Redistributing Poser Dynamic Hair without the base figure - a solution

[Cliff Bowman]

Please forgive any tardiness in replying or updating for a few days - my day job has exploded again so I'm not able to be as responsive or make progress on this as I would like. My clients do seem, on the whole, to lay in wait and then all have major issues at the same time as I'm trying to do something else!

If I get enough time to do something on the project that makes me smile, I'll do my best to post

Cheers,

Cliff

 

[Cliff Bowman]

Just popping in to report that I'm still alive. Although the weekend is looking full of work I think I'm going to be able to put some more effort into these scripts today (it's about half past one in the afternoon here and I'm finally able to pop my head up over the parapet!).

Cheers,

Cliff

 

[tiggersprings]

Here are some of the current batch of thumbs for the routines. They may be redone if I can make them better.

Got to run - supper is getting cold!

Cheers,

Cliff

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These are so cute!

... So - tiggersprings in particular. Ball is in your court - do folks think that a version of the existing thumbs work on your screen or do we think I need a custom hair prop to make things clearer?

Cheers,

Cliff

Sorry for the delay. I don't have a lot of computer time at once these days. By thumbnails, do you mean the ones in your first post? Or the general 91 x 91 pixels general Poser product thumbnails? The general 91 by 91 thumbs are ok, if the vendor puts thought in how they're rendered...

 

[Cliff Bowman]

Sorry for the delay. I don't have a lot of computer time at once these days. By thumbnails, do you mean the ones in your first post? Or the general 91 x 91 pixels general Poser product thumbnails? The general 91 by 91 thumbs are ok, if the vendor puts thought in how they're rendered...

To be honest - BOTH!

To be clear - many versions of Poser allow you to select the maximum size of those 91 x 91 thumbs. As such, mine have been designed/are being designed at 400 x 400 instead of 91 x 91 (as I'm at work I've been dabbling today and improving these images slightly as well as writing more of the code). To give you an idea of my approach to all of this project, I did not like the way the hair appeared to not be attached to the head beside the ears on earlier renditions of the thumbnails/icons (because the "Hair Style" had been thrown together too quickly and did not covert the back of his head, or even behind the ears).

I've also been simplifying the name to make each clearer - in a folder full of "Hair" items you don't REALLY need an icon labelled "HairLength+". Simply "Length+" would do, I feel.

So, with Poser being able to use larger than 91 x 91 thumbs, here's an example showing todays thumbs as large as I can get Poser to display them.

And don't worry about speed of replies - I vanish for days at a time when I've got too much real-world work to do (though I am TRYING not to do that too often right now, when I can help it).

Cheers,

Cliff

 

[Cliff Bowman]

I'm still open to suggestions on the thumbs, and I'm already considering a nice big red "X" above the bald head for extra clarity. All of the displayed features...

... are written and working except for "CoverInFur" which is still fermenting in my head (OK, you got me, I haven't had time to type it up and test it yet). The feature list is not fixed yet either - I'm STRONGLY considering making these triplets instead of doubles (+/number/- instead of +/-). It's just the time to type it in and then correct the typos (and copy/paste and then remember to change ALL of the right words).

There will be quite a bit of effort, I suspect, in producing a .PDF manual to document not only the way it works out of the box, but how to tweak it and how to use it as a Merchant Resource (E.G. I doubt the Lion's Mane should load using the default icon ).

Cheers,

Cliff

PS I'm also pondering how to help identify the pairs/triplets of functions. Possibly changing the background colour (so "Tip Width" features would be on a different background colour to "Verts" and "RootWidth" and "SaveDynHair") or whether to use coloured borders - like picture frames - to likewise groups different functions together.

 

[tiggersprings]

I think I'd be ok with what's shown. Here's a full-size screenshot of what my "default" setup for Poser Pro 2014 is (saved with UI dots). I cropped the Windows bar out, but that's all...

 

[Cliff Bowman]

Yeah, looks to me like these should be clear enough for you. Until I press "GO!" absolutely everything is up for discussion. for example, just now I decided to rename the Load, Save, and Cover items to group them at the top of the list.

The whole idea is to be as easy to use as possible. For ME, if no-one else.

Cheers,

Cliff

PS and I mean EVERYTHING! I've chosen the hair features that I feel would be most useful and excluded any that I think would dilute these features too much - but if you really feel "Clumpiness" or some other dynamic hair feature would be useful, let me know and I'll consider it. Right now I need to consider supper, and I'd love to work on the "CoverInHair" routine.

 

[Tiny]

Wow Cliff!! This looks amazing. This could help me loads for the billions of furry projects waiting on my todo list. Adding all the hair groups on furred animals is a very tedious task. If the groups can be placed with a button click on specific texture groups it would be great. Doing the fine tweaking and settings in the hair room are the fun parts even if it takes ages.
Will follow this thread now most carefully.

 

[Nod]

You should ALWAYS consider the feelings of others before you add or remove clothing of any sort. The first time I remember using Poser's dynamic hair was back when Poser 5 was released. Still one of my favourite hair renders

Cheers,

Cliff

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Now that picture is a blast from the past.

 

[Cliff Bowman]

Now that picture is a blast from the past.

Yo Nod! Long time

Yeah - blast from the past and I'm still no better at hair LOL

Cheers,

Cliff

 

[Cliff Bowman]

Wow Cliff!! This looks amazing. This could help me loads for the billions of furry projects waiting on my todo list. Adding all the hair groups on furred animals is a very tedious task. If the groups can be placed with a button click on specific texture groups it would be great. Doing the fine tweaking and settings in the hair room are the fun parts even if it takes ages.
Will follow this thread now most carefully.

