hair plugin request
Chris Fox Art
Posts: 380
I was wondering if anybody could make or is interested into some hair plugin that works similar like the native dynamic hair in carrara.
I would like to see something that works with polyline instead of the dynamic hair but with all the options that the dynamic hair has to offer, like cutting, brushing, single selection, and so on.
I think it would be pretty interesting to use the polyline option to draw some nice realistic hair that can be used in any other software too.
There are a few things i don't really like on the dynamic hair, even if they can already look pretty realistic, so with using polyline you could have a bit more control on every single point of the line.
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Here is what we have at present.Im sure its not exactly want you want, but good results can be had.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/197821/philemo-plugin-dynamic-hair-to-mesh/p2
Thanks for the reply, i already got philemo's hair plugin but haven't really used it yet but i think it can't help at all for what i am looking for.
In image 1 i was just testing out and it would just take too much time to create a hair that way, thatswhy i am looking for an easier and a bit faster way to create hair like in image 2 and 3 without using dynamic hair and converting it.
There are 2 ways i would love to try out in Carrara.
The first would be fibermesh hair, this can be done with ZBrush but that software is a bit too expensive for me right now.
The other thing i would like to test out is only available for 3dsMax and is called: Hair-farm.
So 3ds Max also is expensive as a standalone but hair-farm plugin will also be a bit too expensive(about 700$).
Thats one reason why i am looking for some alternative hair plugin that is good as fibermesh hair and hair-farm and can be used in Carrara.
One point why i am looking for an alternative is that dynamic hair have a minimum length of 0,01ft what seem to be a bit long for fine natural body hair, so it's good for hair on the head, for lashes it can be very usefull and of course it's great for eyebrows too but on bodyhair it reaches it's limits.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/218641/octane-shader-settings-for-realism#latest
the last two pictures have a bit of body hair and eyebrows set with dynamic hair but it's very hard to play with so fine and short body hair in that, so i'm still not 100% happy with the outcome.
Another point i don't really like on dynamic hair is that it's limited to the selected polygons. So if you want to create fine hair like eyebrows you have to select the polygons for the hair grown region but those have sharp edges what makes that a bit more difficult.
Some direct paint on the model for the hair growth without selecting the polygons would be much better in my opinion.
it can be shorter you just don't see the decimal points but adding zeros it definately is
and use a density map
I never bother with the fine setting and use medium for everything. It's easier to control the thickness and density when I do via the shader tools. Wendy is correct about the short length working.
I work in metric, but say I set something at .05 -- it will show that short of a length in two decimals. If I change it to, eg.. .0005, the hair length will only show 000's... but actually, I will have length as chosen... at least to my eye it is. I have shortened hair using the hair length tool setting in the upper tool bar. And that tool lets you control length based on guides chosen vs the overall General Length settings in the right panel.
I use the density tools on the upper left of the tool bar (the + and - buttons). For brows, beards and mustaches, I make the region much much bigger in area than needed, then use the minus density tool to reduce and soften the edges, (I do this for hairlines around the face as well) and you can do the insides too by selecting some guides and adjusting those. I change the length and curl/wave/frizz as well.... remove highlight and shine... mess about with the noise and patterns so the ends of light hair don't glare out at you. I have had good stubble results doing this and don't have to ramp up the hair count as much as if I used the fine setting. If you have hair areas that are drastically different, make a NEW hair growth from the Assembly room, don't just add another group in the hair room or should you lengthen one group, they will all 'grow'. You can do left and right heads length and shading separately, but you have to select guides to do this and assign a new shader for one side or another, etc. I would guess you have have multiple regions with different shader settings if you are careful. I like the layering of head proxies... much easier!
If you use a head proxy, (I frequently poach the one from PhilW's Adrea hair) you can control the style that comes 'through' your character's skull. And I have made some layered styles using more than one head proxy at a time. Just stack them up! I also put a loit of hair/fur on clothing... and that is where I have problems... hair inside of creases/folds in clothes is difficult, so am working with Philemo's plugin for that, but am not very good at it. Need more practice!
I have Zbrush (got it through a student licence) and have been experimenting on using Phil's head proxy in there to create hair... that's a huge learning curve! But if I can do that... I am going to start furring my clothing in Zbrush,
thanks a lot for the informations.
