Look at my Hair (LAMH) Official Thread: update 1.6.0.2 released

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Comments

  • WillowRavenWillowRaven Posts: 3,724

    @WillowRaven, try setting your DS preferences like in the attached image and see if it helps. If you still get crashes, perhaps best thing is to email me log files so that I can take a look. Cheers

     

    That worked, AM :D Thank you so much!

  • WillowRavenWillowRaven Posts: 3,724
    Gogger said:

     

    I'm rocking an Alienware AR4 desktop and while I have recently installed an RTX 2080 Ti graphics card and upgraded the harddrives, this thing just keeps on going and going even after six or seven years. I love my Alienware, and I love LAMH!  Perhaps check your videocard driver, keep note of other programs running at the same time (you know, the usual stuff to check), and hopefully you get it sorted out.  Good luck!  

    I love my Alien ... I took the plunge and spent the money after I literally melted four laptops in five years. But I've had this for about five years now, and although I've had to bump up my hard drive, this puppy doesn't even get warm during a 5000-pixel render with 50+ figures in the scene.

    Luckily, the setting AM just gave me fixed the problem. 

  • AnotherUserNameAnotherUserName Posts: 2,726

    Hi All,

    Im wondering how a "Catalyzer group" works. I just got the woolly mamoth, https://www.daz3d.com/woolly-mammoth-by-am , and when I load the iray figure, I see the figure but no hair. I do see the catalyzer group in the scene tree but im not sure what to do with it. Thanks.

    Hello, did you activate the Catalyzer plugin? Instructions here if you didn't: https://www.alessandromastronardi.com/blog/lamh2iray-catalyzer/

    If you are able to see the mammoth with the colored guide hairs in the viewport, all you need to do is to click the Render button in the Catalyzer pane.

    Bought the catalyzer today. Thanks Alessandro. The Mammoth is a really fun model!

  • @WillowRaven, try setting your DS preferences like in the attached image and see if it helps. If you still get crashes, perhaps best thing is to email me log files so that I can take a look. Cheers

     

    That worked, AM :D Thank you so much!

    Well I'm glad it works now. Some of the settings in the DS preferences do impact plugins that use their own openGL context (like LAMH) and guess what... they are not documented so I came out to that by trial and error. Keeping settings like this should help having a stable system.

  • Hi All,

    Im wondering how a "Catalyzer group" works. I just got the woolly mamoth, https://www.daz3d.com/woolly-mammoth-by-am , and when I load the iray figure, I see the figure but no hair. I do see the catalyzer group in the scene tree but im not sure what to do with it. Thanks.

    Hello, did you activate the Catalyzer plugin? Instructions here if you didn't: https://www.alessandromastronardi.com/blog/lamh2iray-catalyzer/

    If you are able to see the mammoth with the colored guide hairs in the viewport, all you need to do is to click the Render button in the Catalyzer pane.

    Bought the catalyzer today. Thanks Alessandro. The Mammoth is a really fun model!

    Thanks to you, I'm glad you like it!

  • valzheimervalzheimer Posts: 519
    edited July 2019

    This is awkward, I just installed new Daz Studio 4.11 and tried installing LAMH (both latest official versions) and LAMH doesn't install at all, installer goes to the finish but no files are dropped in Daz directory and there's nothing in installed plugins and menus. Am I missing something? Also LAMH isn't showing up in DIM for download/install.

    Edit: Solved by installing through DIM (it's under LAMH not Look At My Hair).

    Post edited by valzheimer on
  • L'AdairL'Adair Posts: 9,479
    edited July 2019
    JOdel said:
    It gets a bit tricky once you have more than one animal in the scene that you want to put fur on. But it can be done. 

    I've tried searching the forums via Google to find out how to do this, specifically with two of the same animal, (in my case, I want to render an image with two Big Cat cubs playing together,) and I can't find how to do this.

