dForce Hair (as well as strand based hair and the strand based hair editor) in public beta

Slosh · May 2019

BlueIrene said:

The Mohawk seems a bit of an odd choice for the sample dForce style, since the typical Mohawk sees the hair defy gravity rather than to succumb to it :)

But, you can experiment with the settings and then it won't defy gravity anymore. You can even change the length by increasing or decreasing the strand size amount. I am going by memory, so forgive me if that is not the exact name of the parameter in the surface tab.

BlueIrene · May 2019

Slosh said:

BlueIrene said:

The Mohawk seems a bit of an odd choice for the sample dForce style, since the typical Mohawk sees the hair defy gravity rather than to succumb to it :)

But, you can experiment with the settings and then it won't defy gravity anymore.

I know this (thanks, though). I just suspect that a draped Mohawk won't get much use :)

Slosh · May 2019

BlueIrene said:

Slosh said:

BlueIrene said:

The Mohawk seems a bit of an odd choice for the sample dForce style, since the typical Mohawk sees the hair defy gravity rather than to succumb to it :)

But, you can experiment with the settings and then it won't defy gravity anymore.

I know this (thanks, though). I just suspect that a draped Mohawk won't get much use :)

heheh... good for practice, though. I'm sure there will be plenty of hair to mess around with once Daz has finished everything

Joepingleton · May 2019

RobotHeadArt · May 2019

I haven't had time to really dig into the strand based hair yet... is it possible to import guide curves created in an external modeling program like Blender or ZBrush?

wolf359 · May 2019

Funny that .. I was under the impression that DAZ Studio would be a free
content creation platform for DAZ customers. Given that it includes a number
of tools for content creation.

I imagine we have differing definitions of a "content creation tool"
To make any worthwhile clothing object or custom morph you need a modern day
external modeling/sculpting app ,and with all due respect to its users, that excludes Hexagon IMHO

Stonemason uses Autodesk Max IIRC
Most of the top tier PA are using professional 3DCC application and tools I would imagine

Competing with other shops is best done by providing better/more content

.
And Daz inc has done so with a clearly superior base figure framework (Genesis)
and a UNIFORM set of Daz studio tools& standards for converting externally created models to Daz studio format
such as the transfer utility and the morph loader etc. as well as a modern updated public SDK for
plugin &purpose built utility development.

It is because of these tools& uniform standards that I was liberated from the Daz $$Content Hamster wheel$$
once I had My sudden modeling epiphany over a year ago

And While the jury is still out on the current SWF*
(*saviour white female) for that other program,

Most agree that it was the lack of an easy to use ,built in,uniform Auto cloth rigging and morph loading tools
that Doomed all of the previous attempts to create a flagship SWF* to supplant the aged V4

Locking features to PAs only is just harmful to creative users and
probably unuseful too for the purpose of a competition advantage.

No sir ....I think the history of business is replete with examples of how many companies
have maintained their competitve advantage by keeping their secret sauces,recipies
manufacturing processes,chemical formulas and software code etc etc OUT of the hands of the Masses.

3anson · May 2019

Apart from Blender, every other application that has 'dynamics' is a paid for program ( to the best of my knowledge) even Poser and Carrara are 'paid for' programs. Poser has had 'dynamic hair' for many years, and exactly how many

items of Poser dynamic hair will you find that is/or has been available? i have searched and found exactly 6( i may not have found them all ) and NONE were 'nice' styles, or worked that well( either locking the machine up during simulation, or just plain crashing Poser )

DAZ3D is a BUSINESS, and businesses do not ever give away ALL their tools,recipes or manufacturing processes. People want the dynamic hair tools? simple, put the work in and become a Daz PA.

Alternatively, download the SDK, learn how to code and write a plug-in that does the job( if you want to use and create dynamic hair inside Daz Studio), or go out and BUY one of the other 3D Programs that have dynamic hair creation as part of their toolset, learn how to import and re-rig, reshader DS assets and do your renders in those apps.

Most PA's have invested a lot of money into programs that allow us to create what we do, and a huge amount of time into learning how to use these programs.

randy88 · May 2019

I made baby's hair with New Starand Based Hair. Hair was created on the HairCap, not the head. In this way, you can save your hair and move it to other characters.

randy88 · May 2019

I made baby's hair with New Starand Based Hair. Hair was created on the HairCap, not the head. In this way, you can save your hair and move it to other characters.

RAMWolff · May 2019

Wendy_Carrara said:

RAMWolff said:

So my little question.. probably been answered but there is just too much to read!