I was wondering as i already used length of 0,005 ft and so but it always just displayed 0,00 and no hair at all was visible.
While browsing for fibermesh hair i've found an interesting thread on this forum, not sure how old it is but it seem to be no more available here on daz store.
It's a plugin for DazStudio called Garibaldi Express, i am just wondering if they could make a plugin for Carrara and if here would be enough interest in that plugin as it looks pretty nice.
http://www.garibaldiexpress.com/index.php
I never have seen that before... maybe a Carrara veteran might know of it. I went to the downloads page for examples and am trying to open one of the smaller duf files with Carrara... very very slow. Might try opening it with DS to see what it looks like a bit later. http://www.garibaldiexpress.com/downloads.php
Try putting 0.0016 ft into your slot and see if you get any hair showing. You might have to select all guides and then apply the push tool to see them, especially if the tips are very fine.
Sadly, there is no quick fix for hair. Fibremesh hair will be static-like and I would that that means you have to create morphs for it to get wind-blown or action effects. Not a biggie for me as I illustrate and don't animate. With Car hair... I just brush it or yank it to get that.
ETA: Found this discussion... https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/17345/
I just watched a few videos/tutorials on creating hair with different software.
Modeled hair looks pretty interesting how others do it and gives some nice ideas how to model hair in carrara.
For some reason it's very hard to find modeled hair that looks realistic but i think that's not an issue of the textures but more a question of the shader settings and the hair itself.
Some hair generation tools of other softwares works similar like the Carrara dynamic hair like this one
just looks like the hair at all is a bit easier to handle.
But after watching fibermesh hair with ZBrush i would just wish Carrara would also have that option, this looks so amazing and fun to do, that's what i would love to see, just painting the groth area on the model instead on the polygon and than just work with those.
If that hair modeler can be made as a plugin for Carrara that would be awesome! :)
As me goes, right now i mostly just make static scene/portraits, so animation isn't a question for me right now (even if i would like to i first need a much better system just for 3D), so static hair wouldn't be a problem for me :)
And if a style is lacking something... you can stack other styles or more of the same on top as well. I often go into the textures and create my own highlights in PS if not happy with the stock colours. I think Dartanbeck uses three layers of Angelina hair for his Rosie character. I once cut half of one style and half of another to and put together to illustrate a person who had suffered head trauma and lost their hair.
Good luck... I liked your brows and lash effects you first started. I have been busy and have vision problems at the moment, so am taking a bit of a break.
I think that your request / hope for a Carrara plugin to do that is probably not going to happen, hair is a very difficult thing to do - and Carrara already has a very good hair system, and with Philemo's plugin, we have the ability to convert to polygon hair. Yes I have seen a video of Hair Farm and that looks really powerful, but as it is expensive and is a plugin for an even more expensive program, it reflects the kind of value / cost that you can expect. So you either work with what you have, or invest in one of the other (expensive) systems. I think it is sadly unrealistic to expect such a system will appear for Carrara.
Garibaldi was a hair system for DS but it really got eclipsed by "Look at my Hair" which came out about the same time. Neither of these are fully dynamic.
Actually, i'm not a programmer, so i don't really know what kind of effort it is to make a plugin that can do these kind of things.
Anyway, asking Hair-Farm for making a plugin for Carrara can be an option but i'm afraid that they'll charge a lot of money for a Carrara plugin too if they'll do it.
Another option is to ask at2-software for making a plugin as they are also developing plugins for other softwares too but here also the question of pricing comes first.
Than i've also found a plugin that converts polygon hair, it's a plugin for Maya but could also be done for Carrara i think.
The question i am asking to myself now is, if there is a plugin for hair for example like the one in ZBrush with fiber mesh, will octane render it or does octane needs a plugin compabilitie to that?
I remember that the octane plugin couldn't render Carrara's dynamic hair and the standalone won't render Carrara's dynamic hair.
Phil... would you be violating your agreement rights with IS or it's successor if you created an in-depth hair tutorial? I only ask as I don't think you will be creating any more hair products for Carrara, unless they are gagging for them, which is that case I am willing and waiting!
