Anyone got dForce working on Hair? My list.
IsaacNewton
Posts: 1,300
dForce is supposed to work on any "compatible" mesh (meaning a single mesh, I believe).
I have been trying to use dForce on Hair figures. For the record, I imported the hair alone, applied a dynamic dForce modifier, switched Self Collision off (I have not yet found an item, clothing or hair, where self collision does NOT cause a mesh explosion) and then Simulate.
On my system the following Hair figures appear to work without giving an error or crashing the program:
Saffron Hair
Liv Hair
Amber Hair
Nita Hair
Goldie Locks Hair
Sporty Ponytail Hair
Gully Hair
V5 Elite Ponytail Hair
Yumi Hair
On my system the following Hair figures give errors and/or cause DS to crash:
Rochelle Ponytail Hair
Fayette Hair
Peggytails Hair
Symphony Hair
Ayleen Hair
Miho Hair
Jocelyn Hair
Antonia Hair (all versions)
Skyler Hair
Janna Hair
Radiant Hair
Paradise Hair
Olive Hair
Ourania Hair
Lily Hair
Lada Hair
Sora Hair
FK-Twintails Hair (@#*&!... one of my faves)
I'd be grateful if anyone else would like to add to these lists Hair figures that they have successfully or unsuccessfully used with a dForce dynamic modifier. I hope the list is useful to others too.
If you have successfully used one of the Hair figures where I got an error, please let me know how you did it.
Thanks.
Daz 3D is part of 
Connect
DAZ Productions, Inc.
224 S 200 W, Suite #250
Salt Lake City, UT 84101
Licensing Agreement | Terms of Service | Privacy Policy | EULA
© 2024 Daz Productions Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Comments
Moved to Daz Studio Forum
I just answered on another hair thread- @divamakeup posted in one of the dForce threads about being successful using Jaguar Hair. Sickleyield had success in VWD with the "Pure Hair" models made for Genesis (Jaguar is from that line or around that time frame.) Seems like the older, lower poly models might work. I haven't had any success in dForce or VWD with hair yet, and I even tried one that was designed to work in VWD from Rendo. The instructions were very involved.
Good to know some of them work! I'll continue to fiddle with these as I can. Right now, I'm getting lots of explosions from hair and clothing, and I totally agree about self-collision!
I have added a few more to the lists of "working" and "not working" on my system. I should add another caveat; sometimes when one Hair causes an error, it stops subsequent Hairs working unless I do a DS restart. It's a bit random... well it is still beta. Anyway, check out the first post the list will be growing.
Polycount may be an issue however, I have had problems with some of the older low poly Hairs. Anything with multiple parts not welded together just gives an error or falls apart.
I have the Dragon braid ponytail working if mapped to have the root area not move. So far the braid can't work because there's a big break in the meshes near the bottom. I'm guessing most other tails of the set will have the same issue. It's not polycount. dForce can chew through a LOT of polys (see: Dragon braid ponytail above, lol). In my testing it's:
-triangles/ngons
-too much self-clipping
-too much clipping with the figure (usually hidden in the neck and upper back area)
I'll try and get in more hair testing this week as I work on my dForce Updater for older products.
I had some really weird results testing Perrin Hair. It didn't crash or blow up, but stuck to the figure's back crazily. I may have the settings wrong. I tried simulating the hair without the figure, and got even weirder results, but no blow-ups.
I partially succeeded with Charm Hair.
But as already stated: The outcome depends on how the strands are connected to and distributed over the cap/scalp.
Sometimes dForce is not able to handle the self-collision of the different strands.
And honestly:
Hair is the most interesing use for dForce.
Confirmed working (with relevant map). In a lot of these I turned off "start bones from memorized pose" because it wasn't really needed.
Sporty Ponytail Genesis 3 Female
V5 Elite Ponytail Hair
Jannah Hair (different from Janna no H?)
Radiant Jaguar Hair
Spiderqueen Hair
Goddess Hair
Aspasia Hair
Crash on sim or "Error perparing (sic)" or "Error during sim" error:
Ancient Combat hair (ponytail plus scalp)
Yumi Hair (tried 3 times, don't know why I can't get it to work when it worked for OP)
Argenou Hair
Augusta Hair
Beach Wave Hair
Found out:
-If it's a braid or tail with a fastener on the end (not just by the scalp), don't even bother. Maybe one day we'll have a soft body/hard body sim that can handle this, but the cloth sim cannot.
-Save scene before sim and reload from there. It doesn't seem to like redoing some sims even if they're cleared.
-Use smoothing/collision of at least 5 and 7 samples to prevent scalp clipping - this makes some "unworkable" hairs work. If that doesn't do it try adding a mesh offset/push modifier set to 0.2 or so. Many hairs have no smoothing/collision added by default.
dForce does NOT like things that clip when the sim starts!
By "clipping" do you mean a partial overlap of the collision mesh (usually a character figure) and the dForced mesh (eg clothing)? If so I agree fully. In my experience, if there is any intersection of the meshes it can cause problems. It may not crash the simulation (or DS) but it will most likely cause the simulation to behave strangely, like getting hung up on the figure surface.
It would be useful if there was a step in the process to automatically check for any intersection, and even better to automatically correct this by separating the intersecting polygons/verts.
It would also be great if the simulation prevented intersection of the clothing with the figure during the simulation, ie that collision means collision. I realise that this might be difficult but a draping simulation is for nothing if the draped item (or part of it) can pass through the object "underneath".
Yes, I mean that if the hair is sticking into Genesis 8 Female (or whatever) when the sim starts it's far more likely to crash or fail. A fair number of hairs are going to do this when autofitted or just scaled to fit without something like the smoothing/collision modifier.