    Can anyone point me to a post, or thread where this has been discussed and the solution provided? I'd greatly appreciate it.

    ETA: I forgot to mention, I want to render this image in 3Delight.

    Post edited by L'Adair on
  • Doc AcmeDoc Acme Posts: 1,153

    This help?

    I suspect you'll need to have them named differently & with unique naming for each fur group.

     

  • WillowRavenWillowRaven Posts: 3,724

    I asked in the Hivewire forum, but no one seems to know the answer...

    If I need a dog or cat that utilizes LAMH presets, and I need to crop the tail or clip the ears to match a specific bree, how does that affect LAMH and posing?

  • L'AdairL'Adair Posts: 9,479

    This help?

    I suspect you'll need to have them named differently & with unique naming for each fur group.

    @mdwhitney_17f0196a22, The video didn't help per se, but naming the presets differently seems to have. I don't know if it was necessary, but opened the LAMH editor, loaded the preset and then saved the preset with a new name. Regardless, I now have two furry panther cubs in one scene. Thank you for helping me out.

  • Doc AcmeDoc Acme Posts: 1,153

    I'm gonna assume you have the Editor.  Load your figure with the default then enter the editor and save the preset with a new name:

    image

    Go back to Studio & click the Attach LAMH Preset.  It will take you to the default folder where they get saved & select your newly created Preset.  These get saved with the figure.

    Repeat with a another new Preset name. Load in a new Gorilla or Cat in your case & attach the 2nd preset.  Now you have two of the same figure but with different named LAMH presets.

    When you get to the stage of exporting the hair, give them unique names too for the Geometry Set name, so KittyFur for one & KattFur for the 2nd as an example so you don't overright the generated fur OBJ's.

     

     

  • L'AdairL'Adair Posts: 9,479

    I'm gonna assume you have the Editor.  Load your figure with the default then enter the editor and save the preset with a new name:

    image

    Go back to Studio & click the Attach LAMH Preset.  It will take you to the default folder where they get saved & select your newly created Preset.  These get saved with the figure.

    Repeat with a another new Preset name. Load in a new Gorilla or Cat in your case & attach the 2nd preset.  Now you have two of the same figure but with different named LAMH presets.

    When you get to the stage of exporting the hair, give them unique names too for the Geometry Set name, so KittyFur for one & KattFur for the 2nd as an example so you don't overright the generated fur OBJ's.

    As I mentioned, that's exactly what I did, all the way down to your last paragraph.

    However, I thought exporting the hair was for Iray. I'm doing this set of images in 3Delight. Do I still need to export the hair?

  • Doc AcmeDoc Acme Posts: 1,153

    Yes.  That's the geometry that will actually render whether Iray or other.  Just use Standard Surface Shader for the hair at the outset for 3Delight I guess.  The green guides don't render of course in fact should probably be deleted once you're posed.  It looks grayed out but you should see a very tiny, blacked text "yes" against dark gray in the Color Setup areas under Mapped.  It takes the basic surface or the character automatically.

     

  • Mustakettu85Mustakettu85 Posts: 2,933
    L'Adair said:

    I'm gonna assume you have the Editor.  Load your figure with the default then enter the editor and save the preset with a new name:

    Go back to Studio & click the Attach LAMH Preset.  It will take you to the default folder where they get saved & select your newly created Preset.  These get saved with the figure.

    Repeat with a another new Preset name. Load in a new Gorilla or Cat in your case & attach the 2nd preset.  Now you have two of the same figure but with different named LAMH presets.

    When you get to the stage of exporting the hair, give them unique names too for the Geometry Set name, so KittyFur for one & KattFur for the 2nd as an example so you don't overright the generated fur OBJ's.

    As I mentioned, that's exactly what I did, all the way down to your last paragraph.

    However, I thought exporting the hair was for Iray. I'm doing this set of images in 3Delight. Do I still need to export the hair?

    Just make sure you export as Renderman curves not OBJ.

