Conforming Eyebrows
Vandalay
Posts: 17
Hi, I've been using DAZ Studio and Carrara for about 6 months now. There have been many occasions where deapair has led me to the brink of asking for help on here! But I have soldiered on with trial and error and tutorials. I now just about know my way around the basics of the softwares, but this has got me flummoxed.
I'm inclined to think this is something that just doesn't work in Carrara - but take DAZ studio and a figure with conforming eyebrows (Hitomi, Hiro, Alfred for M6), everything works fine in terms of the brows following facial expressions. But I can't get this feature to work in Carrara (8.5, Mac). The eyebrows will fit to the figure head shape and follows any change in that regard, but the brows don't move in tandem with the expressions.
I'm not the most savvy with the inner workings of DAZ products, but I can see in the modelling room (animation mode) that the brows have morph targets - that they CAN (?) move, just that they don't. Not with the caharacter's expressions and not of their own accord — there are no sliders in the assemble room to reflect these apparent morph capabilities.
Would love to get some input on this?!
Thanks!
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Hi... I am not familiar with Alfred, but found the following notes on the product page, unfortunately the link that is noted as HERE below is dead. If you go to the parameters for his head... are the Carrara sliders already set for Alfred PLUS you can check the other face morphs, like brows up, down, etc. If they are pre-haired, it might be related to Carrara. Sorry I can't be helpful... maybe someone will know the answer.
ETA: Use the search tab for forums at top and put in Alfred HD. Some interesting posts came up about the morphs from Poser users.
http://www.daz3d.com/fw-alfred-hd-for-michael-6
Details
Alfred is a high quality character for Michael 6 for use in DAZ Studio 4.6 and up and Poser 9 and up.
The head and body are uniquely custom sculpted in Zbrush, and the skin was created using high quality photo references for depth and detail. There are custom nipples that will apply when the main morph dials are applied.
Alfred's facial hair: eyebrows, mustache, and beard figures automatically follow his facial morphs and expressions.They are all mesh based and do not use transparency.Full 3Delight, Iray, and Poser support is offered with this product but keep in mind the facial hair will take a long time to load in Poser and needs a bit of adjustment morph dialing.See the read-me for tips and tricks, you can find it HERE
Please Note: While Alfred was designed with DAZ Studio 4.8 in mind, and its amazing Iray render engine, He will also work and look great using the 3Delight render engine as well as Poser!
I went and got Alfred after I failed with Hiro and Hitomi... the principle is the same, and as your quotation describes - in all instances you load the caharacter and the brows separatedly.
In DAZ Studio, all sets of conforimg eyebrows do what you want and expect once laoded. In Carrara however they load okay but won't morph with expressions as they do in DAZ.
Curiously, my end game was to use the conforming eyebrow figure as a grow region for hair, because my attempts at creating eyebrow grow regions in Carrara (using Genesis) did not cut the mustard. I think I've gotta go back to that drawing board, and maybe create eyebrow shapes using trans maps (geometrical area selection is too "blocky", if you get me), just that I'myet to get my head around the rubrics of Crarra shading..
What would you advise Silene, as one who has achived sucess growing her own eyebrows in Carrara???
Hahaha...don't think I deserve that upvote, LOL... I have 'some' eyebrow success, but it's hit or miss. When you are in the hair room, I use the 2D magnifiying tool to get my target area big enough to work with comfortably. Then, reduce your brush/tool thingy to as small as a polygon in the brow area. Then, fill in more polys than you need. Once done and you tame down the hair length, size and how many hairs, put in your own following the eyebrow. I usually use about 5. Having one at the very end is important. Then tilt the head so you can lay the guides down flat-ish in the direction brow hair grows against the skin. In second to last image I still had to pull that end guide down to skin surface.
Now you still have too bushy an effect, you need to choose the tool that allows you to erase around the edges to soften them, the one with the minus sign. If you over trim/smooth, just add back with the plus sign one. Tool is next to the polygon painting tool.
On this figure I left a hair count higher, and changed to thin for density (although my screenshot still says medium). You can have less hair count and use medium. Depends on the effect which is an experiement to me.
In shader room I remove highlight and shine. Also adjust root and top colour. Thickness on length should be varied as well, eg 80/20 roor/tip, but that will depend upon whether you chose thin or medium, etc. And in the assembly room, I un-tick receive and casts shadows as well.
See attached for some quickie steps... I have not done this in a while so am not up to speed... but maybe it will help some. There are so many ways to do this, that there is no one correct way. And you might find an experiment gives a better reult, so do share!
Oh, and I did have Alfred, but no expressions, just the HD head. Will have to have a play around with him... nice face!
Oh that's interesting to hear what your procedure was - clearly you managed to get the best out of it, cos I had tried these steps and gave up thinking there had to be a better way.
I am encouraged to have another go, knowing I might get some joy.
Although still hoping there is something dumb I am missing re: conforming eyebrow prop/figures in Carrara, which would let me use Hiro brows as I had intended...
At this time (and I have no idea why - I just remember this) Geo-Graft items do not work properly (at all?) in Carrara 8.5 - it's on e of those "known issues" that are listed.
I have a feeling that those parts are Geo-Grafts. :/
Oh, I thought that was a G3 problem... it's in G2 as well? I have been away so long... eeek. Sorry if I gave bum advice.
Silene
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/97051/genesis-3-and-hd-morphs-in-carrara-8-5
Thanks Dartanbeck, that pretty much of confirms my suspicion. I hadn't found that listed as a known issue, but then it can be hard getting Carrara info at times. When I was figuring out best practice for beards a while ago, I thought I was clever using "Unshaven for Men" (think that was it) cos it did exactly what I wanted in DS.