So the strands are rendered out as a full hairstyle but is there a way to export the completed hair style or what ever as an obj to take into say ZBrush for some tweaks or will it just stay as strand guides?

Well yes, this was what I was doing in my posts but as I said the obj was too complex and crashed my desktop to unresponsive black monitors it took about 3 reboots to fix....

Interesting. Thanks Wendy. Hopefully they will work to stabilze the obj export to handle this a bit better. I'm curious as to what your rigs specs are?

Mattymanx · May 2019

randy88 said:

I made baby's hair with New Starand Based Hair. Hair was created on the HairCap, not the head. In this way, you can save your hair and move it to other characters.

That is a smart way of doing it. It keeps the hair UV set to the skull cap so you can change the character UV if need be. And yes, using it on other characters is a major plus. I do that with the current G8F dForce hairs by Linday. I just manually parent the hairs to the head of G3F and it works great.

Mattymanx · May 2019

RAMWolff said:

Wendy_Carrara said:

RAMWolff said:

So my little question.. probably been answered but there is just too much to read!

So the strands are rendered out as a full hairstyle but is there a way to export the completed hair style or what ever as an obj to take into say ZBrush for some tweaks or will it just stay as strand guides?

Well yes, this was what I was doing in my posts but as I said the obj was too complex and crashed my desktop to unresponsive black monitors it took about 3 reboots to fix....

Interesting. Thanks Wendy. Hopefully they will work to stabilze the obj export to handle this a bit better. I'm curious as to what your rigs specs are?

A full head of hair would be millions of polys. I cannot see that being properly dForced in any resonable amount of time even if it did not crash your system

RAMWolff · May 2019

Hmmm, well I'm hoping like ZBrushe's Fibermesh you can actually decrease the amount of poly's that are created when it's finalized. If that's not available as of yet with this new plugin hopefully DAZ will implement this as an option in a later update!

Mattymanx · May 2019

RAMWolff said:

Hmmm, well I'm hoping like ZBrushe's Fibermesh you can actually decrease the amount of poly's that are created when it's finalized. If that's not available as of yet with this new plugin hopefully DAZ will implement this as an option in a later update!

What are you asking for? You can control the amount of hair in the editor prior to exporting. ALso, have you tried Decimator?

As for Zbrush, does it not have the ability to reduce a mesh?

What is you are trying to achive in all this?

Oso3D · May 2019

Important bits in the full dForce Hair that you can manipulate as an end user:

PS and PR: ps is 'simulated,' pr is 'rendered.' You can have either or both render, simulation will only affect PS while PR follows along on render.

PS/PR Generated Hair Scale: changes overall size of hairs. Can be mapped to change where the fur is close/finer to the body vs longer

Reduced length: this essentially clips hair shorter, without changing the overall shape of it.

Interpolation Segment Length: how long each segment of hair is. Basically, decreasing the length increase the number of points a hair is articulated with. Note that this, obviously, increases the load a hair represents.

Hairs Density: Extra hairs per cm2. You can look up references. Obviously, realistic hair counts are often impossible (I think otters are like hundreds of thousands per cm2 or something crazy).

Tesselation, on the hair object's Parameters: how many sides each hair has. 1 is essentially a single surface. Again, this increases load, so the less the better.

Line Width: fairly obvious. Realistic hair is .2 or so to .1 at tip. If you can get away with higher values of width and lower hair counts, the better. You may want to tweak renders so that stuff at medium/far length is less realistic (fatter, fewer hairs).

CWRW · May 2019

Eboshijaana said:

A small experiment of fur use; https://i.imgur.com/XSf8a3N.png

I think I'll stick to LAMH until a good fur making method is found. But I do think strand based absolutely is greast for hair.

Thansk for showing that sample- may I ask what is "colourwerks"? (The last one of your samples that says LAMH+Colourwerks.)

Padone · May 2019

randy88 said:

I made baby's hair with New Starand Based Hair. Hair was created on the HairCap, not the head. In this way, you can save your hair and move it to other characters.

Not bad at all though a little more density would probably make the hair better. Also the hands need to be fatter with shorter nails for a child of that age .. they look too much as "adult" hands. Then the skin may benefit from some more scattering and translucency, specially the ears that look somewhat "plastic".

Leana · May 2019

CWRW said:

Eboshijaana said:

A small experiment of fur use; https://i.imgur.com/XSf8a3N.png

I think I'll stick to LAMH until a good fur making method is found. But I do think strand based absolutely is greast for hair.