I hope I am wrong, but if not... I'd pay for your knowledge if you can market it independently!
wasn't there already a hair tutorial on the learning carrara video on disc 3 chapter 8?
That helped me a lot for creating my own hair.
By the way, i'm offering my dynamic hair (haircuts, eyebrows, lashes, bodyhair) on my website for free, just need to write some licence that it's only allowed for private purpose and not for commercial purpose.
I just would like to add this.
I've watched a few videos/tutorials for different softwares how they can produce realistic hair.
Most of them are pretty nice and gives me lots of ideas i would like to try/test out.
One idea i've got is to really create just one single modeled hair and just duplicate it and rotate it in another position and maybe also change a bit the shape itself, that could be very interesting but gives tons of duplicated hairs. Not sure if Carrara can handle this, or will there be another way to do this? Maybe replicator? Don't know.
Another method and maybe someone who already uses blender can tell me more about this, blender seem to have a similar hair creating tool like carrara have, so maybe it's possible to create the hair in blender and import it than to carrara, or import the daz figure to blender and model the hair directly on the model and re import it than to carrara or octane for rendering.
I'm not sure about all that if and/or how it works, so if somebody who knows more about that or these blender functions, i would appreciate it a lot! :)
Hi Chris :)
with hair,. it's either mesh based (with morphs to allow some movement),. or dynamic and physically simulated.
both are useful,. both have a purpose and a practical workflow,. which type of hair you use depends on what you want to achieve.
VWD Cloth and hair (plugin for carrara) can use a polymesh hair,. and make it appear dynamic in an animation,.
Growth area....
In Carrara's hair room,. when your selecting polygons to grow hair,. that's the first step,. after that, you can adjust (paint) the actual selected area to refine sharp edges, ou can either add or remove areas from the selection,.
check out the "Density Add" and "Density Remove" tools
The selected (growth area) polygons remain unchanged,. but there is a B/W area which can be painted by hand,. so you don't need to have sharp edges where the hair looks unnatural. or poly blocky
Hair shaders can also be used to control the length, thickness, and shape of the hair strands.
it's a really powerful area.
On Octane: and hair rendering.....
Octane already renders carrara dynamic hair and it renders polymesh hair,.(poser daz3d figure hair)
Because fibermesh hair from Z-Brush is exported as OBJ, it'll render in carrara's native renderer or in Octane or Lux
Carrara can handle more than most 3D software, but what (I think) you're meaning is making polymesh strips of hair,. and that's how any Figure/Prop hair is created.
Open a hair figure and have a look at it in the vertex modeller,. it's a bunch of strips of polygons, which are UV mapped and textures with an alpha map for the transparency
The main reasons that the hair systems available in 3D are like this is memory use.
Dynamic hair is simulated physically and the hair is normally generated at render time,. to save memory.
Figure or Prop hair is made of mesh strips, (built onto a Scull cap) with morphs for fitting to characters or movement,. low poly = low memory.
When you start to create hair from things like fibermesh, and exporting that as an object,. it can get massive compared to either mesh or dynamic.
Carrara gives you the ability to create either dynamic or mesh hairs,.
Philemo's plugin allows you to convert dynamic to mesh.
VWD CLoth and hair plugin allows you to simulate dynamic movement, using a polymesh hair
you could model some hairs, then use a surface replicator to apply those to an object,. but' you're using more memory to do that,. and it's basically what's going on in the Dynamic Hair room,. you're selecting an area of an object to (grow) dynamic hair strands
nice Andy, great summary, love how your brain works
Thanks Andrew :)
I like it when my brain works,. sometimes it don't
Thanks a lot for all the informations.
I'll do a lot of research in the last times how other 3d artists generate hair.
Some of them are similar created like the dynamic hair in carrara but also uses different techniques.
particles for example from blender works very similar, there you also have some kind of guide hairs and children that simulate the most hair.
So i've saw tutorials from people who uses this method but nearly created the full hairstyle with the guides while i often try to use as less guides as possible, only where i need them.
I will test out different methods, on blender and on carrara to see what works best for me.
The same about poly hair, there are some very interesting tutorials from 3ds max, maya, blender, and so on and most of them can be also used in carrara.
I think it's pretty helpful to watch 3d tutorials not only from carrara just to see different kinds of workflows.