Hi Tiny,

I don't know if you remember me mentioning this as an unfinished project over on the... Smith Micro Forum was it? It's come on a long way from that point. Back then it didn't address hair styling or materials at all. Coating figures by material zone is the routine I am on 'now'/'next' - my biggest issue being a fairly punishing day job schedule.

Chris, Lisa, and Laurie being generous with giving me access to the beta Lion as inspiration and test material, along with some wonderfully positive atmosphere, explain the progress made recently. Without the Lion the TrueHair project would almost certainly be stuck in 2008 and I would likely be working on something else.

I can't post anything new right now because I haven't even turned on my PC since my last update (due to the day job). Monday is looking busy too, but this IS currently my highest Poserverse priority.
Hang in there with me, if you can - I'm looking forward to doing a public "workflow" video SOON

Cheers,

Cliff

 

[Cliff Bowman]

I didn't address this publicly (which isn't like me) so here goes:

Adding all the hair groups on furred animals is a very tedious task. If the groups can be placed with a button click on specific texture groups it would be great.

Computers are good at tedious, repetitive tasks. So, to me, they should do the tedious repetitive things for us and let us get on with the more interesting and creative stuff. I hope these tools will remove a huge chunk of the drudgery out of doing hair "The Poser Way", by doing things across the whole figure instead of one group (or body part, or actor) at a time.

I'm hoping to put some work into this routine today (fingers crossed, and hoping my clients don't need me much today).

Doing the fine tweaking and settings in the hair room are the fun parts even if it takes ages.

It does, it's true, but it's the fun part that I can't automate. We'll still need us a good measure of "Tiny" - this should just make you more productive / give you an easier life. Isn't that what computers are meant to do? Give humans easier lives? Some people forget that, sometimes.

Cheers,

Cliff

PS this message brought to you via the Department for Procrastination, who appear to be operating on overtime today.

PPS it's nearly half 10 in the morning here and I'm starting to feel that I might actually get some time to work on this... no (incoming) customer calls yet today (only responses made to existing issues).

 

[Tiny]

- this should just make you more productive / give you an easier life. Isn't that what computers are meant to do? Give humans easier lives? Some people forget that, sometimes.

Easier life is just what I need and this gadget of yours will be a great tool for that.

 

[Cliff Bowman]

OK. Right. Well.

I've just uploaded a video of:

which shows some basic workflow of the first few controls in the TrueHair library.

Please bear in mind this is not meant to REPLACE the Hair Room, but it is intended to make certain laborious aspects of using the Hair Room in a full-on project easier. It's meant to ease you in to using the Hair Room by taming the most boring bits. In the video I show covering a figure in hair/fur, saving hair, deleting hair, reloading the hair and spreading one material across all the hair on the body.

This is all working, right now. But there's STILL a lot to do - tidying up some code, tidying up comments, improving error checking, perhaps some code optimisation here or there, make it all work seamlessly for Poser 9 and up, beta testing it once all that is done... and I still haven't decided whether to add a third version of most of the controls which prompt for user input. I really quite like that at present these controls are - most of the time at least - as easy to use as applying a pose. that was the idea, of course, so it's perhaops not surprising that I am tempted not to make the project any larger than it has to me. Anyone got any comments?

Not to mention writing the documentation, and producing some promo stuff for it before I can even try submitting it to HiveWire!

I am almost as bad a vendor as I am a customer. I haven't properly looked at what resolution promos I need to produce, or anything really. Need to get my, er, self in gear and do those things I guess. But making the

 

[Tiny]

Brilliant! Is there a density setting too or do you adjust that in the hair room?

 

[Cliff Bowman]

The Density+ and Density- settings go a long way to helping there, but you may well need the Hair Room for specific groups.

RootWidth+ and RootWidth- work pretty well IMO, as do TipWidth+ and TipWidth- and Verts+ and Verts-.

Anything else definitely requires a visit to the Hair Room.

Cheers,

Cliff

 

[eclark1894]

Hey, Cliff, have you tried using the hair in Bullet Physics yet? I'm not looking for anything more stylish than the hair draping.

 

[Cliff Bowman]

Hey, Cliff, have you tried using the hair in Bullet Physics yet? I'm not looking for anything more stylish than the hair draping.

Only very briefly, for testing purposes. I can't find those values available to save so while I save the "Poser Legacy" solver variables I don't save (or load) the Bullet Physics values.

Cheers,

Cliff

 

[Tiny]

The Density+ and Density- settings go a long way to helping there, but you may well need the Hair Room for specific groups.

RootWidth+ and RootWidth- work pretty well IMO, as do TipWidth+ and TipWidth- and Verts+ and Verts-.

Anything else definitely requires a visit to the Hair Room.

Sounds great.

Hey, Cliff, have you tried using the hair in Bullet Physics yet? I'm not looking for anything more stylish than the hair draping.

If you mean hair draping along the character that is what the dynamic hair will do when you run "calculate dynamics - hair".
---- edit ----
I think I misunderstood you. Sorry.

 

[Cliff Bowman]

If you mean hair draping along the character that is what the dynamic hair will do when you run "calculate dynamics - hair".
---- edit ----
I think I misunderstood you. Sorry.

Nope, you're right - but as of Poser 11 there's now 2 different "solvers" for draping dynamic hair - "Legacy" and "Bullet Physics". Both work, but my scripts can't do anything with the Bullet Physics draping. They can, however, save the Legacy draping settings.

Cheers,

Cliff

PS and here's a Mil Cat with the Length- a few times and the Density+ a few times.