Hair and wind and Dynamic Hair and...and...

Griffin Avid

I was going to write a post about hair and how people are doing 'the wind blowing stuffs' effect.

Then I found DYNAMIC HAIR. And that led me to Carerra...which I probably won't be looking into. Daz is enough as it is.

So....

A) What is everyone doing for WIND effects blowing through their scenes if animating or doing gusts for stills? I intend to use Photoshop and/or After Effects for wind effects..

B) Has anyone discussed, considered putting bones in hair? I was thinking beyond the obvious ponytail, would it be possible to make several gross joint and let us animate hair? I have 1 set of hair with a blown option:

http://www.daz3d.com/darcy-hair-for-genesis-3-female-s

If that was a morph, and you were dialing between the two, that would count a long way towards a 'native Daz dynamic hair' alternative.

Even if it was big tufts of hair moving around, I could live with that.

Any ideas?

 

There's this, which is real hair modeling.....

http://www.daz3d.com/garibaldi-express-hair-system-for-daz-studio

And this...

Optitex

http://www.daz3d.com/optitex

Which is supposed to have hair, but I can't find it.

nicstt

I use VWD, it takes work, but can really good results.

The only option I found for hair with Optitex worked very poorly. I didn't bother trying to find out if it was something I was doing wrong. I now rarely use Optitex, but it is great for those getting started as there are a few freebies available.

spearcarrier

I love Optitex over VWD. VWD is too limited. It does some great things! I'm not knocking it - well, for me it crashes constantly so can only do one thing. I can't figure out why, so that is that.

With Optitex, now that I've gotten to learn it a lot better, I'm realizing it's a very very powerful plugin. The ability to animate more than one object at a time and have it collide with more than one object at a time are definite plusses. Not to mention I've been working on making my own dynamic hair. It's time consuming and you have to know how to model somewhat, but it's possible.

A: The wind option is in the full, paid for version of the optitex plugin. I love it, and it's why I bought it. The other things - greater control over fabric density, etc, were plusses I wasn't aware of yet.

B. Bones in hair does happen. For me, I actually prefer the hair props with bones in them, but I can't get modellers to listen to reason. :-P But I also work primarily with toon style products with animation in mind, and most folks don't understand the reasoning for it. Morphs are okay, but man I hate depending on them when dealing with say a braid.

So for product suggestions - being as this is what this area is for so I'm going to attempt to stick to topic here - I think it would be nice if they'd add a couple of features to the Optitex plugin. This would make dynamic hair more of a possibility.

1. The friction control is nice and does freeze some things, but it would be nice to be able to set a certain part of a prop to "don't go anywhere no matter what. You heard me." Then you'd set the hair cap on a hair prop to stay put and it would stay on the model's head. I'm honestly confused why this one particular feature doesn't exist, considering all of the actual clothing bits out there we have that we try to make stay put: broaches, etc. Not to mention the increase in draping/realism power! C'mon DAZ folks. You've went insane with the realism lately. Think of the attention you'd get!

2. Being able to convert your own item without having to buy a script or plugin. Maybe this is very problematic for the DAZ folks that they haven't added this one little thing into the program yet.... maybe Poser has the patent on it or something. Who knows. But to be able to convert a skirt I can't otherwise find a dynamic version for would be nice. This especially goes for certain uniforms...and hair.

3. To be able to tell an object "no man left behind". So if you converted over an object that's made of separate bits (sleeves, then bodice, etc.) that aren't welded together (which is why dynamic clothes don't fall apart) and you set the object to "welded" the program could treat it as if it were welded and NOT allow the parts to fall from each other. While thinking of this option, I realize it's a super tall order because welded areas depend on vertices and the program might very well just freez eobjects and then they wouldn't be dynamic anymore. Okay, so strike that. I'm dreaming. But it would be nice. 

3 continued. In poser if I wanted certain areas to stay put, I'd select the vertices manually and make them their own little group. I don't kow if other programs offer that, but being able to do that in DAZ sure would be nice. I only have Poser for the clothing converstion bit, see. I do prefer to work with DAZ and have been finding all sorts of work arounds to DAZs late library antics that frustrate me to h*** and back to the point I rarely buy DAZ stuff anymore simply because I'd simply like to *find* it my way. MY WAY. But that's a rant for another day.

IsaacNewton

Spearcarrier, by the Optitex plugin do you mean "Dynamic Clothing Control"? Does this work on hair too? If it does work on hair, does it work on all Hair items? ( I could not see any Optitex compatible Hair items in the DAZ3d shop.)

Odaa

There's one available here as part of a Egyptian V4 outfit: http://www.daz3d.com/ds-dynamic-egyptian-for-v4

There were two more made that were only released through Martin's personal store, which (last time I checked) you can still find online but can't do anything with except download the freebies. There were more than "a few" of those-I think there were/are like 15 pages of freebies with like 9+ freebies per page.  

The dynamic hairstyles were both shoulder length feminine things, and they just didn't look that convincing from some angles. Here's a texture addon I did for one of the two "lost" hairstyles: http://www.sharecg.com/v/50972/gallery/11/Poser/Wavy-Dynamic-Stephanie

The picture will give you some idea of what worked and what didn't with the "lost" dynamic hairs.