But Carrara kept Crashing when I used it. I persisted for ages trying to figure out why - until I found a long forgotten forum post buried somewhere announcing that, basically, "Unshaven for Men" just doesn't work in Carrara. :D
It looks like I've got to get to grips with the hair tool, focusing on the question of whether/how you can use trans maps to create more pleasing facial hair region shapes. I figure there's got to be a way to make that work (ie a density map) rather han the density paint tool. The quest continues. :)
Thanks guys!
Hmmmm... it took FOREVER to find this, but this post says (on line 17 under New in Carrara) that geo graft has been implemented... is it still a broken think or not? Never tried Geo Grafting because I thought it didn't work... anyone?
Did you have a link to post... or did the forum eat it LOL!
Colin, if you use photoshop, there is an eyebrow brush creation tool... not perfect, but I used it for filling in when doing my Neanderthal brows. I use Crazy Bump to make bumps, etc. There are others out there, but this was easy to download.
http://www.obsidiandawn.com/eyebrows-photoshop-gimp-brushes
Yeah ned the link Dart! Never heard of "Geo Grafting" before.
Thanks Silene, although I definitely want to use Carrara hair rather than image map hair, as it were, for facial hair.
It's just I'd like to finesse the blocky shape of the hair grow, ideally this can be done with a simple image map which is what I'm looking into now. It's encouraging to tknow the desnity paint tools could do the job, I just find them a bit clunky is all and very prone to crashing when I'm messing with those tools!
Good luck with it.... there's a lot of wiggle room for hair I have learned. Someone did a great pdf of using hair some time back. I will try to find it, maybe it was in Carrara Cafe. Dart might recall. But do try using that MINUS TOOL to smooth your edges... it works quite well.
The technique makes a lot more sense to me now thanks Silene, by virtue of making the original region a fair bit larger than I had in the first place - so painting away desnity with a decent feather allows for the creation of a nice shape, you're absolutely right.
I reckon I can make do with the results this is yielding, although the Geo Grafting failure is a real shame. Take the Hiro Brows for instance - if those did work in Carrara, you could grow eyebrow hair on them, and hey presto you'd have a set of "real hair" brows with its own (limited) different eyebrow shape choices AND more dynamism in terms of the way the brows animate/morph for different posed expressions.
I'll cry me a river.
I'm not familiar with the products you mentioned, but you can grow Carrara's dynamic hair on a face euther by painting the polygons where you want the hair, or by using a texture map. I've done beards and moustaches that way with very realistic results. Just a thought!
Hi PHil, I've not tried doing the hair on a texture map yet... just on the mesh in the hair room. Is there a tut for that LOL? I haven't dived into your Infinite Skills for a year now...not good! xx Silene
Hi Phil, your Infinite Skills tutorial package has been one of my guiding lights. :)
Yes, I have got the hang of painting hair grow regions and growing facial hair. My point with the conforming eyebrow products (Hiro/Hitomi's are even called "Anime Brows") is that they are kind of like props, with their own geometry and morphs, but which follow expression morphs of the parent figure in Daz (for heigtened effect) - but not Carrara.
But I'm glad you mentioned texture maps - my experiments with loading texture maps in the hair desity and hair length shader channels sort of worked (I won't go into that right now) - but you indicate that it is possible use a texture map as a grow region?? Can you elaborate? xx
I suspect that the product brows you are talking about are using geograft, which is not supported by Carrara (as has been mentioned).
I double checked the Carrara hair grow thing, and you are right, you can't directly use a map as a grow region, but by using a map as a density map, you can control where the hair grows, and optionally how long or how thick it is - I have attached an example image where you can see the mainly black grid object has a white "S" drawn onto it and using that as a density map, with black = no hair and white = full density. You could use this approach to draw eyebrows or other hair features onto a model.
P.S. You don't have to use the same map for everything, and you can use maps to control virtually anything on the hair, which gives a massive amount of flexibility.
Looks interesting, Phil! Cheers
Silene
ETA: I use hair for grass on ground planes, in rock crevices etc.
what about the mesh hair the, was either garibaldi or lamh, exports? does it crash rara?
i been waiting on a sale to get the real hairy sets, wanted it to use in cararra
You are better off using Carrara's own hair system for strand based hair. The issue with exporting from Garibaldi, LAMH or indeed any strand based hair system is that the meshes produced are enormous. Say you have 50,000 individual hairs, each with 20 segments and each segment has a triangular cross section - that's 3 million polygons! That probably wouldn't crash Carrara but it would be slow and almost impossible to edit. Carrara has a wonderful built-in hair system and it is well worth spending a little time getting to know it. It is one of the things I focussed on when I got Carrara and I ended up producing a number of Carrara hairs for sale.
Carrara Hair is not hard to get to understand and there have been some really good threads about it in the past.
you made male body hair like the real hairy? https://www.daz3d.com/real-hairy-for-genesis
looked at your vendor page.
i haz this http://www.daz3d.com/carrara-realistic-seas-2
totally forgot it for the nautical challenge doh >.<
I've not done a hairy male body but it would not be too difficult.
Carrara hair is superior to any other hair solution I've seen so far for any software likely to be used by people using Daz/Poser content (short of spending gigantic amounts for hyper-pro level software like 3ds, C4D, Maya, Houdini, etc, and if you were doing that you wouldn't be using Daz figures anyway). Very easy to make your own version of 'real hairy', on any figure/character you want. I know most of the vids I did were on long hair swaying in the wind and moving, but body hair follows the same principles, doesn't really even need to be animated or styled (just placed, and maybe combed a little bit).