Diffeomorphic: custom strand based beard imported -> does not follow facial expression
Dissendior
Posts: 139
As the subject says: when I import a figure with a beard using Diffeomorphic I struggle to get the beard working with morphs and rig posing around the mouth: The beard does not adjust to the movement of lips, cheeks, chin and so on - whether I try it by using the rig or by using the FACS expression morphs for example.
- I've created a beard with strand based hair system within Daz and imported the figure into Blender with Diffeomorphic including the FACS Expressions morphs.
- After import I used the "Make hair" tool with following settings:
- Create = Tube, Output = Hair Curves. Whatever I try under the "deform" section - the beard does not adjust to any mesh movement. When I use a proxy the beard adjusts but the hair curves are stretched - it's not only that the beard moves with the mesh but also the curves themselves get adjusted.
- Create = tube, output = Particles, under "deform" is "Parent to Head" checked -> here the beard moves accordingly to morph and rig changes
- Create = tube, output = Curves, under "deform" is "Parent to Head" checked -> here the beard DOES NOT move accordingly to morph and rig changes
Attached you can see what I mean - when the mouth is open the hairs remain their position. I'm a little bit confused by all the possibilities how to create hair in Daz and Blender and might miss something very basic - sorry for that in advance.
Can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong? Maybe I'll stick with Blender's particle system as this seems to work best with daz strand based hair but at least I'd like to understand what's going on here.
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Comments
First you don't need "tubes", you can set the tessellation to one in daz studio then use "lines" that's much faster to import if you plan to convert to curves.
As for particle hair you got it. This is the old way in blender before hair curves became available. It's a fast setup if you don't need to animate the hair. Also simulation doesn't generally work fine. These are limits in blender not a bug in the addon.
As for hair curves, if you don't need to animate the hair then you can choose the "curves" deform method, which will follow the mesh. While "proxy" is needed if you want to animate the hair, which will provide you a hair rig. Unfortunately some curves can't convert fine, again a limit in blender not a bug in the addon.
The other methods "curves" "polyline" "mesh" are there for manual rigging and conversion if anyone would dare.
p.s. However, it is generally better to try and use the blender native tools for hair rather than importing from daz, as daz hairs can't always be converted fine because of limits in blender, or some can be heavy and not good for animation.
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Thank you for your response....but I am still confused maybe you can help me to understand!? You say I don't need tubes...to be honest it was not a decision I've made because somehow I thought I need it :-D It was simply working and it was said in a documentation about the plugin that "Tubes" should be chosen for strand based hair. As I need to choose something under the "Create" section - what else should I choose? Additionally I am so confused about the "Create" and "Output" section in general: what does it mean in this plugin / context, "create" and "output"? For me by the words it's the same. I bet it has somethng to do with guides and additional hair per guide or something?
Then you write: "As for hair curves, if you don't need to animate the hair then you can choose the "curves" deform method, which will follow the mesh." - but it doesn't. When I pose the head rig it follows but when I open the mouth - it doesn't matter if by bone or morph - it does not follow the mesh.
Convert to hair curves.
Alt+P - remove parenting and keep transform.
Apply Location, Rotation, and Scale (Object-Apply-All Transforms).
Add the node group below (Attach Hair Curves to Surface and Deform Curves on Surface). I think this is the most important part. And make sure you check the correct boxes on 'Attach Hair Curves to Surface'.
If you want, you can parent the curves to the mesh they are following (Hold shift, click on the curves, and drag them over the mesh in the outliner).
In some older versions of Blender there was a bug in the hair curves, the following method fixed it. Not sure what versions or if it was ever fixed, but I still usually do it just in case:
An easy way to get past that error is to simply add empty hair to the mesh. You can delete it right after. That clears up the rest position error.
Then you will get another error Curves are not attached to any UV map. Well they are if you set up the curves with the surface and UV map filled in.
Just select the curves and go to sculpt mode. Under Curves, select Snap to nearest surface.
That clears up the UV map error and you are done.
Let me know if you still have questions. I may have gotten something out of order here. I think I've done different iterations of these steps about 100 times so they all kinda blend together after a while and I just start mashing buttons.
The documentation refers to the default tesselation for SBH in daz studio, which is "tubes". If you change the viewport tessellation to one you can use "lines" instead.
Well, "create" refers to the source geometry, which can be of different types in daz studio, while "output" refers to the target geometry, which can be of different types in blender. Of course they're not the same thing. The documentation also explains it fairly well.
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/wiki/Features/Hair Tools
The "curves" deform works fine here, be sure to use an up to date version of blender and the addon, as Krys explains, old blender versions may have bugs. Here I'm using blender 5.0.1 and diffeomorphic 5.1.0.2799.
