a support asset
adding the morphs in transfer utility, I just do visemes and expressions (but it can and will add EVERY morph otherwise) will put them in the actual mesh,
I do this for export to iClone and move them in parameters to the head before applying the Reallusion facial animation duf without the figure loaded so it is baked in the FBX export for iclone to auto convert for facial expression, then add and conform to the figure and add the facial duf to that.
didn't know that, my apologies.
There can be many reasons why fiber hair looks coarse:
- total hair count
The average human being has about 100'000 hairs on the head. Blondes have about 140'000, brunette hair about 108'000 and redheads only 80'000 strands.
Now if you want to create really realistic looking hair for a computer graphics model then you would create also about 100'000 fiber hair curves.
When working with fiber curves you do not have to worry about it at all and just go for 140'000 hair strands.
But when working with obj based fiber mesh hair people may try to lower the polygon count.
The longer the hair is the more points each strand will need.
If a fiber hair would only have one segment it would basically be a straight line.
If a fiber hair only has 3-5 segments it will bend a little but you still risk to get some "broken" hair strands.
You can observe that in the picture of the girl with the purple / lila hair I posted.
- Another cheat then is the hair thickness. The thicker the fiber hair is the more area it will cover but then of course it will also look more coarse.
- - -
So basically the polygon count is dependent on the total hair curves and the number of segments you add.
The less hair curves and coverage you have the more coarse fiber hair will get.
- - -
For those reasons I suggest not to make too much compromises when working with .obj based fiber hair.
And now that is the point where the quality policies of DAZ may come into play.
Maybe there are some vertices count limits in play that artists are not allowed to cross when submitting new products?
Maybe the accepted limits should be adjusted to allow for more high resolution models?
For example the Charlie hair has 799'661 points / vertices.
The hair is not too long so from my point of view this is a great example of a very optimized hair model.
It renders fast and looks realistic enough for my purposes.
But if you would like to get the same results with longer hair you would need to be open for 10'000'000+ points / vertices.
- - -
The other approach would be to sell fiber hair based on hair curves like LAMH.
As mentioned the idea of hair curves is that they are optimized for a specific render engine and use less system resources.
- - -
But there are other techniques that can be applied.
Instead of creating strands on the whole head why not only create fiber hair strands on the front and hide the rest of the head under a beanie, a hood or any other kind of head gear?
- - -
Last but not least the quality of the fiber hair in the end also is dependent on the techniques used to create them.
It is a question of effort. How many hours do you want to spend creating morphs for many different hair strands?
As you can see in my examples I did not have a lot of patience when I started experimenting with this.
- - -
Let's have another look at the Portrait of Sylvia by jwillust:
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?191358-Portrait-of-Sylvia
- a high count of curves was used
- a high count of segments was used
- a lot of time was spent brushing individual hair strands into postion
- part of the hair is hidden under a hood to lower the overall polygon count.
- - -
As this example shows: It can be done!
As a general sentiment I can kind of agree, though it works for certain hairstyles the hairs I've seen on fiber mesh are just too thick to read realistic, still I find them a good deal more realistic than most prop/figure hair.
.
The render at the top looks great! And yes, I agree with both sentiments.
For me, The thick strands of hair in most fiber mesh looks like the thick hair Jeff Goldblum developed in the fly. Too large follicles and too large.
It is unlikely though, that my machine could handle hair like the first image though. Might be different with lashes and brows. =-)
The render at the top looks great! And yes, I agree with both sentiments.
For me, The thick strands of hair in most fiber mesh looks like the thick hair Jeff Goldblum developed in the fly. Too large follicles and too large.
It is unlikely though, that my machine could handle hair like the first image though. Might be different with lashes and brows. =-)
I actually find that strand dynamic hair renders more quickly for me than prop/figure hair (I was surprised to find this, as I was expecting just the opposite). I'm finding I'm able to do realistic animations really quickly, for example this was test animation that took something like 12 minutes to render:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsz65nEkq5U
I have made a couple of Daz Studio renders of Olympia 6 with Charlie hair and they took not so long time to render.
Below are examples with light setup from:
FWArt -> Sebastian -> CharacterLights --- Rendering Time: 6 minutes
and
Skin Builder Promo Lights --- Rendering Time: 7 minutes 6 seconds
Only wonder if somebody would release some fiber mesh eyebrows and eyelashes with or without a character...
