Tutorial: Creating realistic Carrara hair for animations and still renders

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  • argus1000argus1000 Posts: 701
    edited December 1969

    Jonstark said:
    Hi Argus, those hairs sticking through the neck is a sure sign that your autogrouping isn't enabled
    For the V4 proxy, it's just like loading it as conforming clothing on the character. So put the character in the scene, then drag and drop the clothing onto the character (or just use the 'fit to' drop down in the General tab for the proxy).

    Now everything works. Thanks. :-)

  • argus1000argus1000 Posts: 701
    edited December 1969

    It doesn't conform like a clothing item?

    After I applied the "fit to" feature, now it does.:-)
  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738
    edited February 2015

    whoa, Evil I have seen all those renders before, but never until just this moment did I put together that you were using the ponytail before! It looks great in static scenes, for sure, and now that you mention using smooth tool to get rid of the curly-q that makes a lot of sense. I guess it's totally valid to have a curly-q type ponytail, but it's pretty rare to see one of those styles in real live, especially one so perfectly coiled (almost like springs). But let the ponytail relax a little and that hairstyle definitely is very useful.

    Though 1000 guide hairs is really a lot more guides than needed. Most are just in the central main part of the hair, to make sure it adheres to the head, and since no movement is even needed for that section, you could get away with almost no guide hairs and use of the clump tool, plus auto grouping and shape stiffness set high. I'm just envisioning how 1000 guides would slow sim calculations :)

    Post edited by Jonstark on
  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738
    edited December 1969

    argus1000 said:
    Jonstark said:
    Hi Argus, those hairs sticking through the neck is a sure sign that your autogrouping isn't enabled
    For the V4 proxy, it's just like loading it as conforming clothing on the character. So put the character in the scene, then drag and drop the clothing onto the character (or just use the 'fit to' drop down in the General tab for the proxy).

    Now everything works. Thanks. :-)

    Awesome, Argus! To be honest, I am very keen to see what use someone who is already very talented at animation such as yourself will make with this added to your toolkit. Should make for some excellent and very realistic animations indeed, very much anticipate seeing your results. :)

  • GarrettDRGarrettDR Posts: 229
    edited December 1969

    Jonstark said:
    GarrettDR said:
    Hey Jonstark,

    I started your tutorial yesterday and because of limited time I wasn't quite able to get all the way through the first one, but I have listened and occasionally peek over and watched both tutorial videos several times at work. Man, some of the things you say is hilarious! Great Tutorials! I have been trying to go through them and make notes when I can because you give so much information! i am, however, not doing hair right now, but beards. I have been using two groups, one for the beard, the second for the mustache. And looking at your advice on modeling a braid and rigging it.

    Thanks for your time and effort on the Braids! I believe you are right that it may not be worth while, but I am going to experiment with your findings.

    "Once you’re done, and have your braid ‘braided’ then remember you will want to set the shape stiffness fairly high for this, if it’s set low then in simulations and hair movements you’ll end up shaking the braid loose. You may want to put a primitive torus (parented to the head) around the tip of the braid as well at hold it in place."

    You talked about parenting a primitive to the head to hold the braid in place. Can you not parent a primitive to a segment of the hair itself? Anyway, As soon as I Finish my first beard animation, I will post it up on my Carrara experience post along with any other Carrara hair I create! Can't wait to see more from you!

    Thanks!

    Interesting idea Garrett, never even occurred to me to try to parent an object to the hair itself (although I know we can't parent to any particular hair segment, it would just be parented to the hair as a whole). I don't think it would work well, even though I'm curious to try, simply because the hair will move and sway with wind forces and scene effects, and something like a 'ponytail holder' we would want to remain constant in relation to the motion of the head, but maybe I'm wrong. Might be fun to play with an see.

    I haven't built a beard yet, I think there's a very nice tutorial on that though over at the carrara café (if memory serves) and I would think larger hair size (and stiffer, without much movement) would be more appropriate for a beard then on the scalp. Maybe even using the fur setting, although maybe not.