  • Doc AcmeDoc Acme Posts: 1,153
    L'Adair said:
     

    Just make sure you export as Renderman curves not OBJ.

    I believe it defaults to that; there's an obsure panel in the editor to change in any case.  In either case, the resulting geom brought back into Studio via the Export Fiberhair process are OBJs.  It tells you where under your User/Documents folder.  They're typically ~ 1/2 Gb in size.

  • L'AdairL'Adair Posts: 9,479
    edited July 2019
    L'Adair said:

    I'm gonna assume you have the Editor.  Load your figure with the default then enter the editor and save the preset with a new name:

    Go back to Studio & click the Attach LAMH Preset.  It will take you to the default folder where they get saved & select your newly created Preset.  These get saved with the figure.

    Repeat with a another new Preset name. Load in a new Gorilla or Cat in your case & attach the 2nd preset.  Now you have two of the same figure but with different named LAMH presets.

    When you get to the stage of exporting the hair, give them unique names too for the Geometry Set name, so KittyFur for one & KattFur for the 2nd as an example so you don't overright the generated fur OBJ's.

    As I mentioned, that's exactly what I did, all the way down to your last paragraph.

    However, I thought exporting the hair was for Iray. I'm doing this set of images in 3Delight. Do I still need to export the hair?

    Just make sure you export as Renderman curves not OBJ.

    @Mustakettu85, How long should it take?

    Everytime I've tried to export "Renderman", the dialog window closes immediately, and nothing happens. But when I export to OBJ, the window stays open while LAMH creates the obj.

    Post edited by L'Adair on
  • Doc AcmeDoc Acme Posts: 1,153
    L'Adair said:

    t make sure you export as Renderman curves not OBJ.

    @Mustakettu85, How long should it take?

    Ev

    erytime I've tried to export "Renderman", the dialog window closes immediately, and nothing happens. But when I export to OBJ, the window stays open while LAMH creates the obj.

    Are you using the little tiny Export button or the large blue Export Fiberhair button?

    image   image

     

    The tiny one gives no feedback.  The Export Fiberhair is the one you want to use.  You can set a number of things there, but it does give an indication at least that the export is in progress.  It also performs compression that the tiny button doesn't.  I compared the results of both methods & with the default of 5 it's ~ half the geometry.  Tested with the Beaver and was 4.41 million polys vs 2.21 mill.

    Export Choices.jpg
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  • L'AdairL'Adair Posts: 9,479

    @mdwhitney_17f0196a22, I thank you for you help. I would like to point out, though, that you and @Mustakettu85 are giving me different instructions.

    First, I have no trouble converting a preset to fiberhair, or to a wavefront obj. While I've never been able to create my own hair, (yet?) I've been using the editor for years to convert presets for use in Iray. I've also had no issue using a single figure with preset when rendering with 3Delight, though I use 3DL very seldom since Iray was introduced with the 4.8 beta.

    Where I'm running into an issue is trying use two figures with the same base, (and I want to render them in 3Delight.) I have two feline cubs playing in the grass, and I want to use their LAMH preset. The first issue I'm having is it's one preset. I "solved" that issue by loading the preset in the Editor and saving it with a new name.

    However, trying to reload the file after saving with both LAMH groups loaded crashes Daz Studio. I had to uninstall LAMH from one install of Daz Studio, (remove the dll and folder from the Plugins folder,) to open my file. Then I had to delete one of the LAMH groups from the scene and save. With only one LAMH group, the file opens in the version of DS that still has the plugin installed.

    To solve that issue, you suggested I export the geometry of both groups, (and are now clarifying you meant Fiberhair.)

    @Mustakettu85 was quite positive I need to export as Renderman curves, and not as an object, so I'm hoping he (she?) will come back in and explain how I can export as Renderman curves.

    In the meantime, I can render with both LAMH groups in the scene, I just have to delete one before saving, or I have to jump through the above outlined hoops to access the file again.

