Complex Hair Dos
TangoAlpha
Posts: 4,584
Just been watching Phil's chapter on the hair room, and as usual I'm psyched at the possibilities. But it only covered what are really pretty simplistic hair styles. It doesn't take much browsing through the store here to see poly hair in all kinds of weird and wonderful styles - updos, beehives, dreads, Princess Leias, and on and on.
So how much of that is possible with the fibre style hair? I'm thinking particularly about things like pony/pig tails, constraints - hairbands / tiaras / hats etc, braids, tied in ribbons/beads etc.
I'd like my actors to have more variety than just a long/short/curly combout, but still retain the ability to look natural when placed in what might be termed "unusual attitudes" e.g. jumping, running, twirling, lying on a pillow/sofa, suspended inverted over a pit of boiling lava (as you do)...
Another issue brought up by Cripeman on a tutorial at the Cafe is that you can only have one hair shader across all hair zones. So my question there is, how can I get effects such as a Cruella De Vil white stripe, or blonde hair & black eyelashes, or greying temples etc?
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Comments
the hair shader uses the uv of the object it is growing on
so you can paint a Cruella whitestripe on the hair cap and it can be saved as part of a map.
can use primitives with hair on them to create fancy do's too
brush hair around toruses for buns
ok, that's like 15 questions...
Color: it's a map. paint it however you want. The hair's color (tip and base) are based on the UV of the mesh it grows from.
ponytails: yes, this is easy use ONE guide hair and grow it from a coin-sizes base. That "coin" will fit against the head where ever the tie or hairband would cover it. See my timelapse shaders on a ponytail for some tips: http://carraracafe.com/tutorials/dynamic-hair-shader-timelapsewalk-through/
up-do, etc: yes. Learn to use the brush tool.
Hair can be in as many different Hair models as you need. They overlap just fine. Start with the crown for instance, then have a completely different Hair for the back and sides.
Most elaborate updos have a little secret inside, a small soft "shaper" nylon bag filled with fluff to construct the updo around. Use this idea in 3D, either fill the "volume" with a head morph or a prop with hair grown out of it. There are a few morphing skullcap props that will help shape this volume.
You can put hair on anything, an octopus... or a boned hair prop - like a horse tail. Get creative. Design some parts to sim and some not to. For instance with a ponytail, just the tail sims, not the main shape of the scullcap....
Yeah, sorry I'm like that - questions just breed like rabbits!
UV of the skull cap. That didn't even occur to me! :red: But you've certainly given me some good pointers to play with. :0
Holly's Carrara Fur Tutorial (in comicbook format) demonstrate how we can load an image map into the hair shader. I never knew we could do that!
Some styles might be better modeled and used as a prop or conforming hair that to try and get it to work with Carrara hair which, unlike a lot of other dynamic hair offering, isn't actually fiber based. I was made to understand some time ago that it is all shader based. I don't recall who told me that, not do I know for sure if it's true... but it seems to be so. That's why we cannot export it as an OBJ or anything.
When messing around with it, the controls for stiffness can play a big part in how the style holds together. You can comb it into a style until you're blue in the face, but as soon as you try to animate it (even just to make it work with a pose for a still) you can lose all of that work in an instant.
I still need a lot of work on mine. Actually, I need to scrap mine and start over, trying everything from scratch. But I love how it looks, especially compared to conforming hair. It can really look real!
You can also apply multiple hairs to one object for different effects, such as traditional hair, coarser hair for beards and mustaches or even arm pits. Each one will then be able to be colored differently. Use either maps to distribute them or try using the density tool in the hair room.
That's a great tut... but I still have a question unless I missed it as it was a weird week when I first read it.
It's OK easy enough to keep head, eyebrows, beards, chest hair, etc all as separate hair zones on a body in the Actor tree but I wish there was a way to know which areas you have already put in hairs when your want a layered look of a real change of colour (not just highlights). I see on Phil's Addision hair he paints the part area. How do you do that...can you do that so you know where you have previously created different hair layers in your tree? EG, hair top, hair sides, hair back, hair length, sort of the old fashioned US 70s shag hairdo. (No PhilW, NOT that kind of shag).