    I don't know if it was included with C8.5, but in earlier versions there were hair samples included. They would be in the Object Browser under Hair. They are built on hair caps. One is a ponytail style. I would check it out if it's there.


    I'm thinking about beards and viking mustaches that have ties at the bottom where you would want them to react to the movement of the mustache, not necessarily the head.

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  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738
    edited December 1969

    Garrett, I take back what I said before, now that I'm looking at that pic I do think that a simple prop won't look nearly as good or realistic as Carrara hair would. It might be a time consuming chore to create a braid like that in the hair room, but once done and saved it could look very realistic and with the right settings would move naturally with the characters head and motions in animations probably a lot better than the prop braid version would. I do think it's doable, and probably worth doing, if that's what you're after.

  • GarrettDRGarrettDR Posts: 229
    edited December 1969

    Thanks! I am messing around right now and If I come up with anything, I will definitely post it. I do want to apologize because I don't mean to be asking you questions from left field. You have a huge project you are working on for hair and I'm distracting you from it. I do appreciate your time with my questions!

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    I have some thoughts based on my own experience regarding a braid like hair style, but it will have to wait until after this week. Rehearsals every night this week, and opening night Friday. In fact.... It's almost time for me to leave.

  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738
    edited December 1969

    I was pro actor for a while when I was younger, but still my favorite shows weren't the national tours but the stuff I did in community theatre, a lot of fun. Break a leg, evil! :)

  • starboardstarboard Posts: 452
    edited December 1969

    Jon,
    I started watching you tutorials when you first posted them. Got as far as 5 when I got sidetracked by other events. I have finally got the proxy up and working and I finished your tutorial 7 tonight. They are really very good. I like in particular at the end of 7 when you show what happens when some of the controls are used to extreme. This is the type of information that stays with you.

    You mentioned that you have a full time job, so your time is rationed and you are doing this pro bono, however, I hope the next one is coming soon..#8..

    Thanks for some in depth probing of a complex feature,

    Starboardtack

  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738
    edited December 1969

    Thanks Starboardtack, I appreciate it and I do hope it's of good use to you (and at least fun to play with :) )

    I actually put up the 2nd tutorial, which covers a slightly more complex hairstyle and the hair shader room, and the other hair tools not covered in the first tutorial, as well as a good bit of theory and other ramblings :) I've updated the first post of this thread to include a link to the 2nd tutorial, since I know how easily these threads can get lost (maybe I should have always kept them together on the same thread, now that I think about it). Here's a link:

    http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/52022/

    And if you're curious, here's the hairstyle created:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3PgxGv7-rc

  • starboardstarboard Posts: 452
    edited December 1969

    Jon,
    Thoroughly enjoying the new Tutorials. They came along just in time as I was running into the problems you described...rats nest of wayward guide hairs... The stiffening was the solution...marvelous. I was also trying my own proxy - and sure enough when I started your new tutorials you suggest this course of action...

    I tried using Phil's Poly Proxy on a M4 but even after I fooled with the mesh to conform it to the m4 I was getting some strange effects..so I tried making my own head and shoulder proxy and it works exempt of course when you turn your head the shoulders turn as you might expect. However the plan was from the start to cut the shoulders off and parent them to the abdomen of M4 while the head of the proxy is parented to the M4 head. I unchecked hair collisions with the M4 and made sure the hair collisions are checked for the shoulder proxy. I could see no reason why this should not work. However when I tried it the hairs still pass through the shoulder proxy. Puzzling.

    I am alternating between trying to solve this puzzle and pursuing you latest tutorials.. The tuts are getting better and better.

    Starboardtack

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  • starboardstarboard Posts: 452
    edited December 1969

    Correction to the above.. It should read parent to the chest not abdomen.

    Starboardtack

  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738
    edited February 2015

    Just threw together a quick test to see if I could replicate this, but I'm still getting collisions on the parented object.

