Can someone please make more modular hair models?

Spamakopita

Modular hair is probably the easiest type of hair to do, and you get a lot of bang for your buck. At the very simplist you need a base hair piece (or a couple base styles), then have various buns, pigtails, ponytails, updos, braids, and optionally bangs that can simply be parented and don't even have to be fitted to the figure. You can have side curls, side braids, braids that run along the head, different shapes of pontails that can be geometrically simplef. You can vary bun placement, and add in accessories. You can get pretty creative with it, just like video game hair systems. So why don't more hair vendors do modular hair? 

So far the only vendor I've seen do something like this is Out of Touch, and they do it pretty well. But there is so much more that a vendor could do to create a fancy, creative, and relatively simple hairstyle. If someone were to make more modular hairstyles that were well done I would love to buy them. 

richardandtracy

I think it's because making realistic hair has to be treated as a whole.

If you think of real people with hair pieces added, when they stick a bit in, it does affect the existing hair by bulking it up, pushing it sideways or distorting it in some way. This is exceedingly difficult to do in a model as you'd have to put in many, many interacting morphs. And with hair vertex numbers being stunningly high (4-9 million are figures I've seen), that's a lot of work for the person who does it.

The hair models for polygon hair tend to be made up in many strips, as shown in the clay render image below:

Each of these will need a morph for every movement caused by the hair pieces added. That's a lot of work and time from the person doing it. And as the idea of 'More bang for your buck' is to ensure it is done at a lower cost. So, either the PA invents a quick way to do it, or their earnings for the time they spend drops catastrophically, and they don't/won't want to do it - bringing us back to the siuation we're in. The PA gets a rate per hour that they can just about live with and we get less versatile, but still very realistic hair at a cost we can afford that sorta reflects the time required to make the model.

It's always instructive to do something like this yourself. If you can find a way of doing it that no-one else has discovered, you deserve to get a good wack from it. Otherwise, doing it is an instructive way of finding out the effort hidden behind the models we see. I've done a few hundred freebies over at renderosity, 60+ are models, none are clothes or hair, and I really admire the PA's who take on the huge modelling task of hair. I really don't want to try it myself (yet).

Regards,

Richard

Leana

Spamakopita said:

Modular hair is probably the easiest type of hair to do

I doubt that (at least if you want to create a product to sell), because instead of having one full hair to create, morph and make materials for you now have multiple pieces to take into account and make work together.

On thing that comes to mind for example is ensuring that the extra pieces adjust well enough (and realistically enough) when the base hair is morphed to fit the character's head or for movements, which is not that easy because unlike conforming items, parented items don't adjust to the parent's morphs.

Spamakopita

richardandtracy said:

I think it's because making realistic hair has to be treated as a whole.

If you think of real people with hair pieces added, when they stick a bit in, it does affect the existing hair by bulking it up, pushing it sideways or distorting it in some way. This is exceedingly difficult to do in a model as you'd have to put in many, many interacting morphs. And with hair vertex numbers being stunningly high (4-9 million are figures I've seen), that's a lot of work for the person who does it.

The hair models for polygon hair tend to be made up in many strips, as shown in the clay render image below:

Each of these will need a morph for every movement caused by the hair pieces added. That's a lot of work and time from the person doing it. And as the idea of 'More bang for your buck' is to ensure it is done at a lower cost. So, either the PA invents a quick way to do it, or their earnings for the time they spend drops catastrophically, and they don't/won't want to do it - bringing us back to the siuation we're in. The PA gets a rate per hour that they can just about live with and we get less versatile, but still very realistic hair at a cost we can afford that sorta reflects the time required to make the model.

It's always instructive to do something like this yourself. If you can find a way of doing it that no-one else has discovered, you deserve to get a good wack from it. Otherwise, doing it is an instructive way of finding out the effort hidden behind the models we see. I've done a few hundred freebies over at renderosity, 60+ are models, none are clothes or hair, and I really admire the PA's who take on the huge modelling task of hair. I really don't want to try it myself (yet).

Regards,

Richard

To be more clear, I'm talking about done-up modular hair of this type: https://www.daz3d.com/dforce-strand-based-build-your-updo-mega-hair-pack-for-genesis-9. Not hair that interacts with the neck/shoulders. 

All it takes is a base, or a couple types of base that don't need many morphs and don't need to interact with anything below the head. Then slap on your ponytail, braid, buns, or whatever that can be parented. Out of Touch does a great job with this but I'm surprised more people havn't done something similar considering how much creative potential there is. Buns don't need posing, and braids/ponytails shouldn't take as much work to rig/pose as loose hair that goes to the shoulders.