    I asked in the Hivewire forum, but no one seems to know the answer...

    If I need a dog or cat that utilizes LAMH presets, and I need to crop the tail or clip the ears to match a specific bree, how does that affect LAMH and posing?

    I'm not ignoring you, @WillowRaven, but I don't know the answer either. If you have the editor, (full product,) you might be able to "crop" the preset in there, but I couldn't begin to tell you how.

    Good luck. I hope someone in here will know the answer.

  • WillowRavenWillowRaven Posts: 3,724
    L'Adair said:

    I asked in the Hivewire forum, but no one seems to know the answer...

    If I need a dog or cat that utilizes LAMH presets, and I need to crop the tail or clip the ears to match a specific bree, how does that affect LAMH and posing?

    I'm not ignoring you, @WillowRaven, but I don't know the answer either. If you have the editor, (full product,) you might be able to "crop" the preset in there, but I couldn't begin to tell you how.

    Good luck. I hope someone in here will know the answer.

    I didn't think I was being ignored. I just figured no one knew the answer. I'd imagine if I'd like to know, so would others. For example, what if I want a three-legged dog? What does that o to my preset? My guess is only Alessandro Mastronardi will be able to answer.

    I don't know if this will help you, L'Adair, but I was having crash problems recently that AM solved for me, too. But until that was solved, I loaded my animal with fur, positioned and posed, then saved just the animal as a subset file. Then next time I opened the scene and no fur was showing, I just had to import/merge the solo critter.

    Here's the page where AM helped with my settings so I quit crashing: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/14818/look-at-my-hair-lamh-official-thread-update-1-6-0-1-released/p72 (not sure how to link a specific comment)

     

  • Doc AcmeDoc Acme Posts: 1,153
    L'Adair said:

    @mdwhitney_17f0196a22, I thank you for you help. I would like to point out, though, that you and @Mustakettu85 are giving me different instructions.

    `Z@Mustakettu85 was quite positive I need to export as Renderman curves, and not as an object, so I'm hoping he (she?) will come back in and explain how I can export as Renderman curves.

    In the meantime, I can render with both LAMH groups in the scene, I just have to delete one before saving, or I have to jump through the above outlined hoops to access the file again.

    That's actually something I asked AM directly & not possible ... yet.  Possibly next version.

     

  • L'AdairL'Adair Posts: 9,479
    L'Adair said:

    @mdwhitney_17f0196a22, I thank you for you help. I would like to point out, though, that you and @Mustakettu85 are giving me different instructions.

    `Z@Mustakettu85 was quite positive I need to export as Renderman curves, and not as an object, so I'm hoping he (she?) will come back in and explain how I can export as Renderman curves.

    In the meantime, I can render with both LAMH groups in the scene, I just have to delete one before saving, or I have to jump through the above outlined hoops to access the file again.

    That's actually something I asked AM directly & not possible ... yet.  Possibly next version.

    Okay. Can't get more definitive than that! lol
    laugh

    It sounds, then, as if I misunderstood what Mustakettu85 was saying. Perhaps he was referring to saving the preset, (i.e. Renderman curves,) with a new name, which makes sense; Exporting as fiberhair would only work with the current figure/pose, and I need the preset to work with multiple figures.

    And again, thank you for all your help.

  • Doc AcmeDoc Acme Posts: 1,153
    L'Adair said:
    L'Adair said:
     

    That's actually something I asked AM directly & not possible ... yet.  Possibly next version.

    Okay. Can't get more definitive than that! lol
    laugh

    It sounds, then, as if I misunderstood what Mustakettu85 was saying. Perhaps he was referring to saving the preset, (i.e. Renderman curves,) with a new name, which makes sense; Exporting as fiberhair would only work with the current figure/pose, and I need the preset to work with multiple figures.

    And again, thank you for all your help.

