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What is a LAMH file?

rnollmanrnollman Posts: 310
in The Commons

What is a LAMH? Does it stand for Look at My Hair? If so, what does it do? Why is it necessary? What is the relationship between a .duf file and an LAMH file? What is the relationship of the Look At My Hair products and the Look At My Hair Reader?

Comments

  • fixmypcmikefixmypcmike Posts: 19,707

    Yes, LAMH stands for Look At My Hair.  Some products (such as those by AM and RawArt) come with LAMH hair/fur options.  The .lmh file is just the hair, there will usully be .duf files with and without the hair.

    The free LAMH Player allows you to use these presets if you don't have the full LAMH plugin.  Currently the Player only supports 3delight, you need the full plugin to export the hair for use in Iray.

  • rnollmanrnollman Posts: 310

    Am I correct in assuming that the Look At My Hair product is the full plugin?

  • fixmypcmikefixmypcmike Posts: 19,707

    Yes, that's right  http://www.daz3d.com/look-at-my-hair

  • rnollmanrnollman Posts: 310

    When you say "export the hair", how does this work? Why do I have to export the hair? Wait, I am beginning to see the light...

    Look At My Hair is a plugin that allows you create the hair on a figure, say on the Genesis male to make him look like a werewolf (for example). Look At My Hair plugin creates the LAMH file. But then you have to somehow export the file? Export the file to where?

    AM products, such as Kangaroo and Joey, is a Kangaroo figure that has a preset using the LAMH file to create different versions of the Kangaroo figure. You choose one of the presets and it is applied to the figure and you are ready to render in Iray or 3Delight.

    Nah...that does not seem right. I am still confused...

  • fixmypcmikefixmypcmike Posts: 19,707

    For 3delight, you don't need to export anything, it works directly with the free player.  It uses a feature of 3delight (and other Renderman-compliant render engines) called ricurves to make light-weight detailed hair.  These won't work in Iray or other render engines, so for those you need to export the hair in a format that they can use, like fibermesh or .obj.  That feature requires the full plugin.

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,094
    edited February 2016

    If you really like Iray (or Luxrender), the plugin is totally worth it -- converting to Fibermesh 'freezes' the hair in place, but it makes for a lightweight file.

     

    My big complaint with LAMH right now is that it's very temperamental and has some annoying bugs. But it does stuff nothing else does as well. (And an update is due any day/month/year now...)

     

     

    Post edited by Oso3D on
  • Kendall SearsKendall Sears Posts: 2,995
    timmins.william said:

    If you really like Iray (or Luxrender), the plugin is totally worth it -- converting to Fibermesh 'freezes' the hair in place, but it makes for a lightweight file.

     

    My big complaint with LAMH right now is that it's very temperamental and has some annoying bugs. But it does stuff nothing else does as well. (And an update is due any day/month/year now...)

     

     

    No pressure added Will.  Yes, I'm late.  I admit it.

    Kendall

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,094

    I say it with love. Because I can't imagine trying to do a project of this magnitude without a team.

     

  • PennamePenname Posts: 347

    If it didn't crash my daz software every single time I used it, it would be an even better product.

  • gederixgederix Posts: 390
    Fixmypcmike said:

    These won't work in Iray or other render engines, so for those you need to export the hair in a format that they can use, like fibermesh or .obj.  That feature requires the full plugin.

    Not quite right. You can export obj files using the free player. 

    For rnollman: the free player allows you to use preexisting LAMH products like Wolf Am, these come with LAMH hair. The full plugin allows you to create hair from scratch, style it etc.

    If you are rendering with 3delight LAMH does not require exporting obj (or fibermesh) as 3delight can 'see' the LAMH hair by default. For other renderers like reality or iray these cannot see LAMH so you have to convert the LAMH hair to a format these renderes can see. So with the free LAMH player you can export obj files. Which literally consists of selecting your LAMH hair figure (not the LAMH hair objects themselves) and clicking export obj at the bottom of the free player window. Then just wait a min or 3 for teh player to do its export reload magic and once done, hit render. Simple. The newer and sleeker fibermesh option is only available with the full plugin (I think). From what Ive read the fibermesh is less memory intensive and works really well, but I have not used it. For me obj files work fine (but I plan on picking up the full player eventually, most hair props are imho infuriatingly terrible and the full player shoudl help me address this. I hope).

     

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,094
    edited February 2016

    Penname: Do not group or try to apply preset/editor to an item that's grouped. That's a big common bug. Since I learned to avoid that, my crashes are fairly infrequent with LAMH.

    I also find it helpful to save and restart DS whenever I do anything big with LAMH, and save hair to presets frequently.

     

    gederix: Yes, the free player can export to obj, but I really really really really recommend against bothering unless the hair count is low or you have a hotsh* machine. Fibermesh is _incredibly_ economical in it's compression, and if you are going to use LAMH with Iray/Reality/whatever, I HIGHLY recommend springing for the full plugin for that reason alone.

    A good hair/fur set of about 1 million hairs might be 10 gigs as an obj, and maybe 500 kb as fibermesh.

