Garibaldi Express: Hair and Fur Plugin Beta [Commercial]

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Comments

  • futurebiscuitfuturebiscuit Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Mec4D said:

    however what I would do is reducing the hair strands and use higher thickness values if rendered from far

    There is a percentage slider in the garibaldi node's parameters (in daz interface) which will do this automatically for you.
  • futurebiscuitfuturebiscuit Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    Mec4D said:
    I see also that the specular level in the Subsurface tab should be a little bit down and not plain white especially for more realistic look
    as real hair will do according to the mirror and references
    Not sure what you mean, I assume your refering to the Garibaldi Hair shader?
    I think rendering the hair in Uber Environment make them looks even more cooler , and surprising render fast!! as you don't waste time for shadow map

    I would warn that this might not scale to well for large amouts of hair.

    Beard render looks good...

  • MEC4DMEC4D Posts: 5,249
    edited December 1969

    wow , it take 5 sec to render the beard when set on 50%
    this is a time saver !!!! excellent feature !!


    Mec4D said:

    however what I would do is reducing the hair strands and use higher thickness values if rendered from far

    There is a percentage slider in the garibaldi node's parameters (in daz interface) which will do this automatically for you.
  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited December 1969

    Mec4D said:
    yes why?


    mjc1016 said:


    Cath...that's the Genesis gorilla, right?


    Because, I've thought it was the best looking gorilla model around...but looked kind of 'lacking' because of lack of a good hair.

  • MEC4DMEC4D Posts: 5,249
    edited December 1969

    First I was talking about the base surface settings ( ds tab ) they are great when use with spot light but when use with uber environment they are much to strong, actually I never use white color for specular as it can pretty burn the colors while rendering
    when I rendered the gorilla I use 127 half gray for the specular channels as I like it more natural silky

    btw I love how it render using Uber Environment , there is so much deep , beautiful silky surface
    I did not try the full 150 with Uber yet doing it slowly up to see what is going on

    Mec4D said:
    I see also that the specular level in the Subsurface tab should be a little bit down and not plain white especially for more realistic look
    as real hair will do according to the mirror and references
    Not sure what you mean, I assume your refering to the Garibaldi Hair shader?
    I think rendering the hair in Uber Environment make them looks even more cooler , and surprising render fast!! as you don't waste time for shadow map

    I would warn that this might not scale to well for large amouts of hair.

    Beard render looks good...

  • MEC4DMEC4D Posts: 5,249
    edited December 1969

    the problem with some animals now you have that they are modeled with the fur include in the shape
    and sometimes it can looks to puffy , but anyway it changed dramatically the look of the gorilla
    I tried other animals but the UV's was so bad it does not worked well


    mjc1016 said:
    Mec4D said:
    yes why?


    mjc1016 said:


    Cath...that's the Genesis gorilla, right?


    Because, I've thought it was the best looking gorilla model around...but looked kind of 'lacking' because of lack of a good hair.

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited December 1969

    Mec4D said:
    the problem with some animals now you have that they are modeled with the fur include in the shape
    and sometimes it can looks to puffy , but anyway it changed dramatically the look of the gorilla
    I tried other animals but the UV's was so bad it does not worked well

    I've noticed that too, even with trying to do displacement mapped fur (or worse, a displacement shader). The overall shape may be fine, but the UV is not conducive to any kind of fur. The 'painted' skins can be worked around, but bad UV mapping is a bit more of a problem.

  • futurebiscuitfuturebiscuit Posts: 0
    edited October 2012

    Mec4D said:
    First I was talking about the base surface settings ( ds tab ) they are great when use with spot light but when use with uber environment they are much to strong, actually I never use white color for specular as it can pretty burn the colors while rendering
    when I rendered the gorilla I use 127 half gray for the specular channels as I like it more natural silky

    The colour in the specular options is just a blend colour, the blend slider below will blend from the colour set (at setting 0) and the colour settings set in garibaldi (at settings 1).

    The hair shader is not very intuitive. I need to do some documentation/tutorial about what it all means.
    Basically the Primary specular is extra shinny bit on the hair. Normally nearly white and small.
    The secondary is the more wide specular that is more coloured and less bright.
    There also a transmission reflection, which is off by default, this is basically for back lighting the hair.
    Also the more traditional diffuse and ambient settings. Diffuse is good for a bit of fill, to simulate a multiscattered look.

    For the specular settings:
    Intensity is the overall brightness of highlight. Possible to set over 1 for extreme brightness.
    Color and Color Blend are discribed above.
    Shift is to move the highlight up and down the hair strand.
    Width is how wide the highlight is.

