LI Strand Forge Hair for Genesis 9
daveso
Posts: 8,042
in The Commons
This product looks very interesting. It would seem a discussion of this would be in order, but I'm not finding anything on it.
https://www.daz3d.com/li-strand-forge-hair-for-genesis-9
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Comments
IMHO, no need to even think about it, personally I would say just buy it. I've been wanting to create and control my own hairstyles in the Daz Studio viewport ever since we got Strand Based Hair, and this product allows you to do that. It works a lot like in Blender. You basically add some rigged and fully tweakable hair formation props into the scene, and the Strand Based Hair follows the form of those props.
You also have full control over the strands in the usual 'Strand Based Hair' way, and that hair is controlled directly in the viewport by following as many forms as you wish. Put it this way, I made a lot of bad purcases recently, but this was the polar opposite of that and I couldn't be happier with it really!
The beauty of it is that you're basically deforming a polygonal system that is rigged, but what you see is the hair strands, not the polygonal formers. To anyone starting out with it, don't forget to adjust the Cutout Opacity for the hair formers themselves so that you can see the hair once (or even while) creating your style.
I think now, the only thing stopping Daz Studio from being absolutely top-dog killer, is the lack of Geometry Sculptor as a standard plugin.
I'd pay £100 for it as long as it was a perpetual licence!
Mesh Grabber which is an earlier form of geomtery sculptor is still available for purchase
you can use SBH Editor in Viewport in Daz 2025.
I understand the particular hair creation workflow you are referencing, but from the promos and product description, this product quite simply contains numerous hair presets. Therefore, because hair is something Daz has had forever, "It works a lot like Daz" is more apt than saying "it works a lot like Blender".
Yes I see the value of this product is that it includes a variety of different hair presets as a base that you can start with and then additional rigged hair pieces that you can use for adjusting styles
The product incldues those rigged proxies but just to note that many of the assets are standard SBH assets (which arent posable and you wouldnt expect them to be).
I think trying to assemble an entire hairstyle from the rigged proxies alone would be way more effort than its worth. Those would be useful to supplement a full hairstyle.
For constructing a full hairstyle, I imagine you would use an existing hairstyle preset that comes with this product (or any other) as the base and then use the additional pieces to add points of interest or tweak.
Blender is free and sculpting is straight foward to do there, and fairly intuitive. It's not like it takes very long to export base mesh and import via morph loader pro. I would estimate the round trip from Daz to Blender and back again is maybe 20 extra seconds. Most of the time sculpting will be spent on actual sculpting rather than importing/exporting, so ask yourself if what Daz could make would be better than Blender's sculpting system or would you waste those 20 seconds fumbling around a clunky interface and tools?
This product is very good, but ultimately you could have much more flexibility using Daz's SBH Editor itself or another hair editor, as you would have free reign to do whatever you like, especially if you have something hyper specific in mind. You can even create your own rigged hair assets similar to these if you export the SBH, although they wont have all the functions of SBH. But with owning this product, you might not need to do that anyway. So DAZ SBH Editor + this Product could be a powerful combo for creating hair.
To make daz top-dog killer probably might take more than a geometry sculptor (which you dont actually need anyway, becuase Blender) and new hair construction products (that are technically just downstream of the same hair system Daz has had for years now anyway).
My need case is relatively simple; often I just want some simple hair under a hood or cap. Here is Mousso's Samuel with the Dforce Origin outfit and LI Strand Forge Hair (before and after):
it is something I wishlisted for now though the Australian dollar might improve with all the events going on
It is a very impressive product. Seems very versitle from the promo pictures. I have a few of Laticis Imagery's products. They do make wonderful products.
@Charlie
Haven't tried it yet, but I do have the previous version of Mesh Grabber and I'm guessing that could also be used for deforming the hair formers of this product.
@lilweep
Sure, but a lot of my plugins won't work in that version, and even so, it's still nice to have this way of working as an option. By comaring it to Blender, I was referring to those hair plugins that cause the strands to follow polygonal formers. This works exactly the same, but with the benefit of not having to hop between programs. it can be cumbersome working this way, for example it's not as easy as combing some hair, but it still does allow full control and for me personally, makes things easier to visualise than using the Strand Based Hair Editor.
They each have their positives and negatives really.
@nemesis10
I dread creating a full hairstyle with it but that's a perfect example use case. In a close-up portrait as another example, you would only need to create what is seen.
@Wendy
Definitely worth wishlisting, although it's one of those products that quickly eats into productivity due to the involvement required in getting it how you want it. You seem to fly through creations at speed, so in that respect you might not like it. But other than that, it's a great product to have!
@WriteIdea
Yup!
Please post your results, @3DIO
I think it is a good product, but its high price prevents being used widely.
There are some full hairstyles included with the product so it is a bargain for those alone and they are editable. The additional parts can be used with the included hair or just for hair peeking out like I illustrated.
@Artini
Haven't done anything with it yet, but I reckon it's going to come in very handy many times over the coming years.
@nemesis10
True, and now you got me wondering how they even saved the presets.
Grabed it for $20.57 with the 40% off coupon and 8 tokens.
lowest i can get it is $24. Plus the $6 buyins. so $31 total. Better than $48 though. To buy now or not to buy now. that is the question.
Use a new DAZ+ item (over $1) for the buyin and the LI Strand Forge Hair will act as the other buyin.; so your buyin cost with the 8 tokens will be minimal