Does "fiber based hair" work in Carrara ?
mikael-aronsson
Posts: 549
Hi!
As far as I understand, "fiber based hair" is not a feature in DS, it's just how they model it in ZBrush or whatever, so it should still work in Carrara and also be able to export it to OBJ ? anyone know if this is a correct assumtion ?
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Depends on the hair and the amount, some do.
LAMH converted to mesh is often too much if a full body fur and I found Real short hair by Laticis too much for carrara,
the good thing is carrara has its own dynamic hair.
The other hairs still useful for using in other apps so I buy them still.
It's sort of like asking 'how do I bring a cup of water to the ocean, because I want to make sure the ocean is wet enough?'
Carrara has the most realistic, easily useable hair available in the hobbyist-priced market. The more I play with it, the more I'm amazed by how quick and easy it is to make dynamic hairstyles that are highly realistic for animations. This is on a par with the hair sims we see in movies. So far beyond any mere prop or figure hair out there. And if animation's not your thing, well bear in mind you can do a quick simulation of a few frames in Carrara and the hair will naturally fall right into the correct physical position. You can achieve realism you could never achieve in a million years with morph parameters. Use scene forces to blow wind through your character's hair, run their fingers through the hair, set shape to certain parts of the hair to make it behave as if it had been hairsprayed (which doesn't mean stiff and lifeless, it still interacts with the scene forces, but retains it's shape in a natural and realistic way). Run a quick hair sim, maybe even put your character slightly in motion, and pause at any frame that looks best for your pose, render, and now not only do you have the best and most realistic dynamic hair animation possible, but it's also the most realistic still render of hair that can currently be achieved with any other hobbyist software that I know of (maybe there's something out there I'm not thinking of?)
Bonus, Carrara hair also renders faster than prop and figure hair, not having to deal with levels upon levels of transparency.
I'm still testing and refining methods, but I've been doing some extensive playing around with the hair room and creating Carrara hair and I'm amazed at how easy it is to use once you understand a few of the tools therein. Sometime in the next couple of days I need to open a thread and post a few settings, tips, and a short tutorial.
All of which I know doesn't really answer the original question, sorry for straying (but I've been very excited about what Carrara hair can do and what I've learned working with it). Short answer to the original question is yes, I don't think there's any reason Carrara couldn't import the fiber hair you refer to.
I'm kinda surprised to hear someone say that. It's been a VERY long time since I messed with the dynamic hair, and my memory on that is very foggy...in fact I could be remembering another app.... :)
But my recollection was that the biggest problem with the dynamic hair was the shading. Extremely difficult/impossible to get some decent shading in the hair. And my other recollection is that the rendered hair strands look unrealistically thick.
But again, maybe it has improved or maybe I'm mis-remembering again.
Does anyone have any really good examples where it has been successful?
Here's a quick 4 second test clip I did day before yesterday. I did a few animations on a primitive sphere as I was learning the hair tool, then this, on a low poly proxy v4 that Philw made. It's not perfect, in fact I've learned quite a bit more since that first one, and I'm doing more rendering even at this very minute of other tests (wind forces, stroking a finger through hair, more movements, etc) and trying to refine settings, so I'll post more of the tests soon-ish, but keep in mind this one was my first ever hair that I created myself (and is kind of simple actually) and there's still lots to learn about finding the right settings.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofWd1iAfv4c&feature=youtu.be
The hair has a drop down for size, and is set by default for large, which is indeed too thick for human hair (at least imo) but the medium size is about right. The small is so fine you'd have to go with a very large hair count to make it work, and I think it would still be too thin. I think there's an extra large setting there too, though I don't know what it would be useful for.
Wow, that's very nice for the first attempt...
I opened up Carrara and took some test runs of the hair, and what I was referring to about shaders is a little bit apparent in your YouTube video. The hair is kinda "glowy". I could never get a realistic highlight, it was always an overall "glow" or something.