    There is also seperate opacity settings in the general tab. One for the beauty render and one for shadow map renders.
    The localised shading rate in general is set high (low quality) as the nature of geometry means loose interpolated shading samples will be fine.
    There also ambient occlusions settings which are good for short hair (assuming your not using the various urber occlusion things), There also a localised shading rate for occlusion here. Occlusion will slow down renders, especially for lots of hair strands

    Here is a diagram (cross section of hair strand and light/reflection directions) of the general shading model.

    scattering.gif
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    Post edited by futurebiscuit on
  • futurebiscuitfuturebiscuit Posts: 0
    edited October 2012

    mjc1016 said:
    ... The 'painted' skins can be worked around, but bad UV mapping is a bit more of a problem.

    I'm assuming this is referring to the issue with garibaldi not supporting overlapping UVs. I really didn't think this would be a issue but apparently some of the daz animals UV maps do this. (I'm not going to comment on this)
    If this is wide spread then I'm going to have to support them in garibaldi at some point in the future.
    Post edited by futurebiscuit on
  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited December 1969

    Mec4D said:
    First I was talking about the base surface settings ( ds tab ) they are great when use with spot light but when use with uber environment they are much to strong, actually I never use white color for specular as it can pretty burn the colors while rendering
    when I rendered the gorilla I use 127 half gray for the specular channels as I like it more natural silky

    The colour in the specular options is just a blend colour, the blend slider below will blend from the colour set (at setting 0) and the colour settings set in garibaldi (at settings 1).

    The hair shader is not very intuitive. I need to do some documentation/tutorial about what it all means.
    Basically the Primary specular is extra shinny bit on the hair. Normally nearly white and small.
    The secondary is the more wide specular that is more coloured and less bright.
    There also a transmission reflection, which is off by default, this is basically for back lighting the hair.
    Also the more traditional diffuse and ambient settings. Diffuse is good for a bit of fill, to simulate a multiscattered look.

    For the specular settings:
    Intensity is the overall brightness of highlight. Possible to set over 1 for extreme brightness.
    Color and Color Blend are discribed above.
    Shift is to move the highlight up and down the hair strand.
    Width is how wide the highlight is.

    There is also seperate opacity settings in the general tab. One for the beauty render and one for shadow map renders.
    The localised shading rate in general is set high (low quality) as the nature of geometry means loose interpolated shading samples will be fine.
    There also ambient occlusions settings which are good for short hair (assuming your not using the various urber occlusion things), There also a localised shading rate for occlusion here. Occlusion will slow down renders, especially for lots of hair strands

    Here is a diagram of the general shading model.


    That's one of the 'pro' hair shaders, isn't it?

    Or at least an adaptation of it...

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited October 2012

    mjc1016 said:
    ... The 'painted' skins can be worked around, but bad UV mapping is a bit more of a problem.

    I'm assuming this is referring to the issue with garibaldi not supporting overlapping UVs. I really didn't think this would be a issue but apparently some of the daz animals UV maps do this. (I'm not going to comment on this)
    If this is wide spread then I'm going to have to support them in garibaldi at some point in the future.

    Yes...and general poorly laid out UV maps.

    I go hunting and raise animals. I've butchered my own and have turned the skins into leather/furs.

    When I UV map a critter, I try to lay out the map as if I were skinning it to turn it into a fur or leather item...to me, that provides the most 'natural' look to the texture. Many of the animals are not mapped that way.

    Post edited by mjc1016 on
  • futurebiscuitfuturebiscuit Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    mjc1016 said:

    That's one of the 'pro' hair shaders, isn't it?
    Or at least an adaptation of it...

    It's a modified and simplified version of the standard hair shading model used in VFX for many years (although more modern ideas are being used by some houses).
    This is the only hair shader in garibaldi (it's hard coded to the node, for various reasons).
    It can be used to generate effects from basic flat cartoon effects to photoreal shading. Various preset will be available.
  • MEC4DMEC4D Posts: 5,249
    edited December 1969

    I know the diagram from Pixar website as I made research a little time ago
    I found the all options when I made the beard test , I want it to looks exactly as the 2D references and changing the primary and secondary colors of the specular nodes made the trick so I can get the same color result especially in Uber .. regarding to the standard rendering in DS everything is just fine , I got only issue in Uber but as I mentioned above it made the trick to match the 2d hair on the textures
    rendering in Uber will slow down because of the ambient occlusion however I find the hair more dimensional
    and the direct light is much more realistic that the standard light but not in all cases as the Gorilla I rendered was pretty awesome for a 1 spot rendering only .