 

Spamakopita

Leana said:

Spamakopita said:

Modular hair is probably the easiest type of hair to do

I doubt that (at least if you want to create a product to sell), because instead of having one full hair to create, morph and make materials for you now have multiple pieces to take into account and make work together.

On thing that comes to mind for example is ensuring that the extra pieces adjust well enough (and realistically enough) when the base hair is morphed to fit the character's head or for movements, which is not that easy because unlike conforming items, parented items don't adjust to the parent's morphs.

See my comment above for clarification. I'm talking about this type of hair, not something that interacts with the neck/shoulders:https://www.daz3d.com/dforce-strand-based-build-your-updo-mega-hair-pack-for-genesis-9

Leana

Spamakopita said:

Leana said:

Spamakopita said:

Modular hair is probably the easiest type of hair to do

I doubt that (at least if you want to create a product to sell), because instead of having one full hair to create, morph and make materials for you now have multiple pieces to take into account and make work together.

On thing that comes to mind for example is ensuring that the extra pieces adjust well enough (and realistically enough) when the base hair is morphed to fit the character's head or for movements, which is not that easy because unlike conforming items, parented items don't adjust to the parent's morphs.

See my comment above for clarification. I'm talking about this type of hair, not something that interacts with the neck/shoulders:https://www.daz3d.com/dforce-strand-based-build-your-updo-mega-hair-pack-for-genesis-9

Not having to interact with the neck or shoulders doesn't change the need to have the pieces "follow" when the base hair is morphed to fit a character.

For the record, the hair you linked to is not just a base hair with parented props, as noted in the description all the pieces are conforming. Which means that OOT basically created around 20 different rigged figures including some with custom bones, and with dozens of adjustment morphs each. That's a lot of work, and I'm not even counting the pre-built options and all the materials. Granted, they've been creating hair for years so they likely have an optimized workflow, but still.

Spamakopita

Leana said:

Spamakopita said:

Leana said:

Spamakopita said:

Modular hair is probably the easiest type of hair to do

I doubt that (at least if you want to create a product to sell), because instead of having one full hair to create, morph and make materials for you now have multiple pieces to take into account and make work together.

On thing that comes to mind for example is ensuring that the extra pieces adjust well enough (and realistically enough) when the base hair is morphed to fit the character's head or for movements, which is not that easy because unlike conforming items, parented items don't adjust to the parent's morphs.

See my comment above for clarification. I'm talking about this type of hair, not something that interacts with the neck/shoulders:https://www.daz3d.com/dforce-strand-based-build-your-updo-mega-hair-pack-for-genesis-9

Not having to interact with the neck or shoulders doesn't change the need to have the pieces "follow" when the base hair is morphed to fit a character.

For the record, the hair you linked to is not just a base hair with parented props, as noted in the description all the pieces are conforming. Which means that OOT basically created around 20 different rigged figures including some with custom bones, and with dozens of adjustment morphs each. That's a lot of work, and I'm not even counting the pre-built options and all the materials. Granted, they've been creating hair for years so they likely have an optimized workflow, but still.

Yes, OOT has conforming pieces in this hair but you wouldn't have to other than the base, right? You don't have to have little strands coming down and you can easily parent various buns or braids that don't need to move other than adjusting size/position.

memcneil70

Here are three PAs who have created multi-part hairs in the past, you might want to check out their stores.

https://www.daz3d.com/stalker-girl-hair - smay

https://www.daz3d.com/mrl-messy-hair-bundle - Mihrelle

https://www.daz3d.com/dolly-changeable-hair-for-genesis-3-female-s - all the following by goldtassel

https://www.daz3d.com/dolly-changeable-hair-for-genesis-8-female-s

https://www.daz3d.com/dolly-changable-hair-expansion-for-genesis-3-and-8-female-s

Also look at other artists who very often do have morphs built into hair to allow for removal or adding on, different parts of a hair that often is not shown in the primary promo picture or even the minor promos. Read the text and the Read Me for what is included. I am often very surprised by what I think is a simple hairstyle that is acutally very flexible and turns out to be one of my favorites.

The hairs I listed were simply ones I could select from the name of the product and my memory of them from my listing in my Content Library. They made that much of an impression. There may be a lot more if I spent the day testing hairs for you. I don't discount OOT, I invest heavily into their products also. But you already are a fan of theirs.

Edit to correct spelling.

Seven193

Some hairs have multi-part materials, for different types of strands or situations involving transparency.  Materials can be hidden by setting their opacity to zero, but, I wouldn't call this modular, as they can overlap each other.

chris-2599934

Modular hair is probably the easiest type of hair to do [...]  So far the only vendor I've seen do something like this is Out of Touch

If there's only one vendor doing that kind of hair (and they're probably the most skillful hairmaker on the site), that's a pretty strong indication that it's not "the easiest type of hair to do." Quite the opposite, in fact.