Share Your Efforts and Experiences with the new Strand-Base Hair in DS

[Joe Pingleton]

Joe Pingleton Thank you for sharing this is so generous of you!

Everything loads fine and seems to render fine (I have an older computer so it takes time). Looks great!

The thing that come to my mind to improve it is : for the cat head work on the direction the hair should go (to increase realism). For example on cats the hair goes from nose to forehead and on forehead up in a vertical way ; on the cheeks it goes in a horizontal way from right to left on the left side and from left to right on the right side .... Hope it makes sens

Thank you for your feedback, There are tons of problems with my SBH preset. My initial experiments with SBH were to try and do everything without combing the fur to get a solid base to work from. Since DAZ has decided to only allow PAs to create dForce SBH, I decided to stop wasting my time learning DAZ SBH. I posted this preset to help people learn from the mistakes I have made. I am sure someone who actually knows what they are doing will create something much better for Hivewire cat.

 

[xmasrose]

Sad because you made the best looking animal fur with strand hair so far!

 

[Joe Pingleton]

Thank you for your kind words of encouragement. I got much better results when I started to mimic how fur is actually structured and was concerned that it was too complicated for people to actually use.

 

[Rae134]

Most short haired animals won't need dForce, for example, they horse coat would be fine, it would just be long hair like the main and tail (and maybe the fetlocks) that would benefit from dForced hair.

 

[L'Adair]

I've been working on a short hair style for G8M. Instead of using the figure, though, I'm using a scalp, (hair cap,) from one of RedzStudio's hairs. I think all of her fiber mesh hairs have the hair strands parented to the scalp, so any one of those should work. I chose Retro Hair because it showed up first.

One of the limitations of the SBH editor, imo, is it uses Material zones for the density maps. We can create Selection Sets for styling, in the editor. But it would be nice to be able to create Selection Sets for the object, before opening the editor, and then be able to use those for painting/modifying the density. That would allow an object like the hair cap to have one material zone, and still be able to support multiple density maps. (For example, one could create a Selection Set for the hairline, one for the back/neckline, one for the temple/sideburns, and so on.)

Anyway, to get multiple hair sets, I duplicated the first SBH object and then modified it in the editor to be a lot less dense and messier.

Still have a long way to go before I'm happy with it, but here are the latest images:

 

[Joe Pingleton]

I've been working on a short hair style for G8M. Instead of using the figure, though, I'm using a scalp, (hair cap,) from one of RedzStudio's hairs. I think all of her fiber mesh hairs have the hair strands parented to the scalp, so any one of those should work. I chose Retro Hair because it showed up first.

One of the limitations of the SBH editor, imo, is it uses Material zones for the density maps. We can create Selection Sets for styling, in the editor. But it would be nice to be able to create Selection Sets for the object, before opening the editor, and then be able to use those for painting/modifying the density. That would allow an object like the hair cap to have one material zone, and still be able to support multiple density maps. (For example, one could create a Selection Set for the hairline, one for the back/neckline, one for the temple/sideburns, and so on.)

Anyway, to get multiple hair sets, I duplicated the first SBH object and then modified it in the editor to be a lot less dense and messier.

Still have a long way to go before I'm happy with it, but here are the latest images:

View attachment 47796 View attachment 47797 View attachment 47798

Amazing work

 

[Joe Pingleton]

I posted all my SBH presets at Strand Based Hair Freebies so others can learn from my mistakes.

 

[L'Adair]

One of the limitations of SBH, (inherent in both Garibaldi Express and LAMH as well, I believe,) is it works with the material zones. If the object you want to create the sbh on has only one material zone, you need to break it up into your own material zones, or use more than one SBH object.

Ultrascatter Pro will allow you to select a "Selection Set" of the object to constrain the scatter to an area, without the need to create a separate material zone. (Not to be confused with the Selection Sets the SBH Editor allows us to create.) I think SBH would really benefit from implementing something like that. I'd also like to see "layers" where we can use the same zone more than once, without having to create a new copy of the strand-based hair.

That said, I've been working on a more realistic hairline for my first human hair, shown a couple posts back. To get the look I wanted, I ended up duplicating the original several times, and one of the modified duplicates once. There are a total of 5 copies of strand-based hair to get this look. (Still a work in progress. Those sideburns…! shiver.)

This is a close up, so you can see the hairline and part.

 

[Rae134]

L'Adair, I wonder if that's why I've seen people create human hair on a hair cap? Would that be easier than creating mat zones (I've never done either so I don't know )

 

[Dakorillon (IMArts)]

Well, as a cosmetologist, I HAVE seen sideburns like that. But, it's always been on Asian, Mexican or American Indian males (usually younger ones) and you have to learn how to cut them to NOT stand up like that. It has to do with their growth patterns, which tends to have a more perpendicular to the follicle growth pattern.

But, the the hair? Bravo! Excellent work.

The one thing I've noticed about ALL the SBH I've seen and much of the fiber mesh hair (and some polygonal hair) is the strands are all too big. It is thick, coarse hair. Like overly processed hair. Not softer, smoother hair. And while there are some people that do really have that coarse and stiff of hair, it's more like beard hair or It's more like fur, really. So is the LAMH, which is why they all work well for fur. I haven't played with any of those yet, other than once or twice, so I have no answers. But, it is something that bothers me about the SBH and a number of other hairs. And why there are many that I just won't buy.