    And many thanks for the additional info it is good to know the technical side of it


    The colour in the specular options is just a blend colour, the blend slider below will blend from the colour set (at setting 0) and the colour settings set in garibaldi (at settings 1).

    The hair shader is not very intuitive. I need to do some documentation/tutorial about what it all means.
    Basically the Primary specular is extra shinny bit on the hair. Normally nearly white and small.
    The secondary is the more wide specular that is more coloured and less bright.
    There also a transmission reflection, which is off by default, this is basically for back lighting the hair.
    Also the more traditional diffuse and ambient settings. Diffuse is good for a bit of fill, to simulate a multiscattered look.

    For the specular settings:
    Intensity is the overall brightness of highlight. Possible to set over 1 for extreme brightness.
    Color and Color Blend are discribed above.
    Shift is to move the highlight up and down the hair strand.
    Width is how wide the highlight is.

    There is also seperate opacity settings in the general tab. One for the beauty render and one for shadow map renders.
    The localised shading rate in general is set high (low quality) as the nature of geometry means loose interpolated shading samples will be fine.
    There also ambient occlusions settings which are good for short hair (assuming your not using the various urber occlusion things), There also a localised shading rate for occlusion here. Occlusion will slow down renders, especially for lots of hair strands

    Here is a diagram (cross section of hair strand and light/reflection directions) of the general shading model.


  • MEC4DMEC4D Posts: 5,249
    edited December 1969

    I am afraid the animals from the safari starter will be not used well
    the UV"S are plain planes mirrored so the plugin don;t know how to handle it in this case well total mess not only with the plugin but if you want to make any texture for that, the animals are old Poser4 stuff so nothing to wonder about , and I hope they get updated one day


    mjc1016 said:
    mjc1016 said:
    ... The 'painted' skins can be worked around, but bad UV mapping is a bit more of a problem.

    I'm assuming this is referring to the issue with garibaldi not supporting overlapping UVs. I really didn't think this would be a issue but apparently some of the daz animals UV maps do this. (I'm not going to comment on this)
    If this is wide spread then I'm going to have to support them in garibaldi at some point in the future.

    Yes...and general poorly laid out UV maps.

    I go hunting and raise animals. I've butchered my own and have turned the skins into leather/furs.

    When I UV map a critter, I try to lay out the map as if I were skinning it to turn it into a fur or leather item...to me, that provides the most 'natural' look to the texture. Many of the animals are not mapped that way.

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited December 1969

    I've gotten pretty adept at using Blender's UV mapping, so remapping the older animals, for personal use wouldn't be too difficult...but distributing remaps that would make many of them more useful would be. Yeah, many of them aren't the greatest models, to begin with but sometimes, they're the only thing there is.

  • HeatherleeaHeatherleea Posts: 247
    edited December 1969

    mjc1016 said:
    I've gotten pretty adept at using Blender's UV mapping, so remapping the older animals, for personal use wouldn't be too difficult...but distributing remaps that would make many of them more useful would be. Yeah, many of them aren't the greatest models, to begin with but sometimes, they're the only thing there is.
    Is there a tutorial showing how to do this? I want to be able to use my animals and if I need to remap them I need to learn how to do it.
  • larsmidnattlarsmidnatt Posts: 4,511
    edited December 1969

    mjc1016 said:
    I've gotten pretty adept at using Blender's UV mapping, so remapping the older animals, for personal use wouldn't be too difficult...but distributing remaps that would make many of them more useful would be. Yeah, many of them aren't the greatest models, to begin with but sometimes, they're the only thing there is.
    Is there a tutorial showing how to do this? I want to be able to use my animals and if I need to remap them I need to learn how to do it.

    same here.

  • MEC4DMEC4D Posts: 5,249
    edited December 1969

    If you change the UV's you need to make new textures also for your animals at last for the old one that have bad UV's
    It is not that hard with Zbrush you can do it with one button click , then load the new UV's in DS and save the new figure
    in my forum at mec4d and on my account at youtube you will find the way of how to change and UV's manually and using GOZ but this cover only DS and Zbrush

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited December 1969

    Mec4D said:
    If you change the UV's you need to make new textures also for your animals at last for the old one that have bad UV's
    It is not that hard with Zbrush you can do it with one button click , then load the new UV's in DS and save the new figure
    in my forum at mec4d and on my account at youtube you will find the way of how to change and UV's manually and using GOZ but this cover only DS and Zbrush

    And for most animals, a simple texture would be enough, coupled with a hair plugin to do the fur. It's just that the plugin needs a clean, well laid out UV map to work.

