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Hair modeling question...ZBrush, Blender, or Hexagon?

posecastposecast Posts: 386
in The Commons

I'm wanting to learn hair modeling. I have ZBrush, Blender, and Hexagon. Which would you recommend I start with?

Comments

  • IllidanstormIllidanstorm Posts: 655
    For zbrush there are a lot of tutorials for this. No one really uses hexagon. Not sure about blender, I find it to be a very uncomfortable program to use.
  • DiomedeDiomede Posts: 15,388

    This new release in the store was created using Carrara. Carrara has dynamic strand based hair that can be converted to polys, which makes creating wind and style morphs possible because bushed strands will have the same number of vertexes in the same order when converted.

     

    https://www.daz3d.com/paige-hair-for-genesis-8-females

  • posecastposecast Posts: 386

    Yes, I have this hair, and I like it! I also have the newest Pro version of Carrara, so that is a possibility!

    Blender is no fun for me, that's for sure, but if the hair can be converted to polys, it looks great.

  • DustRiderDustRider Posts: 2,880
    edited April 2018
    Illidanstorm said:
    For zbrush there are a lot of tutorials for this. No one really uses hexagon. Not sure about blender, I find it to be a very uncomfortable program to use.

    Hmm......don't tell DzFire, IIRC he uses Hexagon to model all of his amazing creations.

    Posecast, if your wanting to make the standard flat (sort of flat) polygon based hair (like most of the hair in the store), Blender or Hexagon will do a great job (as will Carrara), you could use ZBrush for this as well (but it's a bit of overkill for just poly hair). For fiber-mesh hair, ZBrush, or as noted by Diomede, Carrara, will work well. Hexagon doesn't do strand based (or shader based) hair, Blender does, but I don't know if it can create/export a usable "fiber mesh" version (hopefully a Blender user will pop in and let us know). Bottom line though, it really depends on your budget, and what works best for you (not everyone likes or works well with every software)

     

    Post edited by DustRider on
  • j cadej cade Posts: 2,310
    edited April 2018
    DustRider said:
    Illidanstorm said:
    For zbrush there are a lot of tutorials for this. No one really uses hexagon. Not sure about blender, I find it to be a very uncomfortable program to use.

    Hmm......don't tell DzFire, IIRC he uses Hexagon to model all of his amazing creations.

    Posecast, if your wanting to make the standard flat (sort of flat) polygon based hair (like mist of the hair in the store), Blender or Hexagon will do a great job (as will Carrara), you could use ZBrush for this as well (but it's a bit of overkill for just poly hair). For fiber-mesh hair, ZBrush, or as noted by Diomede, Carrara, will work well. Hexagon doesn't do strand based (or shader based) hair, Blender does, but I don't know if it can create/export a usable "fiber mesh" version (hopefully a Blender user will pop in and let us know). Bottom line though, it really depends on your budget, and what works best for you (not everyone likes or works well with every software)

     

    Blender can. Although, it's not the most straight forward of methods (it's not hard, it just uses a tool that doesn't get used a lot so there's not as much information floating around) it can end up *very* controlable. I *think* zbrush might be more memory efficient however.

    If you're doing things like eyelashes or brows though, I honestly think blender is a better option as it's very good at doing things with absolute precision. And you can do things like adjust the clumping or length with a dial. (You can do this with a full head of hair too obviously)
    Post edited by j cade on
  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,085

    Zbrush fibermesh, you can adjust clumping and length pretty easily when generating it, then you have further tools to modify the result.

     

  • j cadej cade Posts: 2,310
    edited April 2018
    Oso3D said:

    Zbrush fibermesh, you can adjust clumping and length pretty easily when generating it, then you have further tools to modify the result.

     

    Can zbrush do that non-destructively (I don't actually know)?. I like being able to have my base shape and then make as much variation as possible while keeping the base intact. I find it much easier to make multiple morphs that can interact that way (blender could still be better, for a brief shining moment there were hair shape keys but the setup was deemed too hacky)
    Post edited by j cade on
  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,085

    As long as you don't mess with the basic stuff (distribution, hair count), it seems vertex order and everything are preserved. I've managed to experiment with fibermesh and apply tweaked versions as morphs of a base hair.

    The only big problem I run into is that if the poly count is high, trying to apply multiple morphs and use reverse deformation can lock up my computer.

    With multiple morphs, SOMETIMES they play nice together, and sometimes dialing in two morphs cause all sorts of garbage.

     

    So, for example, I could make some hair at length 20, Accept it, GoZ it over to Daz. Yay!

    Then I can redo the hair at length 50, Accept it, GoZ it over as a morph of the first hair with reverse deformation. Now I have hair that varies in length with a morph.

    Now let's say I do the same thing, but now apply negative gravity so the hair is flying up. Apply it as morph with reverse deformation. Hair flies up! And it MIGHT play nice with low values of the previous morph.

     

    There are also all sorts of groom brushes in zbrush to modify things further, but I'm still getting the hang of that.

     

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,085

    I've specifically been playing around with creating fibermesh coats on MilDog, MilCat, Genesis figures, etc...

    The problem, of course, is that any way you slice it, creating realistic coats of fur are _hideously_ high in poly counts. I've managed to make some stuff at 300-500k polygons... but the coats generally look terrible around the ears or head. Better results can easily take many millions of polygons.

    At least with human scalp hair, eyebrows, facial hair, etc, the hair counts are small.

    Dogs have something like 14,000 hairs per square inch. Cats have about 100,000 hairs per square inch.

    And otters, one of my favorite animals, have close to a MILLION hairs per square inch.

    Even if you are modeling a hair as one single polygon, that's a lot of polygons. And if you want hair to look decent, you probably want a good dozen or so polygons per hair!

     

  • bluejauntebluejaunte Posts: 1,990
    Oso3D said:

    As long as you don't mess with the basic stuff (distribution, hair count), it seems vertex order and everything are preserved. I've managed to experiment with fibermesh and apply tweaked versions as morphs of a base hair.

    The only big problem I run into is that if the poly count is high, trying to apply multiple morphs and use reverse deformation can lock up my computer.

    With multiple morphs, SOMETIMES they play nice together, and sometimes dialing in two morphs cause all sorts of garbage.

     

    So, for example, I could make some hair at length 20, Accept it, GoZ it over to Daz. Yay!

    Then I can redo the hair at length 50, Accept it, GoZ it over as a morph of the first hair with reverse deformation. Now I have hair that varies in length with a morph.

    Now let's say I do the same thing, but now apply negative gravity so the hair is flying up. Apply it as morph with reverse deformation. Hair flies up! And it MIGHT play nice with low values of the previous morph.

     

    There are also all sorts of groom brushes in zbrush to modify things further, but I'm still getting the hang of that.

     

    For human hair you won't get far without grooming. And that's when you lose the ability to go back and adjust fibermesh settings. I think that's what j.cade meant.

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