 

[L'Adair]

L'Adair, I wonder if that's why I've seen people create human hair on a hair cap? Would that be easier than creating mat zones (I've never done either so I don't know )

I did use a cap for this hair. I've seen people create hair on the figure, but it can't be moved from one figure to another. With a cap, that's not an issue. This cap was for G8 males. Changing the Scene Identification allows it to also work on G3 without using autofit.

I've never tried to make fiber mesh hair with any modeler. I did try with LAMH, years ago, when I first bought it. But I didn't have any success. Anyway, I don't know how fiber mesh hair is created, styled, etc. Regardless of the creation method, a cap can be made for a specific figure gender/generation, and then the resulting hair can be applied to all of the gender/generation, with varying results.

Well, as a cosmetologist, I HAVE seen sideburns like that. But, it's always been on Asian, Mexican or American Indian males (usually younger ones) and you have to learn how to cut them to NOT stand up like that. It has to do with their growth patterns, which tends to have a more perpendicular to the follicle growth pattern.

But, the the hair? Bravo! Excellent work.

The one thing I've noticed about ALL the SBH I've seen and much of the fiber mesh hair (and some polygonal hair) is the strands are all too big. It is thick, coarse hair. Like overly processed hair. Not softer, smoother hair. And while there are some people that do really have that coarse and stiff of hair, it's more like beard hair or It's more like fur, really. So is the LAMH, which is why they all work well for fur. I haven't played with any of those yet, other than once or twice, so I have no answers. But, it is something that bothers me about the SBH and a number of other hairs. And why there are many that I just won't buy.

Thank you.

As I said, the sideburns need work. The original plan was to create a basic style I could then modify to get other styles. I didn't plan on doing much with the sideburns until I was doing a derivative style. But they are being a real headache, too sparse from one direction and too full from another.

I've learned a lot about how the editor works and there are things I would do differently now. I have considered just setting it aside and starting over. Whether I ever use it or not, it's been a valuable learning experience.

I agree about how coarse fiber mesh and SBH hair always looks. I think both are capable of creating hair as fine as typical human hair, but to make it look good would be so dense, our computers couldn't handle it. (I was changing the root and apparently typed in an extra ".". It reverted to 0.00 but I didn't notice. When I rendered, the hair disappeared about half-way to the scalp.)

 

[Pendraia]

Thanks Joe for sharing!

One of the limitations of the SBH editor, imo, is it uses Material zones for the density maps. We can create Selection Sets for styling, in the editor. But it would be nice to be able to create Selection Sets for the object, before opening the editor, and then be able to use those for painting/modifying the density. That would allow an object like the hair cap to have one material zone, and still be able to support multiple density maps. (For example, one could create a Selection Set for the hairline, one for the back/neckline, one for the temple/sideburns, and so on.)

View attachment 47796 View attachment 47797 View attachment 47798

Thanks for sharing your work flow...it looks great. I was wondering could you create a special surface using the materials editor that you could use for this?

I've had a quick play using Dawn...I'm no where near your expertise. Just default lighting and I need to work on the shader.
no skull cap first and with skull cap second

 

[L'Adair]

Thanks Joe for sharing!
Thanks for sharing your work flow...it looks great. I was wondering could you create a special surface using the materials editor that you could use for this?

I've had a quick play using Dawn...I'm no where near your expertise. Just default lighting and I need to work on the shader.
no skull cap first and with skull cap second

Using the Geometry Editor in Daz Studio, you can select polygons and create a new surface from those polygons before opening the object in the Strand Based Editor. It doesn't matter what the object is, but changing material zones on a human figure's head would be problematic with the human figures where the torso, (back of the head,) and face seams meet. This is yet another reason why I prefer skull caps for human hair.

Polygons can only be part of one material zone, but they can be part of multiple DS Selection Sets. If we could create selection sets based on the figure and hair style, then use those sets for growing and styling hair, the SBH would become significantly more useful. (IMO, of course.)

Besides creating new materials zones in DS, you can use the tools in the SBH Editor to select curves and create SBH Selection Sets. Those sets come in handy for styling a part of the hair.

Thanks for the compliment, but my level of expertise is actually pretty low. I think I got lucky with the short hair. It's only my second serious attempt at using the SBH Editor.

 

[Pendraia]

Sounds like you've investigated it thoroughly...and compared to mine your expertise is way higher...I suppose it's all comparative.

 

[Faery_Light]

I absolutely have to learn this if I can get these last five eye close-ups rendered in DS so they look good.
And I have one or two other things to finish so I will not start anything else till I learn this!

 

[Pendraia]

There is a tutorial here Strand-Based Hair Mini-Tutorial

I'm planning on trying to get to it this weekend if I can get a promo done in time.

 

[Faery_Light]

Yep, bookmarked that one.

Last render is nearly done for these promos...Yay!
Now on to other things.
By the weekend I'll ge to play with the STBH,

 

[Pendraia]

My latest with Baby Luna and no skull cap. Density is really high and having the terradome in the image also slowed it right down so I removed it. I do like the effect on this one though.

 

[Faery_Light]

My latest with Baby Luna and no skull cap. Density is really high and having the terradome in the image also slowed it right down so I removed it. I do like the effect on this one though.

That looks great!

 

[Miss B]

That's actually adorable Pen.