    I cut the head off of Diomede's low poly Genesis envelope figure, then dropped that on M4's head (literally right on the head bone), used model in the assembly room to push/pull a few vertexes with soft selection so that it generally fit closely over M4's head, then added a real simply hair along with a face shield object (wanted this to be a fast test, so no need for a more complex hair). I had collisions unchecked on the effects tab for M4, and did a drape, of course the hair fell through the shoulders as expected since there was nothing for it to collide with but the head object.

    Then added a vertex object to the scene, chose a cylinder, moved it so it was on M4's left collar (and also dropped it on the left collar bone, so that if I animated the cylinder would move with the collar as well). I was going to push and pull a few vertexes to make it match up better with M4's actual collar/shoulder/traps etc but figured it didn't matter for testing purposes. Did a drape, and as you can see the hairs are colliding with the proxy vertex collar object ok, as expected.

    May want to turn off the generated hairs visibility in the assembly room and turn on the guide hairs visibility instead to get a more true picture of what's colliding and where and to see what's going on here. Remember the 'loose' visible hairs that are actually visible in renders never collide with anything, they only follow where the guide hairs go, only the guide hairs collide with stuff. Not sure why you're getting the result you are, but I will do more testing later when I get off work to see if I can figure out what's going on. If you spot something weird going on with the guide hairs when they are visible and the loose render hairs are invisible that may point to what's going weird in your situation.

    (Edit: I did not resize all the hairs to be equal length, so some of the guide hairs just barely reach the vertex cylinder, may look like they are not colliding and passing through but this is actually just an illusion because the guide hair length stops just at the top of the cylinder, I got collisions from every guide hair that hit the cylinder...)

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    Post edited by Jonstark on
  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited December 1969

    Jonstark said:
    I was pro actor for a while when I was younger, but still my favorite shows weren't the national tours but the stuff I did in community theatre, a lot of fun. Break a leg, evil! :)

    Thanks Jon! The play is, The Murder Room, By Jack Sharkey. It's a murder mystery farce.

  • starboardstarboard Posts: 452
    edited December 1969

    Jon,
    I have been playing with this most of the day. Since you were able to make it work with a flattened cylinder I tried this also. Although the guide hairs are avoiding the cylinder when it is rendered out the hairs are still passing through it. It is strange ?

    I am taking a break.. well get back to it later.

    Starboardtack

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  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738
    edited December 1969

    Do you have 'auto grouping' checked? It looks like a lot of your loose hairs aren't adhering tremendously closely to the guide hairs. There will be some variance, but auto grouping helps make them adhere better.

  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738
    edited December 1969

    Also even with autogrouping checked you might need to fiddle with the autogrouping parameters to get as many loose hairs as possible to follow the guide hairs. Other remedies would include simply adding a few more guide hairs at the trouble spot, and a small bit of using the clump tool on all the hairs in the hair modeling room may help, as well as adding a small clump shader to the hair shader (sparingly though, a little goes a long away as you'll see if you play with it :) )

  • starboardstarboard Posts: 452
    edited December 1969

    Jon,
    The grouping tool helped a lot. I had to play with the variables but it is essentially there.

  • starboardstarboard Posts: 452
    edited December 1969

    Jon,
    The grouping tool helped a lot. I had to play with the variables but it is essentially there. It needs some tweaking which I will probably learn the next couple of days as I get deeper into your tutorials. I am going to go back and see if I can get my original proxy working - no reason why it should not be better than a cylinder. I will be using this hair on a Ben Franklin model so I am moving on to your tutorial on wavy hair using the shaders ASAP.

    By the way I am really impressed with this hair..I end up watching it over and over again..its mesmerizing.

    Thanks again Jon..Keep those tutorials coming.

    Starboardtack

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  • Salem2007Salem2007 Posts: 513
    edited December 1969

    Thanks for the tutorial--it's been really helpful----I was able to actual render a dynamic hair animation! I do have a question, though---when I finish the animation, the hair is a mess. It's not at all like it was in the first frame. What could I do to make the last frame more like frame one?

