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Daz genesis 2 female with spline based Dynamic Hair :-o

wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,931
in The Commons

I finally figured out how to get Cinema4D's hair system to work
on Daz genesis meshes  driven by MDD data.
Not perfect by any measure but the steps I need to take for 
using this hair system going forward have been established.


Comments

  • Hermit CrabHermit Crab Posts: 874

    It's good that you've found a method.  Not having Cinema4d or knowing much about mdd I can only guess at the problems (I would suppose that mdd data doesn't allow the mesh to have distinct parts (the head, for example).

    Anyway, it would be nice to see any further examples.

  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,388

    Similar to Marcus Severus, I don't know the specifics of C4d.  However, Philemot created a plugn to convert dynamic strand hair to obj so it could be ported between programs.  Maybe some lessons could be applied in a different setting? Maybe not.

    https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/197821/philemo-plugin-dynamic-hair-to-mesh#latest

    .

  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,931

     I can only guess at the problems (I would suppose that mdd data doesn't allow
     the mesh to have distinct parts (the head, for example).

    Hi no that is not the issue the C4D hair system is based
    on polygon selections  so I can grow hair on any part of  the mesh.

    The problem seems to have been that the hair has a hard time 
    updating on a point level animated mesh driven by MDD data.

    I solved the issue by using an invisible proxy  static head and shoulders 
     parented to  a matching invisible BVH skeleton to use as the hair source and collider.

    more tests to come.

  • drzapdrzap Posts: 795

    I thought you were bringing your characters in bald and styling and simulating in C4D?

     

  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,931
    edited October 2017
    drzap said:

    I thought you were bringing your characters in bald and styling and simulating in C4D?

     

    You are correct sir.

     

     

    spli-screen.jpg
    565 x 792 - 241K
    Post edited by wolf359 on
  • drzapdrzap Posts: 795

    OH. now I understand your problem.  That's probably how I would have handled it too.  So you have a cached animation and a realtime bvh matching.  You can delete the realtime figure (except the hair) after the sim.

  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,931
    Marcus Severus said:

     

    Anyway, it would be nice to see any further examples.

     

    Hi here is my most recent test

    After some research and downloading an amazing series
    of detailed tutorial videos on this feature, I have discovered that
    indeed the Maxon hair  system will work DIRECTLY  on
    MDD/PLA animated meshes from Daz studio if set up correctly
     so my cumbersome  work around is not needed after all.

    My three month research hiatus from my
    Current movie project, is now ending so I will be returning to it  with 
    new levels of realism for the rest of the production.laugh

  • drzapdrzap Posts: 795

    That's looking good, Wolf.  Sometimes we have to spend time doing the wrong thing to learn about the right things.  Good luck on your project.

  • pdr0pdr0 Posts: 204

    Yes you can grow hair from basically anywhere , even from nostrils smiley

    C4D's hair module is very versatile - but it basically hasn't changed in over 10 years.  It's still single threaded and slow. It was amazing back in the day, but getting quite outdated . It needs some serious performance optimizations at least, that reflects modern computer hardware. You definitely need to use low poly proxy colliders .Plugins for other apps are more modern, some can even use GPU physics, much faster

    The main problem I find in hair animations is intersections. Because the hair is interpolated hair between spline guides, there is always risk of hair-to-hair intersections (and hair-to-object, but those are easier to manage). There is a lot of control using spline dynamics , modifiers, forces, vertex maps, colliders, xpresso,  etc... but it's still quite finicky IMO . You can even manually edit/update splines in the cache file (e.g. manually correct a stray spline guide).

    Here is a G3F WIP example.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eHVWuAHxTs

     

     

     

     

  • wolf359wolf359 Posts: 3,931
    edited November 2017

    Hi excellent job on the hair sim.
    I found the biggest mistake I was making was selecting the entire scalp 
    area and growing a guide for ever vertice!!.
    The fellows video channel helped me understand the proper way
    with very few guides needed.


    Yes indeed the hair module is a bit Dated
    and single threaded ,but it is still a much better solution for animated hair dynamics
    than any of the scene choking "fibermesh" options in Daz studio
    because Maxon's hair is essentially a post effect generated by the C4D render engine

    Post edited by wolf359 on
  • pdr0pdr0 Posts: 204
    edited November 2017
    wolf359 said:


    I found the biggest mistake I was making was selecting the entire scalp 
    area and growing a guide for ever vertice!!.
    The fellows video channel helped me understand the proper way
    with very few guides needed.

     


    I watched those tutorials before

    The layering style is applicable for many modern hairstyles and can look good on still images.  But the way he has done it will give you problems if you try to animate it because hair spline guides on one hair object do not dynamically interact with other hair spline guides on other separate hair objects = intersections . You can try to animate in stages and use invisible colliders or expresso rig setups but most of the time it's going to be very difficult

    That same guy made a tutorial on intersections which deals with some of the animation issues, but it's still problematic

     

    Post edited by pdr0 on
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