    Post edited by Oso3D on
  • Kendall SearsKendall Sears Posts: 2,995

    Just for reference:  "fibermesh" is a trademark for ZBrush's haire output.  "FiberHair" is a LAMH special ouput hair format.  Both get stored in .OBJ format for easy import into any program, but FiberHair is significantly less resource intensive than fibermesh.

    Kendall

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,094

    Er, sorry. ;)

     

  • Kendall SearsKendall Sears Posts: 2,995
    timmins.william said:

    I say it with love. Because I can't imagine trying to do a project of this magnitude without a team.

     

    Alessandro and I are a team.  I don't do this alone.  He's done his part and I've fallen behind.  I am completely to blame for the tardiness of both the update and the new version.

    Kendall

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,094

    Oh, I know it's the two of you. I meant, like... a BIG team. ;) With just a few people, so many life things can get in the way.

     

    Are dynamic stuff you posted a while back likely to be with the update, or somewhere further down the line?

     

  • Kendall SearsKendall Sears Posts: 2,995
    edited February 2016
    timmins.william said:

    Oh, I know it's the two of you. I meant, like... a BIG team. ;) With just a few people, so many life things can get in the way.

     

    Are dynamic stuff you posted a while back likely to be with the update, or somewhere further down the line?

     

    I am not a liberty ATM to discuss the scope.  There are some possible legal complications that have arisen in part of bringing dynamics to realization in DS as I had originally planned -- I have a backup plan in case things with Plan A don't work out.  In any case, Dynamic Hair will be in an upgrade and not as a 1.x update.  The exact mode and method is kinda fluid right now.

    Kendall

    EDIT: as an aside, I have added some new material to my youtube channel.

    Post edited by Kendall Sears on
  • Alessandro MastronardiAlessandro Mastronardi Posts: 2,651
    edited February 2016
    Kendall Sears said:
    timmins.william said:

    I say it with love. Because I can't imagine trying to do a project of this magnitude without a team.

     

    Alessandro and I are a team.  I don't do this alone.  He's done his part and I've fallen behind.  I am completely to blame for the tardiness of both the update and the new version.

    Kendall

    No this wouldn't be fair (to take all the blame). As a team, we both are equally responsible for success or failures. What was done so far with LAMH (both released products and current development) is incredibly tough and complicated work. I'm sure anybody with an understanding of computer programming will agree.

    Post edited by Alessandro Mastronardi on
  • gederixgederix Posts: 390
    timmins.william said:
    gederix: Yes, the free player can export to obj, but I really really really really recommend against bothering unless the hair count is low or you have a hotsh* machine.

    They could still TRY it, it is after all free, and as I mentioned in my above post, it works okay for me on my completely mediocre machine. I was simply correcting someone above who said exporting to obj is not available on the free player.

  • SpottedKittySpottedKitty Posts: 7,232
    edited February 2016
    timmins.william said:
    My big complaint with LAMH right now is that it's very temperamental and has some annoying bugs. But it does stuff nothing else does as well.

    It does indeed — here's a test render I did a little while back. Iray render, converted the LaMH fur to FiberHair, converted the materials to Iray, and let it render for only ten minutes or so. The fireflies would have gone away if I'd let it run a bit longer, and I think I could have tweaked the shaders a bit if I knew a bit better what I was doing with them....

    itsdawooolf-01.jpg
    983 x 661 - 55K
    Post edited by SpottedKitty on
  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,094

    Kendall: Heh, ok, good luck!

     

    'Will, you should link a bunch of your LAMH renders'

    What? Who, me? Why sure, mysterious voice... Unless otherwise noted, these use presets or included LAMH.

     

    3DL

    http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Peta-s-Dragon-593029124 (I made her hair. It's... not great, but hey)

    http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Winter-bear-hall-591418715

    http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Woman-and-body-hair-591021917 (I attempted to do some body hair. passable!)

    http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Lioness-590666160

    http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Dr-Sinha-590529373 (Rawart has a lot of cool LAMH presets with characters)

     

     

    Iray (converted to Fiberhair)

    http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Bot-woman-and-squirrel-591699664

    http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Dragon-and-fox-591574063

    http://willbear.deviantart.com/art/Wolves-in-a-dungeon-591488339

     

  • alexhcowleyalexhcowley Posts: 2,404
    gederix said:
    timmins.william said:
    gederix: Yes, the free player can export to obj, but I really really really really recommend against bothering unless the hair count is low or you have a hotsh* machine.

    They could still TRY it, it is after all free, and as I mentioned in my above post, it works okay for me on my completely mediocre machine. I was simply correcting someone above who said exporting to obj is not available on the free player.

    I've used the export to OBJ option on the free player and it does work reasonably well but it does generate horrendously large files, as aluded to above.

    Cheers,

    Alex.

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,094

    Focusing on Iray, I had all but given up on LAMH because I didn't realize how useful fiberhair was.

    Then I did, and was like... holy poot!

    (And then I started using 3DL a lot more, even better)

     

  • Kendall SearsKendall Sears Posts: 2,995

    While we are proud of the "Export ot OBJ" feature, it really does require that the machine be of "better than average" capability.  

    Kendall

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