  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738
    edited December 1969

    msteaka said:
    Jon,
    The grouping tool helped a lot. I had to play with the variables but it is essentially there. It needs some tweaking which I will probably learn the next couple of days as I get deeper into your tutorials. I am going to go back and see if I can get my original proxy working - no reason why it should not be better than a cylinder. I will be using this hair on a Ben Franklin model so I am moving on to your tutorial on wavy hair using the shaders ASAP.

    By the way I am really impressed with this hair..I end up watching it over and over again..its mesmerizing.

    Thanks again Jon..Keep those tutorials coming.

    Starboardtack

    Ah, it's going to be Ben Franklin, I should have guessed when I saw the way you had arranged it on the head. Yeah, looking very good so far (although Ben looks a little young at the moment :) )

    And I completely agree, watching the hair sway and move can be completely mesmerizing. I find myself glued to the animation as it sways.

  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738
    edited December 1969

    Salem2007 said:
    Thanks for the tutorial--it's been really helpful----I was able to actual render a dynamic hair animation! I do have a question, though---when I finish the animation, the hair is a mess. It's not at all like it was in the first frame. What could I do to make the last frame more like frame one?

    Hi Salem2007, very glad to hear it was helpful! :)

    Not entirely sure what you mean though about preserving the hair, it should animate with scene forces and movement, but if you have the character stand still for the last second or so, with no other scene forces hitting or moving the hair, then it should 'settle' back into position pretty much. Can you show a screenshot of the beginning and then the end of the animation to give an idea?

  • Salem2007Salem2007 Posts: 513
    edited December 1969

    Jon,

    I think I solved my problem. I had some of the values for the settings off. I don't have speakers connected to my desktop, so I watched the tutorial without audio and I missed a few steps... oops!

  • scottidog2scottidog2 Posts: 319
    edited December 1969

    Can hair be used to simulate grass?

  • evilproducerevilproducer Posts: 9,040
    edited February 2015

    Can hair be used to simulate grass?

    You would be amazed what you can do with the hair!

    The first picture was a joke promo image I made when C8 first came out. Look at the armpits- just not to close. :sick:

    The one with the warrior women has hair on one of the women's clothes to simulate a hairy hide. The rug at their feet is hair on a simple spline shape.

    The moss is hair.

    The grass in the meridian in the picture with the highway is hair.

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    Post edited by evilproducer on
  • scottidog2scottidog2 Posts: 319
    edited December 1969

    Thank You. I'll leave the hairy armpit but I'll take the rest.

  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738
    edited December 1969

    Can hair be used to simulate grass?

    Oh yes, it's been used for grass on many instances. I will admit this particular tutorial was only on creating realistic animation for human hair, and I'm not giving much advice on how to make fur or grass or wire bristles for a brush with dynamic hair (though all those are possible too) as I haven't delved much into that aspect myself.

    Evil's picture of the moss above, is particularly striking (on of my favorites) and shows some of the capabilities of dynamic hair can include. It isn't just for humans :)

  • JonstarkJonstark Posts: 2,738
    edited December 1969

    Salem2007 said:
    Jon,

    I think I solved my problem. I had some of the values for the settings off. I don't have speakers connected to my desktop, so I watched the tutorial without audio and I missed a few steps... oops!

    Glad to hear it, Salem :) Was it 'auto-grouping'? That seems to be a step that's easily missed and can to lead to lots of stray hairs misbehaving.

    For me personally I tend to make the same mistakes and missteps over and over again. I often forget to turn off collisions in the effects tab for all of the high-poly stuff in the scene I don't want my hair colliding with, then when I'm hit the 'simulation' button and everything slows to a crawl I find myself saying 'why in the world is this taking so long... oh wait, duh I forgot..' For others who make a similar mistake, you can always hit the escape button to stop a simulation and get back to correcting the scene. This is true for draping too, a quick tap on the esc button will stop it at once.

  • TangoAlphaTangoAlpha Posts: 4,584
    edited December 1969


    The first picture was a joke promo image I made when C8 first came out. Look at the armpits- just not to close. :sick:

    :ahhh: So, not a natural blonde then... ;-P

    Seriously though, hair for moss & grass. Hmmm...

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