    I've been looking for some Blender tuts...but many of the ones I'm finding are either much more complex than they need to be or are for older versions of Blender. I don't have any desktop recording software installed so it would be more than a trivial task for me to throw one together...unfortunately,

    But there's lots around...I'll keep looking, I know there's some easier ones, somewhere.

  • MEC4DMEC4D Posts: 5,249
    edited December 1969

    The plugin handle seams very well when painting the density map on a good UV's
    the one software that does not work after I upgraded to win8 was my recording screen software , need to reinstall it and see if there is new version .. the most used one anything else works without problem
    Zbrush is so easy, you just paint the seams lines on the model and push the button and done
    II will make some tests tonight with other animals if I still have power, as the hurricane visit me today about 4 and half hour from now so don't know what is coming .. Prepared awaiting the impact ..


    mjc1016 said:
    Mec4D said:
    If you change the UV's you need to make new textures also for your animals at last for the old one that have bad UV's
    It is not that hard with Zbrush you can do it with one button click , then load the new UV's in DS and save the new figure
    in my forum at mec4d and on my account at youtube you will find the way of how to change and UV's manually and using GOZ but this cover only DS and Zbrush

    And for most animals, a simple texture would be enough, coupled with a hair plugin to do the fur. It's just that the plugin needs a clean, well laid out UV map to work.

    I've been looking for some Blender tuts...but many of the ones I'm finding are either much more complex than they need to be or are for older versions of Blender. I don't have any desktop recording software installed so it would be more than a trivial task for me to throw one together...unfortunately,

    But there's lots around...I'll keep looking, I know there's some easier ones, somewhere.

  • mjc1016mjc1016 Posts: 15,001
    edited December 1969

    Mec4D said:
    The plugin handle seams very well when painting the density map on a good UV's
    the one software that does not work after I upgraded to win8 was my recording screen software , need to reinstall it and see if there is new version .. the most used one anything else works without problem
    Zbrush is so easy, you just paint the seams lines on the model and push the button and done
    II will make some tests tonight with other animals if I still have power, as the hurricane visit me today about 4 and half hour from now so don't know what is coming .. Prepared awaiting the impact ..

    It wasn't supposed to start snowing until tonight...but, it's snowing NOW!

    I guess the forecast, for my area, predicting lots of snow was the correct one.

  • edited December 1969

    So - while I'm not an experienced Daz user - I've been playing with Garibaldi Express and it has been very easy to use. I did a quick take on a Dwarf today - with Garibaldi Hair, eyebrows, mustache, and chest hair. It is very easy to use (even for a novice like me).

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  • bighbigh Posts: 8,147
    edited December 1969

    any news on windows version

  • Zev0Zev0 Posts: 7,068
    edited December 1969

    Ye..I'd like to test that out..

  • futurebiscuitfuturebiscuit Posts: 0
    edited December 1969

    bigh said:
    any news on windows version

    Don't worry... Sometime this week. Just a bit more patience required.
    Trust me it does exist...
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  • Zev0Zev0 Posts: 7,068
    edited December 1969

    cool. How do you sign up for the beta as a tester?

  • futurebiscuitfuturebiscuit Posts: 0
    edited October 2012

    Zev0 said:
    cool. How do you sign up for the beta as a tester?

    Go to the download page at http://www.garibaldiexpress.com/
    Only the Mac OS X version is currently available. You'll receive an email later this week as soon as the Windows version is ready to download.
    Post edited by futurebiscuit on
  • Zev0Zev0 Posts: 7,068
    edited December 1969

    Thanks man.:) Looking forward to it.

  • MEC4DMEC4D Posts: 5,249
    edited December 1969

    Hi Guys, I am just back from 5 days of cold and darkness thanks to Hurricane Sandy , the hell is over
    I hope I never make it again ... I take break until Monday as a lot of stuff have to be done before I can run everything again .. just in case you wondered why I was quiet ...

  • AlexLOAlexLO Posts: 193
    edited December 1969

    Mec4D said:
    Hi Guys, I am just back from 5 days of cold and darkness thanks to Hurricane Sandy , the hell is over
    I hope I never make it again ... I take break until Monday as a lot of stuff have to be done before I can run everything again .. just in case you wondered why I was quiet ...

    Glad you are OK & didn't get the worst of Miss Sandy (hugs)

This discussion has been closed.