Did I see someone wishes for hair springs in Carrara hair in C-9???
:) Silene
I have an experiment started that I can only continue with in my spare time - the same time that I have allocated for dynamic hair - where I am using the Spring primitive to try my hand at making my own curly hair.
Nonetheless, I refuse to give up on this whole dynamic hair thing. I will be working on that a lot more before I ever get back to my Spring experiment! :ahhh: both of which drive me even more nuts than I already am!
As Holly explains,
We can use the thing that we're growing the hair from the add colors to the hair. In that tutorial, since she's covering the whole cat, she uses the actual texture map for the kitty in the color channel of the hair shader. Keeping that in mind, you can paint, or otherwise texture the thing that the hair is growing from, to alter the actual color of the hair, by then applying that map to the hair shader. oh that was way too wordy... time for an example ;)
Example:
Let's say for simplicity sake that we're growing hair from a hair cap, which is quite common. The hair cap is often left invisible, since we're only interested in its mesh as a growing region.
We can use 3D Paint in Carrara to paint upon the hair cap. If all you want is color change, that painting can be something really simple, since nobody will actually see the map, just the colors onto the hair strands that come out from that part of the cap.
A different example:
For personal use only, we could make this even easier on ourselves. We could load in a conforming hair, edit the model and delete everything except for the base, leaving only the cap, and use that as the cap. You would have to import the OBJ of the hair that you'd do that to, otherwise Carrara won't let you delete part of the mesh. I have been told that using "Remove Skeleton" will get Carrara to allow such edits, though I've never tried it.
Now that cap already has texture for it, that can be used to color the hair. But in this example, make sure that you don't apply hair to where the map is using alpha, or it will turn out white or black or some such.
I have an experiment started that I can only continue with in my spare time - the same time that I have allocated for dynamic hair - where I am using the Spring primitive to try my hand at making my own curly hair.
Nonetheless, I refuse to give up on this whole dynamic hair thing. I will be working on that a lot more before I ever get back to my Spring experiment! :ahhh: both of which drive me even more nuts than I already am!
As Holly explains,
We can use the thing that we're growing the hair from the add colors to the hair. In that tutorial, since she's covering the whole cat, she uses the actual texture map for the kitty in the color channel of the hair shader. Keeping that in mind, you can paint, or otherwise texture the thing that the hair is growing from, to alter the actual color of the hair, by then applying that map to the hair shader. oh that was way too wordy... time for an example ;)
Example:
Let's say for simplicity sake that we're growing hair from a hair cap, which is quite common. The hair cap is often left invisible, since we're only interested in its mesh as a growing region.
We can use 3D Paint in Carrara to paint upon the hair cap. If all you want is color change, that painting can be something really simple, since nobody will actually see the map, just the colors onto the hair strands that come out from that part of the cap.
A different example:
For personal use only, we could make this even easier on ourselves. We could load in a conforming hair, edit the model and delete everything except for the base, leaving only the cap, and use that as the cap. You would have to import the OBJ of the hair that you'd do that to, otherwise Carrara won't let you delete part of the mesh. I have been told that using "Remove Skeleton" will get Carrara to allow such edits, though I've never tried it.
Now that cap already has texture for it, that can be used to color the hair. But in this example, make sure that you don't apply hair to where the map is using alpha, or it will turn out white or black or some such.
OK I see, He paints the hair cap as in Addison hair so it shows when it's in hair modelling but not when you render in his clever PhilW way.
So if I wanted to do something hairy where I didn't have a hair cap, eg on a DRESS where I wanted zones to represent different kinds of fur in a more controlled way, I could paint the dress in different parts before I texture it, that for simplicity on my part be the same colour as the root shade of hair/fur I am going to use. Then do I erase it if I am then going to change the under-the-fur to a texture, eg, leather look? This would be after I "fur" it.
