Colorwerks
Charlie Judge
Posts: 13,239
Has anybody tried the new Colorwerks Hair shader system? How good is it?
I already have both UHT and UHT2 as well as PhilW's Hair Luster shaders. Would I be gaining any large improvement in hair shading by purchasing Colorwerks?
Post edited by Charlie Judge on
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Comments
YES! It's amazing! Just did a quick render to try out how a new character looks and the hair looks amazing in it!
You won't regret buying it Charlie, trust me!
How does it work with older pre-Iray hair? Does it solve or improve on the "see through" problems you often get with that hair after conversion?
Its fantastic i used it in every promo for our recent Attitude bundle here at daz and my recent girl at rendo as well, and am pretty much using it in every render now that involves hair lol. While I did have UHT & UHT 2, i find this 1000 times better and actually see myself using this on a standard basis. Its become THE shader for me now.
What makes this so much better than the shaders, colors that come with the hair products themselves?
Magic? Seriously alot of the newer more recent hairs PAs are putting out their shaders are pretty decent and its just a lack of variety in colors thats missing. But for alot of older hairs, early G3 and prior, most hair shaders that came with feel either over or under whelming. The shine is too strong, not enough, makes the hair look kind of plastic feeling, or way too painted and smooth. Colors tend to feel washed out or super saturated. Im sure preference plays a part in the look/style achieved but biggest for me is color variety is seriously lacking because hair vendors can only spend so much time making colors. I tend to spend alot of time making my own 'colors' but i dont have to now. If i want a strawberry blonde or ash blonde or even bronde im pretty covered with 1 click and Im all for saving myself time :D
to be honest, I almost ENVER use the shaders that come with hair products themselves- first of all, there's not enough options, and every hair shader set gives you different things. I really don't think you can ever have too many hair shaders. I have lots too. OOT. UHT, and the glowing hair shaders, and hinky's soft and shimmery (and kinda fairy) hair, but this also brings a whole bucket ton of hair options. There's settings for almost anything. And as for the older hair see thru, just over set the opacity above 1 if i remember right. this looks fabulous on the new draping hair too- just want to point that out. :) not to mention, the adorable MOKIE who goes along with it :D :D :D
Having a hair solution like this means you never have to bother getting the extra hair textures many hairs have.
Which, well, stinks for hair creators, but... great for us.
Thanks.
Also how does it compare with OOT IrayPair Hair Shaders?
Is there a technical reason why nobody seems to be able to do this for 3DLight? We've needed something like this for *years*.
It's absolutely essential if you ever need to kitbash a wig. Or just let your character have different hair styles over the course of a series of illos and have the colors match.
Okay, Here's a challenge. There are some characters in the store which are primarily Iray. But they come with a one-click setting for 3DLight. Could somebody who has one of these characters, who has picked up this product, please post a render of what one gets if one hits a wig that's using this system with the 3DLight converter? Possibly with a comparison with what it looks like in Iray?
It doesn't matter if it looks horrible. I would like to know just how horrible is horrible.
I use hair shaders for LAMH hair, so how does the Colorwerks deal with custom hair presets?
There have been some for years.
https://www.daz3d.com/dg-toon-style-hair-shaders
https://www.daz3d.com/fairy-hair-shaders-bundle-for-daz-studio
I know they are labeled as "toon" but there are natural colors in both of those sets.
Yes, but those are *Toon* shaders, and *Fairy* shaders. We need *realistic* hair shaders, and no one seems to have produced any. Certainly not a package like what has come out in just the couple of years that we've been being dazzled by Iray.
I do like the OOT ones but they often are too shiny/soft for my personal preferences.
Lyoness used a test version of ColorWerks in the promos for https://www.daz3d.com/naia-hd-for-genesis-8-female
I would highly recommend starting a seperate request thread for this. That way it will be far more visable and not have this thread bouncing between two seperate topics all together
I used a lot of tricks to get the right shine on this hair shader for iray... I have doubts that you will get even similar results in 3Delight, even when using the converter. But, I must admit, I am a little curious myself ;)
I really do like OOT's IrayPair hair shaders and still use them, but I might pick these up at some point.
Laurie
yes, OOT's shaders are quite nice. It is great to have a lot of options
Variety is the spice of life ;)
Laurie
The spice must flow.....
tell me wife that
I am definitely getting these.... but not on new release. Glad to see so many other people picking them up right away. I was ready to when I saw the banner... but then I realized I could get the crystals that meet an unfilled need along with a bunch of Vue stuff cheap... and ‘hair shader systems’ are definitely not a ‘need right now!’ thing at this point.
Gonna pick up the Vernea Fae outfit though, because I made myself the same promise there...
I think this is a great product, so I bought it, but I must not be grasping how hair blending works. I've tried it, but I can't get the overlay colors to show. I apply the base color, apply a mask, and then an overlay color. Am I doing this wrong? Once I've rendered it, all I see is the base color. I can't find documentation that gives basic instructions.
Hmm. That is odd. What two colors (base and overlay) are you using, and what mask? I will try it on my pc and see
Okay, I got in and started playing some more with it, and I think I've figured it out. I just needed to experiment with it. Thanks, Slosh!
Can this work on hair originally intended for generation 4 figures (m4, v4 etc?)
Indeed... one of my promos has it on V4 Chrystalline Hair. Results will rely on the transparency maps of the original hair, though... some older styles just may not look the way you want, regardless of what you do. That said, I don't think there will be many hairstyles that don't look better using an iray hair shader.
Here's a quick screengrab of the shaders on the Rhene Hair which is one of my absolute faves for V4 :D
How far back to these colors work? Obviously, they'll work on hair meant for Gen8, but what about Genesis, or Gen 2 or Gen 3? I have a lot of older hair that I might want to use this product on.
Thank you!
Bob
There's an example of those on V4 hair above...