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/downloads/
Then what Krys explains is a setup by hand, if for any reason the addon fails, which shouldn't. You can check in the console if there's any error.
windows > toggle system console
Thank you guys so far. I tried several ways now but still face some issues. I use Blender 5.0.1 and Diffeomorphic 5.1.0
First try: create hair curves with deform. The result:the beard moves correctly but the hair doesn't follow the hair curve guides.
The second try:same as above with no deform
Result: the hair is looking right but the hair does not follow when the mouth is open.
Here I've tried the above: clear parent and apply transforms (for the hair curves!?), added "Attach hair curves to surface" -> the beard is totally misplaced and Blender is heavily calculating as soon as I change the morph value or the pose. The surface deform modifier is completely lost here and I cannot add it - it's not listed in the modifier list
Another approach with "Attach hair curves to surface": I think the UV Map was not correct, the beard is now positioned correctly. However when I use the Facial expression morph "shock" or the rig to open the mouth the beard does not follow.
Now that I look closely in my test I get the same as you with "curves deform". That is, the hair follows the mesh but the hair shape is lost. I guess this is only good for short hair where the hair shape doesn't matter too much, as animals fur for example. I am not sure if we can get the hair curves to follow the mesh and retain the hair shape at the same time.
Unfortunately the alternative setup by Krys doesn't seem to work for me either. Perhaps we miss some steps.
Right now the only advice I can give is to use "particles" instead which works fine in this case.
That's interesting. I use it all the time for brows and lashes. Maybe facial hair doesn't work so well. Also try putting it first in the modifier stack and disabling the other Geonodes to try to isolate the issue.
And when converting from mesh to curves, I've never used any of the 'deform' options. I think that is a newer feature in Diffeo.
@Krys Yes, with short hair it works fine, but it seems the "deform curves on surface" node can't retain the hair shape, so it doesn't work well for the beard example by Dissendior or possibly other combed hair. Actually I didn't find a way to work around this issue which seems a limitation in the specific node. But I'm not a geonode expert at all so may be there's a solution out there.
p.s. Interestingly, the old particle hair works fine in this case as it both follows the mesh and retains the hair shape.
Man, I am so glad after several hours trying to get this working that at the end the issue doesn't seem to sit in front of the monitor :-) Thank you guys for your help!
My plan for today was to try to figure out if anybody in the world ever managed in Blender to get a beard with hair curves follow the deformations of the mouth region and to dive deeper into these hair curves in general. It's so strange bc even for fur I cannot imagine that nobody ever combed the hair and realized this issue. At least I know that I could use particles for now. The whole topic "hair" is new to me and I still try to find out if I really need all three techniques in Blender (hair cards, particles, hair curves) or if I can find a way for me to concentrate on one of them to create hair.
Okay... I think I found the issue: using the attached configuration the result is hair curves without the "Surface Deform" modifier, see the result screenshot.
This needs to be added manually: Add modifier > Geometry Nodes and under "Browse Node tree to be linked" you should see it. BUT: The surface deform modifier / node tree (whatever it is) doesn't exist here. I started a new Blender file and directly used Diffeomorphic to import a daz character.
The solution: I simply added a new hair curve (choose a mesh > Add > Curve > Empty hair) which seems to create / make the node tree / modifier in the new Blender file available. THEN I see the "Surface deform" option for the Geometry Node modifier and choose it. This leads to an error in the modifier: "curves are not attached to any uv map". For this: Open hair curves in sculpt mode, then in menu: Curves > “snap to nearest surface”. This makes the hair curves look nice and follow the mesh. HOORAY. After that I simply delete the manually added hair curves.
Maybe somewhere during the "Make hair" process in Diffeomorphic this needs to be created / done as well?!
Thank you. I just found a old bug report of mine explaining essentially the same as you did, plus some more cleanup. I forgot about it. It seems something goes wrong with the hair conversion, will investigate further and eventually create a new bug report for Thomas, as this seems a regression.
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/issues/2367/
update. Now reported to Thomas with a possible fix.
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/issues/2637/
thank you
the surface derform modifier created on empty hair just contains one simple utility geometry node which you can add into any other geomtry node tree. So just because it isnt selectable from modifier stack, doesnt mean you cant just add that node into another geometry node tree.
Nobody said that it is not possible to add in another way whatever the surface deform modifier adds. As I obviously don't know what this modifier does exactly (and as I obviously don't use the geometry node editor here) this comment is not helpful when you don't describe how to do it and which "simple utility geometry node" is added. Did you just want to raise your comment count here or what was the purpose of your comment? To show off your endless knowledge?
update. This is fixed in the last commit, now the "curves" deform works fine.
https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/downloads/
I can confirm... thank you!