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Does anyone have transparency maps that fix Starlette hair?

FlortaleFlortale Posts: 611
edited March 2020 in The Commons

Does anyone have transparency maps that fix Starlette hair?

As you can see, the transparency maps are terrible, but the shape of the hair is outstanding.  This hair needs fixing transparency wise.

Are there any of you that managed to fix the hair in its current broken state?  If so, can you tell me how you did it? I'm about to fix this hair because I like it so much, so any tips or hints will help me accomplish my goal faster.

If I do manage to fix it, I'll share what I did in photoshop, so you guys can do it too.

I'm thinking that the edges in the transparency map just need to be faded between 50% to 0% opacity, that should hide the edges, but it might make the whole hair too thin looking, we'll see.

Post edited by Flortale on

Comments

  • NorthOf45NorthOf45 Posts: 5,711

    If you are referring to the blockiness at the back, there is nothing wrong with the transparency maps. What you are seeing is (from my experiments) is caused the translucency of the hair, specifically the "Flip" surface. The lighter shades have a fairly bright color for translucency, so try toning it down a bit to a darker color, or reduce the translucency weight. On darker shades of hair, that effect is not even noticeable.

  • FlortaleFlortale Posts: 611
    edited March 2020

    Okay I figured it out. If you guys want to fix this hair, do this:

    1. Open the Starlette Hair Transparency map in Photoshop.
    2. Apply a Gaussian Blur of 33.2  (Filter->Blur->Gaussian Blur)
    3. Save and apply this map to Starlette Hair (all surfaces except scalp).
    4. With Starlette Hair selected in DAZ Studio, Do Figure --> Geometry --> Add SubD
    5. Select Starlette Hair, go to parameters, select Mesh Resolution, change it from Base to High Resolution, set the view subD level to 2, and render subD level to 2
    6. Change Edge Interpolation to soft corners and edges
    7. Select all surface materials and change the following settings:
    - Translucency weight: .60
    - Dual Specular Weight: 0
    - Glossy Weight: 0
    - Top Coat Weight: between 0.8 to 1.0, it's up to you
    - Top Coat Rough: 0.35
    - Reflectivity: 1.0
    - Ansio: 0.5
    - Rot: 0.25
    - If you own OutofTouch Hair, set the Top Coat Bump map to: OOTUtilityAliceHairSP1.jpg, and set the strength to 2.0
    - Thin Walled Off
    - Transmitted Color White (255,255,255)
    - Scattering Measurement Distance: 6.0
    - transmitted measurement distance: 6.0
    - SSS Amount: 1.0

    Geometry Shell 
    - add a geometry shell to starlette hair  (Create--> Geometry SHell)
    - apply iray uber base material to the shell, found in content library, do a search for !Iray Uber Base
    - copy the material from starlette hair to its shell
    - set the shell's mesh offset to 0.3
    - set all of the shell's surface mat cutout from 1.0 to around 0.7, you can play with this setting

    The whole point of this was to fix the sharp edges of the hair, so it looks softer and more natural.

    I would show a screenshot, but I can't, but trust me guys, if you do a before and after render, you'll find my tweaks to vastly improve the hair, it doesn't look as problematic.  This was tested on blonde hair. These techniques can work on any hair.

    EDIT: Holy crap, this is a night and day difference.  This hair looks amazing now, my god. I wish I could show you guys, but I can't show a screen, damn it.

    NorthOf45 said:

    If you are referring to the blockiness at the back, there is nothing wrong with the transparency maps. What you are seeing is (from my experiments) is caused the translucency of the hair, specifically the "Flip" surface. The lighter shades have a fairly bright color for translucency, so try toning it down a bit to a darker color, or reduce the translucency weight. On darker shades of hair, that effect is not even noticeable.

    I did a test with translucency set to 0.1 vs 0.6 ... A setting of 0.6 reduced the sharp edges, while 0.1 made the edges more prominent (bad looking)

    Post edited by Flortale on
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