:) Silene
OK I see, He paints the hair cap as in Addison hair so it shows when it's in hair modelling but not when you render in his clever PhilW way.
So if I wanted to do something hairy where I didn't have a hair cap, eg on a DRESS where I wanted zones to represent different kinds of fur in a more controlled way, I could paint the dress in different parts before I texture it, that for simplicity on my part be the same colour as the root shade of hair/fur I am going to use. Then do I erase it if I am then going to change the under-the-fur to a texture, eg, leather look? This would be after I "fur" it.
:) Silene
What you would do is paint white where you want the hair and black where you don't shades of gray depending on how light or dark they are will provide variations in length. You then add the map in the Hair Length channel in the Hair Shader. This map would be different than the color channel map for the object. It's basically a distribution map.
There's also a density paint tool in the Hair room you can use to paint where you want hair.
The "different kinds of fur" threw me. It sounded as if she wanted different lengths.
I'll add this again because it may have been missed. You can add multiple hair objects to the same model.
This can be useful if you have someone with facial hair such as eyebrows, beard or mustache and the finer hair that would cover the head.
Okay, so I've wasted spent the best part of all day trying to get a relatively straightforward hair to look even vaguely right. As you can see, it's a total disaster. I simply can't fathom where all this hair across the face comes from - I don't have any guide hairs there at all.
The only thing I've done in the shader room is change the tip and root colours.
And I've lost the preview from the preview window. It was really tiny and I tried to zoom it, but all that happened was it disappeared. I tried pressing 0, but no effect. So how can I relocate the hair in my preview window? (Otherwise I have no idea that anything does!)
I'm beginning to understand why people still buy polygon hairs! -- all day and nothing to show for it!
My guess is that you have a guide hair or three going inside the mesh. It may even be from the back of the head.
Here's a little graphic illustrating where I think you may have some issues with the guides.
Thanks EP, I'll have a look at those areas when I get home tonight :)
Try toggle the switches for LONG HAIR - SHORT HAIR FUR. it tells the hairs to "fill in" differently.
Hairs interpolate "fill in" between guides, so if you have two guides close together on the scalp, that end up in very different places (as in your image) hair will still try to connect by filling in between... Solutions are to create different hair groups for the scalp and sides (so the hair part is actually two different groups that do not interact)
Or begin to play with the INTERPOLATION Distance setting, which controls how large each guide's influence zone is (which is a whole new can of worms, but eventually you will want to explore this panel for certain effects).
Try to picture the head as a bowling ball.... your hair style take two guides very close together at the top, they both wrap all the way around the bowling ball, each taking the opposite side (left/right) to end up BELOW the bowling ball... The hairs are interpolating between the tips - shortest distance between two points is a straight line, ergo the interpolated hairs are passing inside the bowling ball...
The following images show this bowling ball with only 2 hair guides (our problematic guides)
I am toggling LONG HAIR and SHORT HAIR, and also toggling INTERPOLATION on/off.
you can see the difference. The interpolation controls are essential....
Thanks Holly. I had never noticed the interpolation controls. I'll have to experiment with them for a couple problematic styles I've been working on here and there.
OH! I was excited for awhile, thought the title was addressing a new operating system.
Holly,
Have you ever considered making more tutorials out hair? Like a start-to-finish complete guide: Everything you've ever wanted or needed to Know about making Dynamic Hair in Carrara? ;)
Yeah... do it!
Holly,
Have you ever considered making more tutorials out hair? Like a start-to-finish complete guide: Everything you've ever wanted or needed to Know about making Dynamic Hair in Carrara? ;)
Yeah... do it!
Yes... Definitely... More tutorials are long overdue from me... Especially since I always bully other (you) into making tutorials! :P
Well... you've already written more tutorials/articles than most... I'm just selfish here, and want you to teach me how to make Carrara hair from the very beginning, is all ;)