    Good to get discussions going in any case. Looked for those earlier ones but didn't have much luck.

    When I first started dabbling with LAMH, I managed to contact Allessandro with a number of questions.  With Rman curve export, I could then bring those into Lightwave (probably a number of other packages too) and be able to do animation with fur as it would then be dynamically created.

    If LAMH could get converted into the new system, that would be great as well I suspect.  Kinda looks like they borrowed heavily from AM anyway, so who knows.

    Good luck with your Kitty Cats. 

  • Mustakettu85Mustakettu85 Posts: 2,933
    edited July 2019
    L'Adair said:

    @Mustakettu85 was quite positive I need to export as Renderman curves, and not as an object, so I'm hoping he (she?) 

    As if it ever mattered =) If you're curious, I'm technically female. But I couldn't care less for pronouns.

    So look - you don't need to do anything out of the ordinary; but you need to use the full editor. I have next to zero experience with that small panel. I just use it to launch the editor :D Faster than scrolling through menus.

    Here's a walkthrough for two MilCats in the scene. Sorry if it's too detailed, it's not that I am assuming anything about your skills - I just want to make sure no steps are lost. And of course, there may be newbies lurking here (hi folks).

    So, two MilCats.

    When you load the same figure twice, DS will rename the second one and add "(2)". So my second cat is "millennium cat (2)" in the scene tab.

    Then I open the LAMH editor. At the top right it has a dropdown with figure names. It will generally have the name of the figure selected in the scene tab. We start with the first cat - "millennium cat" without a number. Then you press the small button with arrows (the one that has the "select and import objects from Studio" as a tooltip when you hover the mouse pointer). LAMH will now load the first cat. 

    The cat is grey and bald.

    Now that we have the bald figure in the LAMH editor, we can press the second small button under the dropdown - the one with the "load project" tooltip. It opens a file browser and you can now navigate to your LAMH file.

    I will be using the "short fur" preset from here: https://www.furrythings.com/presets-animals/ - it has very low default hair density numbers, but this is a walkthrough not a real render. The cats will eventually look sickly =)

    I select the .lmh file, and the editor begins loading it (there will be a progress bar of sorts in the lower left corner). When it's done, you'll see the cat with green guide fur.

    Then you press the leftmost small button with the "export hair" tooltip. And it shows this screen:

    Make sure you have "Renderman" selected and "load in Studio" on for all the fur surfaces (MilCat has two). And here's the number of hairs you may want to adjust eventually.

    Note that "Geometry set name" matches the scene tab label of the first cat. It's important.

    Then you press the tiny "export geometry" button and almost immediately the first cat in the viewport gets green guide fur.

    Now we're back in the LAMH editor. The dropdown lets me select the "millennium cat (2)" now; I repeat the steps above: press the arrows button to import the cat into the editor; press the "load project" button to get to the same LAMH file - no renaming necessary! - then I wait for it to load, make sure my second cat in the editor has the green guide fur, and then I press "export" once again.

    Now the "Geometry set name" should be "millennium cat (2)". I check that it will export to Renderman curves and load them into Studio. Fine; exported.

    Here are my two cats in the viewport:

    And here's the test render (made the fur blue to be more visible; sorry poor kitties):

    You can see they both have fur. Sparse fur, but that's because I didn't bother to play with the hair count.

     

    So... that's all there is to it!

     

    Kinda looks like they borrowed heavily from AM anyway, so who knows.

    The new "strand based hair" tool is not LAMH, it's Garibaldi 2.0.

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    Post edited by Chohole on
  • Doc AcmeDoc Acme Posts: 1,153

    Hey, thanks for doing that Mustakettu85

    I was going to do something similar with the MilCats as I recently got some custom textures for them. But, intead I seem to have gotten caught up this morning doing battle with some re-UV work.