And the hair thickness was a big problem. There are only 4 settings, and the Thin or Medium are the only ones you can consider for hair, and Thin, as you say, is way too thin. And Medium doesn't look right either, IMO.
And the other problem I recall was after you simulate the hair drape, the render shows a lot of hair fibers passing thru the collision object/character's head.
I'm sure I just never got the right settings, but I'm trying 1,000% simulation quality and I still get fibers passing thru the head.
Yeah, by default the highlight is jacked way too high for hair, and it's very reactive to light, ironically it should be lower than most things, not higher, else you get the metallic sparkly, which is indeed present in my vid.
The free hairs that are poking through is because the generated hair that's visible in renders follows the guide hairs you set, but only within a certain radius, so while most of it is following your guide hairs, there's some hair that's not close enough to a guide hair that is just 'loose' in the scene, and drapes through the face etc, you can get rid of it in one of 2 ways, or a combination of the two is actually best. One is to add more guide hairs, but more guide hairs also means the sims take longer to calculate, and I'm not seeing much need for anything more than 20 to 30 guide hairs (I've done sims with up to 100 guide hairs, but really anything over 50 is overkill unless you've got a ridiculously complex hairstyle with tons of different hair regions). The other thing, that is unchecked by default, but should actually be checked is something I think called 'auto grouping' which I'm going from memory because I'm rendering and can't check the hair room at the moment. It's in the middle tab for hair settings down towards the bottom of the page, there's 4 different checkboxes in that section and the top one 'enable' is unchecked. If you check that, it sets it so free hair within a certain distance/radius/falloff of the guide hair will glom onto the guide hair's group, therefore you won't have the hairs sticking through the neck since they'll be pulled to wherever the guide hairs are. This is another setting that ought to be enabled by default but isn't.
The hair going through the head is an easy fix, don't rember how at the moment but it is in one if PhilW's tutorials.
Oh and re the thickness of the hair issue, which I agree is indeed an issue if you leave it at the generic default, the hair shader itself has a width setting for both root and tip, and this can go a long way when combined with a medium size to getting it to the right thickness, currently I'm playing with a root thickness of 80% and a tip thickness of 12% (as an example which I'm still trying to refine, not as a final destination by any stretch) which since I'm using a long hairstyle makes for a much thinner hair than the default medium.
Oh I haven't done any sims with higher than 200% quality to this point, actually not sure if I really need more than 100%
Please do - I've given up in frustration several times with Carrara hair (even after watching and rewatching PhilW's tutorial). Easy is not a word I'd use...
Thanks jonstark....
The more I play with it the more I recall why I never really pursued it before. Very frustrating. I'm sure I'm doing bonehead things, but I just can't dial in anything that even seems reasonable. And I'm used to some of the hair apps in the professional software that is MUCH easier and gives much nicer results.
And the worst thing is the root hair segment. In an effort to get rid of the "flat hair" look where the hair lays down flat at the root, I crank up stiffness of the root. But even with 30 hair segments, there is a sharp bend at the end of the first root segment, instead of the natural curl you get at the root of your hair where it comes out of your head.
Just too many frustrations. I'll find some time later on to study it. But honestly I have yet to see any examples that really make me say "wow, I need to try that". Especially with long hair. Which is precisely when you need dynamic hair, since short hair is much easier to do with conforming hair that doesn't have to collide with anything.
With my creaky old system, I tend to use it for stills, where I think it excels. I much prefer it to prop or figure hair for most things. Braids being an exception.
I tend not to simulate it either
I can style it quite nicely for still hair.
I do apply it to a conforming surface however so it follows the figure poses
a simple hood like prop attached to skeketon will do or the base of a DAZ conforming long hair.
sometimes do add a few dynamic simulated wisps
fur is what I find good in carrara.