The Egyptian one probably holds up better than the other two did, just because the hair ornaments make the flatness and the way the dynamic strands moved more plausible. 

Optitex is a company that makes simulation software primarily for the clothing industry and licensed a version of their simulation tools for integration with DS. The "clothing maker" version of their software is extremely expensive (because it's targetted to the professional market) and Optitex is not comfortable with people making third party clothing compatible with the Optitex DS plugin, perhaps because in their minds it devalues their clothing maker software. 

Martin (known on the forums as MartinForOptitex) is a clothing designer based in Israel who owned Optitex's clothing maker software for his day job, got interested in 3D art, and teamed up with various PAs to make most or all of the Daz dynamics available (the co-producing PAs often worked on textures, helper props and poses, etc). It was not a huge money-spinner for him and the other PAs, IIRC, and I know he went through a period of not great health and then became an instructor on how to use the Optitex clothing maker software, giving classes, so those factors are why you don't see alot of new Daz dynamics. The thing is, the existing dynamics serve a wide variety of purposes, and you can get the dynamics to play nicely with newer figures with a modest amount of effort (basically scaling the newer figures and repositioning their arms so that they fit inside the T-posed dynamics, and then doing an animated drape).

My basic rules for dealing with Optitex dynamics (note: these involve the full version of the plugin):

-if you have the collision set right, and it tries to fall off the figure, stick a meter-square plane with 50+ divisions under your figure, hide it, and add it to the list of things the clothing collides with. Someone taught me how to do this when I was first mucking about with DS4 in 2014 and it helped alot.

-if the clothing twirls around too much when doing an animated drape and gets tangled, either increase the weight of the fabric pieces or increase the gravity.

-if the fabric crumples too much when draping, try turning off self collision, and increasing internal pressure slightly, or adjust the bend and shear resistance settings.

-if there seems to be more fabric than necessary (like when you have a short skinny character inside a voluminous outfit) or the fabric stretches and sags way more than you want, use the Shrink X and Shrink Y dials.

IsaacNewton

I'm still not certain if the OptiTex plugin being spoken of is "Dynamic Clothing Control" by Optitex, available at DAZ3d shop? I don't see any full versus partial version of "Dynamic Clothing Control", so perhaps they are not the same. If not then what is the full name of the OptiTex plugin and where is it available?

Odaa, you seem to be suggesting that the large majority of dynamic clothing for DAZ was made by one person (with help from other PAs) who, for various reasons, is no longer producing dynamic clothing for DAZ, or at least not as prolifically. Is that correct?

If dynamic clothing is no longer being made (or very little) by PAs, then wouldn't it be a good idea for DAZ to get someone in-house to make some? Or maybe specifically commission some clothing items from a PA who already owns Optitex software.

As it stands at the moment the market in dynamic clothing at the DAZ3d shop seems very limited if not dead.

 

Odaa

http://www.daz3d.com/dynamic-clothing-control

That is the full version of the Optitex Dynamic Clothing Control. The basic one, without many of the more useful tools, is included w/ DS, I believe.

The Optitex clothing maker was so expensive that I believe there was only ever the one guy who owned it and was interested in making stuff for Daz.

As far as "limited" goes, take a look at what's available here, and keep in mind what I said about dynamics working on different figures: http://www.daz3d.com/optitex

There's a solid basic selection of fantasy stuff and everyday stuff, with some ethnic wear and fancier women's wear. The early Daz Originals had textures comissioned from Arien, while the ones from Martin on his own with no collaborators tended to have simple textures and you were encouraged to apply shaders as needed. My own impression was a lot of the stuff we wanted for dynamics, including more complex hair styles and puffy hoopskirts were simply not what the Optitex clothing maker was designed for, and although Martin and his collaborators tried to make some of those ideas work, the end results weren't things they were satisfied with, and so they didn't make them available.

IsaacNewton

Thanks for the clarification, Odaa.

It does seem strange that DAZ3d would chose a system for dynamic clothing that so few people (read PAs) could afford to buy the software to make the dynamic clothing items.

Does anyone know where DAZ is going with dynamic clothing in the future? I assume it will continue to support the Optitex system in DS at the least for those who have bought Optitex based dynamic clothes at the DAZ shop. However, what of the future? Is DAZ3d going to keep the Optitex system as it's only dynamic clothing system? Or are they going to add support to DS for a new more widely useful system? Does anyone know?

Richard Haseltine

Most of the time PAs design the clothes and then they are created in the full OptiTex suite by a former Optitex employee. The PAs then make textures.

Daz doesn't generally announce future plans, all I can suggest is periodically checking the change log to see if there are any relevant chnages, and erading new features in Public beta threads. Of course carrying on as heretofore will not figure in those.

nelsonsmith

There are hairs that have wind morphs and those that don't (lots of them don't)  For me I've found that I tend to not do renders that have strong wind, or I rely on the few hairs I have that have wind morphs on them, which I have to continually apply then delete until I find one that works.

Free Spirit Hair has continued to be a go to for me since it has lots of morphs, and tends to look very realistic in renders.