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Could someone discuss the nature of Fibermesh hair please ?

BendinggrassBendinggrass Posts: 1,380
in The Commons

Its nature, advantages, disadvantages, what makes it different from other ways of doing hair, and so on.

Thanks.

Comments

  • FSMCDesignsFSMCDesigns Posts: 12,843

    Fibermesh is actual geometry without using transmaps, like older poser/DS hair does. Think actual hair strands and not a plane with a hair texture on it. The biggest pro is it tends to look more realistic. the biggest con is it can be a resource hog depending on how dense it is.

  • nicsttnicstt Posts: 11,715
    edited August 2017

    And to be effective it needs to be dense; something like eyebrows are not so bad; even so, consider Lacitis Imagary eyebrows (which I have been using for two or so years) have 31,000 vertices.

    It may or may not seem like a lot, depending on your experience and viewpoint; but consider G3 and G8 females, they both have around the 16,000 mark for vertices. Victoria 4 iirc had about 100,000.

    I rarely use a figure without them.

    Post edited by nicstt on
  • j cadej cade Posts: 2,310

    Pros

    • at its best will look more realistic than traditional transmapped hair
    • due to the lack of transmaps it can actually be quicker to render than a comparable traditional hair object

    Cons

    • large filesize and memory. As nicstt mentions you can have just eyebrows with 31000 vertices... you'll notice there aren't any long fibremesh hairstyles in the store
    • kind of grody to rig. adjusting weightmaps on transmapped hair is bad enough, super small strands that you can barely select or paint makes fixing any weightmap errors cruel and unusual punishment.
    • gets really messed up by morph projections and smoothing. The lack of transmaps mean if a strand gets distorted or thicker you get a very noticeable thick dark line. The fact that its hard to use smoothing compounds the weighmapping problems as generally smoothing is a great way to fix some weightmapping issues.

    You may have noticed that all those cons primarily apply to long hair. Fibremesh is great for short hair, eyebows, lashes, and body hair.But for long hair there are still some technological hurdles to climb (or Iray could support strands... pls)

  • BendinggrassBendinggrass Posts: 1,380

    Thanks very much folks.

    That is a big help.

    R

  • FrankTheTankFrankTheTank Posts: 1,481
    j cade said:

    Pros

    • at its best will look more realistic than traditional transmapped hair
    • due to the lack of transmaps it can actually be quicker to render than a comparable traditional hair object

    Cons

    • large filesize and memory. As nicstt mentions you can have just eyebrows with 31000 vertices... you'll notice there aren't any long fibremesh hairstyles in the store

    I think there is actually one in the store...

    https://www.daz3d.com/streaming-hair-for-genesis-3-female-s

     

  • nicsttnicstt Posts: 11,715

    it isn't fibremesh, at least not from its look; it's the traditional hair method.

  • FrankTheTankFrankTheTank Posts: 1,481

    It doesn't mention transparency maps and looks like its actually modeled hair in the last promo pic, so I thought it was fiber

  • RAMWolffRAMWolff Posts: 10,343

    Opacity = Transparency

  • Seven193Seven193 Posts: 1,141

    When I export Fibermesh from ZBrush as a Wavefront .obj file, all I get are lines.  I'm missing a tutorial on how to UV map them with texture and color.

  • nicsttnicstt Posts: 11,715
    DSDT said:

    It doesn't mention transparency maps and looks like its actually modeled hair in the last promo pic, so I thought it was fiber

    Yeh info is spartan.

  • ZKuroZKuro Posts: 718
    Ryzan said:

    When I export Fibermesh from ZBrush as a Wavefront .obj file, all I get are lines.  I'm missing a tutorial on how to UV map them with texture and color.

    I used them here

    https://www.daz3d.com/vintage-vanity-accessories,

    Both brushes are fibremesh, the long with thin fibers, and the fat one with wider ones.

    Thing is, fibermesh, has it's own UV, and is created when you convert them to actual Geo,( you can check it on the UV pan, it's not greyed out, you can click the UV button and it starts to show a UV),problem is that uses a full tile.                             

    So to use it, imagine that a tile, that could, talking about people here, contain a full body suit, you have to resize that UV to a natural size, merge the fibermesh map with whatever you want, not to waste a tile, and to have organized and all that. That's it.

    Maybe someone uses another approach, if so, I'm all ears (eyes :P ) also here.

  • Seven193Seven193 Posts: 1,141
    zkuro said:
    Thing is, fibermesh, has it's own UV, and is created when you convert them to actual Geo,( you can check it on the UV pan, it's not greyed out, you can click the UV button and it starts to show a UV),problem is that uses a full tile.                            

    I think that's part of my problem.

    I can go FiberMesh panel and click Preview button, I see the fibermesh lines on the model.
    I then go to UVMap -> Create -> FiberUV, but this button is greyed out.  It won't let me create them.

  • Seven193Seven193 Posts: 1,141
    edited August 2017

    Finally figured it out!  You must click on the Fibermesh -> Accept button, or the FiberUV button will be grayed out.  I can't believe so many tutorials skip these little important details.

    Post edited by Seven193 on
  • ZKuroZKuro Posts: 718

    I'm happy to let you  know what youre problem was, only thing is I said create, and was accept :P

    Anyway, you managed to fix it, good work!

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