OK Folks,
here's the official announcement:
Well of course. It's not a supported use of the cloth simulator, doesn't mean we can't fiddle with it until it works on at least a few things.
OK,
but it is really shocking, how prompt they refused a bug report after experiencing a persistent crash, only because the mesh got stuck within itself.
Of cause the same would happen for clothing.
So it would be highly recommended to investigate the reasons.
It too would be very helpful to improve the dForce sourccode and functionality for the original purpose.
So - dForce for cloth only? OK !
Although I don't understand.
Clothing is Wearable, Hair is Wearable. !!
Pitty that they miss the chance to have a good example for analysis and improvement of the software extention.
The crash ever happens, when the drapped mesh intersects with itself.
But OK. So I tried with clothing.
A G3 Male with RWI Shorts (Run with It Shorts) sitting down on a chair One of the classic situations to use a drapping process.
First the simulation starts to get stuck. Duration time updates only all half minutes or longer. Finally the RWI-Shorts simply explodes around the character.
Any further questions?
Try it again after turning"Self Collide" OFF. That appears to be part of the issue.
Sorry to be that one, but where can I find that option to turn self-collision off? :)
Edit: It can be found on the "Surfaces" Tab.
Applying dForce to a hair figure without any sort of preparation of the hair is setting it up to fail.
You have to use the Geometry Editor to create new Surfaces which dForce will be applied to, leaving the roots of the hair (skullcap, and the parts that in reality will be attached to the head) alone. Set the Dynamics of the roots to 0 so they don't move.
All "strands" of hair must have a root, even if it's an outer layer that doesn't go all the way up to the scalp. Select (or deselect) the top end row of polys in the mesh and set that as a Root surface for that hair section, then set the Dynamics for that to 0.
Same with pony tails - ignore the ties. They should follow along with the hair.
Also, real hair is usually held in place somewhat with gel or spray, so if your sim is set for hair to behave like water, you need to correct that.
I made weight maps for this on the ones I tested, yes. You don't have to create a new surface unless you're saving that for later, you can just assign selected verts to 0 in the Weight Map editor, hit ++ to expand the selection, and smooth the connection to the others. 90% of hairs aren't going to work without that because they have separated roots. Ponytails or braids with closures at the bottom end (rather than just the top), like I said, pretty much nothing can make those work.
I assume that existing hair models that do work with dForce are still limited to the range of motion of the original mesh.
One of the biggest things I find is that hair is mostly designed to work with a more-or-less upright head position. If the character's head is tilted forward (or back, or to the side), then instead of the hair hanging down the way it would in real life, it clings to the head. Depending on the model, there may be adjustments you can make, but they almost never go far enough.
I'd love to see dForce hair that could more closely approximate the natural fall of hair in almost any position, but I suspect that might be too challenging. Or is that something that might be on the horizon?
This has been one of my biggest gripes with hair, and I've been waiting 20 years for content creators to figure this out (yes, kids - since 1997 and Poser 3 when content creation became "a thing"). At least with dForce, I don't have to wait another 20 years.
Existing hairs are not limited to their original range of motion anymore. If the figure tilts their head, the hair goes with it like it should. The only problem I'm seeing now is the front tips sticking to the body (possible sharp angle coming off the nip-nip that I'm not seeing), but if you can break it free without sending it into a Havok loop (see Skyrim for one of those), then it will fall properly.
However, for hairs that were styled a certain way from the start, like End of Summer, you might have trouble getting it to fold over the other side of the head. Though I haven't tried it yet. Still working with the mostly symmetrical long hair.
I haven't messed with weight maps, personally. Might give it a go. Might take a combination of both to get it just right.
Havok loop lol. Now I remember what dforce explosions remind me of!
VWD does not appear to be working with 4.10. I was able to get it to do some hair in 4.9, but there were some changes in object export in 4.10 that breaks the VWD DAZ bridge script. There is a thread on this issue in the VWD support forum at Renderosity.
SHame about VWD. Hopefully they can get it working again. It's nice to have options.
And someone mentioned applying dForce to skin. It can be done, in the same way as I mentioned above about hair. It's not an out-of-the-box solution and takes some tweaking to get the settings right, but can be done. However, the Breast and Glute Control add-ons would probably be more reliable for most animating needs, unless you were converting male animations to female, which would not include breast motions by default. But then you'd also need keyMate, I'm sure.
But I can see where dForce would be useful for adding realistic jiggle to other areas of the body, such as arms and thighs, or the rolls of fat for the obese morphs.
I tried getting the G2F Sporty Braid to work. I can keep it from exploding, but the Tie at the end holds the braid in place. If you set the Tie loose enough to let the braid move, it explodes.
"Realistic jiggle"... nice term. It's been available in many other platforms for a long time. Hopefully this is a chance for DS to catch up.
I was successful with OOT's Super Sleeky Hair,
Turned of self collide
weight mapped so only the hair below ear level was effected,
takes a while but finally, super long hair that isnt molded to the base models shape or deformed on custom body shapes!
not read the thread but I have VWD working off and on in the D|S4.10 Beta it seems to depend on if I use dforce and if I do whether I clear out all the temporary files after and reboot
Interesting that you mention the need to reboot. I have also found that if an item with a dForce dynamic modifier results in an error then it often means that subsequent attempts to use the dForce simulation process on other items (even ones that normally work) can result in an error. Once that happens, the only way to clear the error seems to be restarting DAZ Studio or even rebooting the computer. It may be that some further work is necessary on the error trapping system of dForce and subsequent resetting of internal variables.
I'm trying it with Gully Hair, and the Geometry Editor doesn't even mention Dforce. What am I doing wrong?