The render at the top looks great! And yes, I agree with both sentiments.
For me, The thick strands of hair in most fiber mesh looks like the thick hair Jeff Goldblum developed in the fly. Too large follicles and too large.
It is unlikely though, that my machine could handle hair like the first image though. Might be different with lashes and brows. =-)
I actually find that strand dynamic hair renders more quickly for me than prop/figure hair (I was surprised to find this, as I was expecting just the opposite). I'm finding I'm able to do realistic animations really quickly, for example this was test animation that took something like 12 minutes to render:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wsz65nEkq5U
...a form of dynamic hair using curves is what Pixar developed for the character Merida. The unrendered version looks a lot like Garibaldi or LAMH with only the curve structure is visible.
Wow, that is a *lot* of guide hairs! And each one heavily segmented to get all those curls. Makes me wonder what it would take to achieve a similar effect...
...don't think we can do that on most of the systems we have today. Each of the base curves had secondary coils that wrapped around it to achieve that wild "springy" look. They also used SSS to create the sense of body and depth.
In all Pixar spent nearly three years developing the proprietary software for the hair alone.
I think there's a lot of overkill built into that thing, I can only imagine what it would be like to try to render without a render farm. And yeah, I can definitely see the sss now that you mention it. I am curious whether a similar style could be built for much less memory cost, probably have a little time to play around later to find out.
..well I have Garibaldi, though not sure how to create the secondary coils.
For the test renders of my Merida project, I cheated by overlaying two instances of Bolina Hair. One alone doesn't give enough depth for the back.
I think there's a lot of overkill built into that thing, I can only imagine what it would be like to try to render without a render farm. And yeah, I can definitely see the sss now that you mention it. I am curious whether a similar style could be built for much less memory cost, probably have a little time to play around later to find out.
In Pixars case, that hair needed to do a lot of things in the dynamics sense as well as have artist control when animating. I don't think it's much overkill.
This has been an interesting thread. I think that pic in the OP is the likely best Zbrush/fiber hair I've seen. Usually it's too thick and coarse as mentioned elsewhere in this thread. Another trick that's hard to pull off is the finer/softer hairs around the forehead, sides and nape of the neck.
For eyebrows, I guess I'd have to go through the whole thing to see for myself, but I can't imagine Autofit 'getting it right' for many brow morphs. (not to mention refitting to a slew of different characters) On the plus side, a very feature rich eyebrow set could give a lot of flexibility for users with morphs and material zones to control the shape, could be fun!
I think the thing that is a challenge with the fiber mesh hair on humans is it is also over articulated in addition to being thick strands so you get a sort of 'pine needle effect' where the hair sticks out and looks grasslike rather than like a soft mass with maybe a few stray strands.
When you see a person, especially someone who has styled their hair in a less hairsprayed look, there usually aren't so many strands of hair individually visible especially from a distance. you'll see wisps and strands around the edge of the hair silhouette, but the rest of the hair should be somewhat soft and falling gently around the face.
As we see manual fiber mesh creation also has its limitations.
So how are all those character models created for movies or games that feature animated expressions that include facial hair?
Disney Research shares some interesting techniques how to create 3D scans that include facial hair that follows expressions:
Each page features a quick description, a youtube video and a very detailed .pdf documentation if you are interested in more detailed information.
- - -
Coupled 3D Reconstruction of Sparse Facial Hair and Skin
From August 5, 2012:
http://www.disneyresearch.com/project/coupled-3d-reconstruction-of-sparse-facial-hair-and-skin/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=npecw1ohjA8
- - -
Somewhat related but more interesting for 3D prints.
Stylized Hair Capture
From August 10, 2014:
http://www.disneyresearch.com/project/stylized-hair-capture/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRBkdhZwBic
- - -
Doesn't ANYBODY read my post? or am I on ignore?
Autofollow
before loading an item fitted using the transfer utility saved as a support asset enable autofollow in parameters and if it on the face it will morph with all expressions and morphs.
This goes for masks, fake heads anything may not look pretty but . . . .