  • Mustakettu85Mustakettu85 Posts: 2,933

    Hey, thanks for doing that Mustakettu85

    I was going to do something similar with the MilCats as I recently got some custom textures for them. But, intead I seem to have gotten caught up this morning doing battle with some re-UV work.

    You're welcome :)

    UV mapping is a pain :(

  • L'AdairL'Adair Posts: 9,479

    @Mustakettu85, Thank you for explaining all of that. I've been using the plugin dialog, and when I go to the editor, the animal and the fur are both automatically imported. And as I've mentioned, if I save with both fur groups in the scene, Daz Studio crashes when I try to reload a saved scene.

    I'm going to try it your way and see if that makes any difference in reloading a saved scene. (Fingers crossed!)

    It doesn't bother me at all that you explained things so thoroughly. I've been using Daz Studio for years, but I'm still a relative newbie to using LAMH.

    (When I was a newbie, I got really frustrated at times when searching for information. I don't know how many times I'd find a thread that said "do such-and-such," but never said how to do such-and such. So I also try to be thorough when explaining how to do something, specifically for the newbies who will be reading the thread months, even years, later.)

  • gitika1gitika1 Posts: 948

    Thorough is always nice!  LAMH seems to stump me whenever I try to use it.  I find myself in waiting mode more that creating mode.  So any step by step guides that allow success are welcome.

  • Doc AcmeDoc Acme Posts: 1,153

    Well, it 'tis a beast (pun only semi intended) when it comes to system demands and not much that can be done other than feed it. One technique though is to split up some of the larger groups.  Even so, that's still a lot of data to churn & just takes time. The Moose was a real test.  I was able to get everything to generate in Daz, but had to do some tricks with Lightwave & split the main body fur into three parts just so I could load it.  There's a point & poly limit per object & I've 64 Gb of RAM to work with fortunately.

     

  • Mustakettu85Mustakettu85 Posts: 2,933
    L'Adair said:

    @Mustakettu85, Thank you for explaining all of that...

    It doesn't bother me at all that you explained things so thoroughly. I've been using Daz Studio for years, but I'm still a relative newbie to using LAMH.

    (When I was a newbie, I got really frustrated at times when searching for information. I don't know how many times I'd find a thread that said "do such-and-such," but never said how to do such-and such. So I also try to be thorough when explaining how to do something, specifically for the newbies who will be reading the thread months, even years, later.)

    You're welcome! :)

    OT: and I don't know how to make the forums create @-mentions :)

  • L'AdairL'Adair Posts: 9,479
    edited July 2019
    L'Adair said:

    @Mustakettu85, Thank you for explaining all of that...

    It doesn't bother me at all that you explained things so thoroughly. I've been using Daz Studio for years, but I'm still a relative newbie to using LAMH.

    (When I was a newbie, I got really frustrated at times when searching for information. I don't know how many times I'd find a thread that said "do such-and-such," but never said how to do such-and such. So I also try to be thorough when explaining how to do something, specifically for the newbies who will be reading the thread months, even years, later.)

    You're welcome! :)

    OT: and I don't know how to make the forums create @-mentions :)

    @Mustakettu85

    It's simple: type the "@" followed by the member's forum name. I usually just copy the name from the sidebar, and then "Ctrl+Shift+V" paste to remove the formatting. (I use FF, not sure if that keystroke combo works in all browsers.)

    It doesn't work for any name, however, that has a "stop" character in it: space, apostrophe, period, etc. So it doesn't work with my forum name.

    BTW, I followed your instructions yesterday. I didn't really see any difference between using the editor and using the plugin pane, but I didn't try using the same preset for both, either.

    Unfortunately, it made no difference when saving the scene with both LAMH groups in the scene. It still crashed DS when loading. However, I have not tried using multiple figures with different base characters, for example, a cat and a dog. I should mention, I'm using the latest 4.11 beta. (I doubt there's any difference between that and the released version. But I'll wait for 4.12 beta to come out and then mess with the new install. lol)

    Post edited by L'Adair on
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