Thansk for showing that sample- may I ask what is "colourwerks"? (The last one of your samples that says LAMH+Colourwerks.)

https://www.daz3d.com/colorwerks-hair-shaders-for-iray

L'Adair · May 2019

Padone said:

randy88 said:

I made baby's hair with New Starand Based Hair. Hair was created on the HairCap, not the head. In this way, you can save your hair and move it to other characters.

Not bad at all though a little more density would probably make the hair better. Also the hands need to be fatter with shorter nails for a child of that age .. they look too much as "adult" hands. Then the skin may benefit from some more scattering and translucency, specially the ears that look somewhat "plastic".

It's actually much denser than the hair that was on either of my two babies, irl. Their hair was fine and whispy at that age. (Seems like the critique on the figure is a bit off topic, though…)

I'm still working on a project I started days ago, so haven't had a chance to play with the new toy, er, tool… but the idea of using a "scalp" for both the placement of the hair and adding a bit of texture and color was one of the first thoughts I had as people commented in this thread on the abrupt change from skin to hair. Very nice implementation of that, @randy88.

L'Adair · May 2019

CWRW said:

Eboshijaana said:

A small experiment of fur use; https://i.imgur.com/XSf8a3N.png

I think I'll stick to LAMH until a good fur making method is found. But I do think strand based absolutely is greast for hair.

Thansk for showing that sample- may I ask what is "colourwerks"? (The last one of your samples that says LAMH+Colourwerks.)

ColorWerks Hair Shaders for Iray, a product here from SloshWerks.

ETA: I see Leana beat me to it! lol

barbult · May 2019

randy88 said:

I made baby's hair with New Starand Based Hair. Hair was created on the HairCap, not the head. In this way, you can save your hair and move it to other characters.

That is incredibly cute! I like the little wisps.

namffuak · May 2019

Oso3D said:

Important bits in the full dForce Hair that you can manipulate as an end user:

PS and PR: ps is 'simulated,' pr is 'rendered.' You can have either or both render, simulation will only affect PS while PR follows along on render.

PS/PR Generated Hair Scale: changes overall size of hairs. Can be mapped to change where the fur is close/finer to the body vs longer

Reduced length: this essentially clips hair shorter, without changing the overall shape of it.

Interpolation Segment Length: how long each segment of hair is. Basically, decreasing the length increase the number of points a hair is articulated with. Note that this, obviously, increases the load a hair represents.

Hairs Density: Extra hairs per cm2. You can look up references. Obviously, realistic hair counts are often impossible (I think otters are like hundreds of thousands per cm2 or something crazy).

Tesselation, on the hair object's Parameters: how many sides each hair has. 1 is essentially a single surface. Again, this increases load, so the less the better.

Line Width: fairly obvious. Realistic hair is .2 or so to .1 at tip. If you can get away with higher values of width and lower hair counts, the better. You may want to tweak renders so that stuff at medium/far length is less realistic (fatter, fewer hairs).

Will - thanks for the insight on dForce hair for the end-user! Very much appreciated.

Leana · May 2019

randy88 said:

I made baby's hair with New Starand Based Hair. Hair was created on the HairCap, not the head. In this way, you can save your hair and move it to other characters.

Very cute :)

Hurdy3D · May 2019

Oso3D said:

Reduced length: this essentially clips hair shorter, without changing the overall shape of it.

Is it possible with the new hair to create a hair product which changes hair length from short (e.g. one inch) to shoulder length, to make an anmation with hair groth?

barbult · May 2019

Joepingleton said:

Strange, my previous post seems to have disappeared, but Wendy was able to quote it. Not that my opinion means much, but I thought I would repost it in case anyone was interested. :)

Just my two cents here, I can see why people are disappointed that us users can't make strand based hair dynamic. To me, it should be a given that hair should be dynamic and it was the biggest drawback of using hair in DAZ studio ever since I made the switch from Poser and Carrara. Every other 3D program has dynamic hair and has had it for a long time. Without dynamic hair, animations look very unrealistic from DAZ Studio. I previously used Poser and Carrara for animation and both had it since very early versions. I switched to using DAZ Studio for most things when DAZ stopped updating Carrara and the introduction of Iray. I was considering dropping DAZ Studio and just moving to Blender mainly because of its built-in support for Dynamic Hair, but I don't want to do that because I like DAZ Studio and I have a ton of assets for it. I was hoping this was a step in the right direction to bring DAZ Studio into the standards of what hair should be and that is it should be dynamic.

Don't get me wrong, I love the new strand based hair and I am grateful to have an alternative to LAMH. The examples I have seen of stand based hair so far are amazing. It just feels like they are holding it's true power from us, lowly users. What if we want dynamic hair for something that isn't popular enough for a PA to create? Are we just out of luck?