I tried making eyelashes in LAMH but was too twiddly
I have Zbrush but still cannot figure it out, updated it to 4R7 today too.
Update/Edit:
To summarize how I thought it worked so far:
- I assumed that with Autofollow you do not mean the same as Autofit.
- As far as I understood it "autofitted" "figures" do only follow morphs but not Pose Controls.
- Props on the other hand are not autofitted but "parented" to a "bone".
- Curve based fiber mesh may be able to follow Pose Controls as well because the curves are linked to the originating triangle or quad polygon face.
Maybe it is best to experiment with this on a practical "finished" example.
Do you happen to have
http://www.daz3d.com/horror-survivors-marius
The "Brow" in that set does not follow head expressions if you select the G2M Pose Controls / Head / Brow and change any morphs like "Brow Down".
Can you post some screenshots how to load the "Marius" "Brow" and how to activate Autofollow with the help of the Transfer utility? :question:
- - -
Screenshot: In this example the G2M Pose Control / Head / Brows morph "Brow Squeeze" was used. The "Maurius" "Brow" stayed in place while the underlying painted brows moved towards the nose bridge.
OK that one was a PITA but I got there
I had to use the transfer utility on the brows adding posing and shaping morphs and in edit mode enable auto follow on head AND beard with all selected
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/48063/ here is how you do it
thanks for links, I must go through those lessons, I am too impatient and not methodical.
I fixed both the beard and brows and added as support assets to my library
really vendors should do this stuff
There can be many reasons why fiber hair looks coarse:
- total hair count
The average human being has about 100'000 hairs on the head. Blondes have about 140'000, brunette hair about 108'000 and redheads only 80'000 strands.
Now if you want to create really realistic looking hair for a computer graphics model then you would create also about 100'000 fiber hair curves.
When working with fiber curves you do not have to worry about it at all and just go for 140'000 hair strands.
But when working with obj based fiber mesh hair people may try to lower the polygon count.
The longer the hair is the more points each strand will need.
If a fiber hair would only have one segment it would basically be a straight line.
If a fiber hair only has 3-5 segments it will bend a little but you still risk to get some "broken" hair strands.
You can observe that in the picture of the girl with the purple / lila hair I posted.
- Another cheat then is the hair thickness. The thicker the fiber hair is the more area it will cover but then of course it will also look more coarse.
- - -
So basically the polygon count is dependent on the total hair curves and the number of segments you add.
The less hair curves and coverage you have the more coarse fiber hair will get.
- - -
For those reasons I suggest not to make too much compromises when working with .obj based fiber hair.
And now that is the point where the quality policies of DAZ may come into play.
Maybe there are some vertices count limits in play that artists are not allowed to cross when submitting new products?
Maybe the accepted limits should be adjusted to allow for more high resolution models?
For example the Charlie hair has 799'661 points / vertices.
The hair is not too long so from my point of view this is a great example of a very optimized hair model.
It renders fast and looks realistic enough for my purposes.
But if you would like to get the same results with longer hair you would need to be open for 10'000'000+ points / vertices.
- - -
The other approach would be to sell fiber hair based on hair curves like LAMH.
As mentioned the idea of hair curves is that they are optimized for a specific render engine and use less system resources.
- - -
But there are other techniques that can be applied.
Instead of creating strands on the whole head why not only create fiber hair strands on the front and hide the rest of the head under a beanie, a hood or any other kind of head gear?
- - -
Last but not least the quality of the fiber hair in the end also is dependent on the techniques used to create them.
It is a question of effort. How many hours do you want to spend creating morphs for many different hair strands?
As you can see in my examples I did not have a lot of patience when I started experimenting with this.
- - -
Let's have another look at the Portrait of Sylvia by jwillust:
http://www.zbrushcentral.com/showthread.php?191358-Portrait-of-Sylvia
- a high count of curves was used
- a high count of segments was used
- a lot of time was spent brushing individual hair strands into postion
- part of the hair is hidden under a hood to lower the overall polygon count.
- - -
As this example shows: It can be done!
linvanchene, thanks for your explanations! This technique is really amazing. I have Garibaldi, but never use it, which is a shame. ;-) I see what is possible with fiber mesh (the Portrait of Sylvia is the best example I ever saw!), and I think I should give it another try.