A few more test animations. First, a few movements from V4 and an animation of 'tucking the hair behind the ear':
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oq7GW9X_IU&feature=youtu.be
(side notes: I made a few mistakes that were obvious in hindsight. I had an invisible cylinder primitive that was inside the head region, which I wanted to move out to the side to hold the 'tucked' hair behind the ear, but made some mistakes in positioning it before the hair is tucked back, you'll see the hair king of pops out randomly on the side of the head just before the ear tuck, this is because the invisible cylinder pops out too early and hits it from the inside. Also there's some jerking of the hairs at the back, this is because I had reverted to using an earlier hairset that I built and hadn't spaced the guide hairs evenly, left a whole section of the back of the head with a large space where there are no guide hairs, so there's a big hunk of the hair that is all moving as one 'hair'. The section of hair without guide hairs makes for a few 'bounces' in the beginning and the ending as the simulation doesn't know quite what to do since not enough guide hairs are in the right place telling it what to do. Also I threw a directional force into the scene at the very end, which is why the hair 'sways' to the right, but I didn't use enough strength and combined with the motion of the figure posing changing it's not terribly apparent, and instead of wind looks more like a swaying of the hair based on the character's movement.)
Second, an earlier mockup with a different and more complex hairstyle with 2 different hair regions, specifically of the 'hair tucked behind the ear' motion:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xbq-yv-ieJA&feature=youtu.be
(side notes: Ironically even though it's obvious this was a rougher and earlier animation of the motion, the hairstyle is a much better put-together and more complex hairstyle that accordingly behaves itself better, with guide hairs much more evenly space. It has 2 different hair sections (the front has shape percentage assigned to it). Also there's a weird little 'blink' or jump in this that wasn't in the original animatiion I did, looks like maybe an extra blank frame somehow made it's way into the animation when I uploaded to youtube....? This little white flash didn't come from the Carrara animation but appears to somehow be an artifact of uploading to youtube. Or maybe it's just my computer that's seeing it, I'm very new to animations and uploading stuff to youtube.)
Third, I wanted to do one simulating wind gusting. Well not windstorm gusting, more like breezing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDD_AgW6-Fg&feature=youtu.be
(side notes: Again, still using a hairstyle where I didn't have enough guide hairs on the back of the head, which is why there's a section back there that shifts all as one piece and looks a little jerky in a few places. No movement on the figure at all, trying to get a wind blowing effect with a directional force inserted into the scene, which varied in strength to try to get a little gusting effect.)
Fourth, just some all round figure movement with this original hairstyle (split down the middle, which is very simple). I finally wised up and added a few more guide hairs in the back regions that were missing guides:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePlppX0Zx9I&feature=youtu.be
(side notes: Just a series of sways and movement poses - by the way, I'm learning a lot about doing animation in Carrara and how astonishingly easy it is as a side effect of these hair tests. I finally added a few more guide hairs to the back of the hair to help even out the movements.
Sorry again for sort of hijacking the thread, once I've done more testing and refining and feel like I've got a better handle on knowing what I'm talking about, I'll definitely open a new thread and hopefully post a short tutorial.
Great stuff, Jon. Thanks for posting your tests. Can't wait to follow your progress. As soon as I think I've become an intermediate, I find out there are whole areas of Carrara that I have barely touched.
I would stick with Carrara hair. Zbrush fibermesh is very powerful and can be exported as geometry. Several problems with the export of hair from Zbrush is the size of the file and Carrara does not have the utilities to change the polymeshes to curves or splines like Lightwave3D or Maya does. (thus won't work as hair guides that Carrara needs). Lightwave3D can handle larger files than Carrara and has the ability of exporting FBX files which Carrara can handle in large file sizes. For instance, FBX 2 mb file size can be handled in Carrara easily, while a 1 megabyte size OBJ Bfile will cause Carrara to choke up and freeze.
Quick experiment using the dog from Zbrush and using GoZ to send the mesh, then applying Carrara hair to the mesh. The grass is an export of grass from Zbrush. I exported it first to Lightwave, so Carrara wouldn't choke up and then exported FBX out of Lighwave with no modification. Notice the flat polygonal shapes is what Carrara would get in OBJ format as well since Carrara can't convert the polymesh grass to curves or splines.