I agree that most programs aren't free, so maybe the solution would be that they provide a plug-in that us users can buy to add dynamics to strand based hair. I already use the LAMH paid plug-in because I wanted to use the hair on figures that are either too old or unpopular for PA's to create hair for them. I also use a lot of the other paid plug-in to provide functions that the base DAZ Studio doesn't provide. At least give the option since they obviously have the technology to do so:)

Anyway, Here are some strand based hair War Hamsters

War Hamsters look great!

Joepingleton · May 2019

WendyLuvsCatz · May 2019

RAMWolff said:

Wendy_Carrara said:

RAMWolff said:

So my little question.. probably been answered but there is just too much to read!

So the strands are rendered out as a full hairstyle but is there a way to export the completed hair style or what ever as an obj to take into say ZBrush for some tweaks or will it just stay as strand guides?

Well yes, this was what I was doing in my posts but as I said the obj was too complex and crashed my desktop to unresponsive black monitors it took about 3 reboots to fix....

Interesting. Thanks Wendy. Hopefully they will work to stabilze the obj export to handle this a bit better. I'm curious as to what your rigs specs are?

16GB RAM Win7 i7 3.5Ghz 4core and a 980ti

of course you can do sparser thicker strands, I went for dense thin strands and the obj while it imported fine and even could use the dual lobe shader, did not simulate, Zbrush most go thicker strands more coverage less dense and transmapping to thin it out into ribbons

barbult · May 2019

Joepingleton said:

barbult said:

Joepingleton said:

Strange, my previous post seems to have disappeared, but Wendy was able to quote it. Not that my opinion means much, but I thought I would repost it in case anyone was interested. :)

Just my two cents here, I can see why people are disappointed that us users can't make strand based hair dynamic. To me, it should be a given that hair should be dynamic and it was the biggest drawback of using hair in DAZ studio ever since I made the switch from Poser and Carrara. Every other 3D program has dynamic hair and has had it for a long time. Without dynamic hair, animations look very unrealistic from DAZ Studio. I previously used Poser and Carrara for animation and both had it since very early versions. I switched to using DAZ Studio for most things when DAZ stopped updating Carrara and the introduction of Iray. I was considering dropping DAZ Studio and just moving to Blender mainly because of its built-in support for Dynamic Hair, but I don't want to do that because I like DAZ Studio and I have a ton of assets for it. I was hoping this was a step in the right direction to bring DAZ Studio into the standards of what hair should be and that is it should be dynamic.

Don't get me wrong, I love the new strand based hair and I am grateful to have an alternative to LAMH. The examples I have seen of stand based hair so far are amazing. It just feels like they are holding it's true power from us, lowly users. What if we want dynamic hair for something that isn't popular enough for a PA to create? Are we just out of luck?

I agree that most programs aren't free, so maybe the solution would be that they provide a plug-in that us users can buy to add dynamics to strand based hair. I already use the LAMH paid plug-in because I wanted to use the hair on figures that are either too old or unpopular for PA's to create hair for them. I also use a lot of the other paid plug-in to provide functions that the base DAZ Studio doesn't provide. At least give the option since they obviously have the technology to do so:)

Anyway, Here are some strand based hair War Hamsters

War Hamsters look great!

Thank you for the kind words of encouragement, I tried to use a density map to make them a little fluffier and still keep their faces trimmed and using a smaller tip and root and more hairs seemed to make them much softer. Also using random length hair helps to get rid of some of the "push" look. Turning up the roughness on the hair shader seems to get rid of the darkness I was getting with the hair colors. I still don't know how to get rid of all the shine and darkness compared to the underlying texture, but it seems like a step in the right direction. I am having so much fun learning from everyone's great examples and discussions :)

@Joepingleton, Please explain how you use a density map to control the hair length (to keep their faces trimmed).

Joepingleton · May 2019

Leonides02 · May 2019

Divamakeup said:

I know it may not make me very popular for saying, but we have to keep in mind that DAZ is a content company, not a software company. They only develop the software so that there is a platform to run their content.

The fact that they give out ANY development tools at all is very generous. Cant see many software companies that would give the general public tools to compete with their own sales. It does not make much business sense to do that, but DAZ still goes out of their way to develop such things...and still give the software away for free.

+1 These are incredible and powerful tools that Daz is giving to the community, FOR FREE, but people still complain.

Many of us are saying we'd pay for this feature.

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dForce Hair (as well as strand based hair and the strand based hair editor) in public beta

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