Uberhair shader and DS 4.5
Kyu2130
Posts: 97
before i throw money at the uberhair shader i would like to know if it is compatible with DS 4.5.
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Yes, it has been updated to work with DS4, and I'm using it regularly in DS4P RC3. I downloaded it again a few weeks back, and you should have four files: two older installers that I believe are for DS3.X (10164_2_UberHairShaderUpdeforUberSurface_2.exe and 10164_ds_UberHairShaderUpdeforUberSurface.exe), and two of the new installers (UberHairShader_1.2_ds.exe and UberHairShaderMetaData_1.2_ds.exe). It makes a definite improvement in the look of your character's hair, and in my opinion, is well worth the extra render time (which isn't terribly significant). I would definitely encourage you to get it.
The current build version is 1.3 for the product your interested in.
Most of Omnifreaker's products have just been updated , so they will work with DS 4.5.
Oh, excellent. Like I said, I went back a few weeks ago and downloaded a lot of my content again to get the updated files. Didn't expect him to update again so quickly. Thanks for the heads-up...
Just a quick demo of UberHair in DS4P 64-bit RC3. (V4.2 Base, Trixie Hair, and UE2.) The head on the right has UberHair applied; the head on the left does not.
I have reset my downloads and downloaded 1.3 uberhair and ubersurface2, but cannot get either one to work with DS 4.5 on my Mac - applying either one to a surface just reduces the shader to a minimal one with opacity and diffuse. What am I doing wrong?
And: what do these do that I cannot do with ubersurface that comes with DS4.5Pro?
[Resolved - my Mac has some kind of configuration oddity that foils the DAZ installers causing things to end up in private/tmp
directories instead of their final destination. I have a workaround for the metadata installation issues, but didn't realize this
was also happening to stuff installed in the application's directory. Live and learn. Log files are your friends. Reading scripts
is sometimes useful.]
I'm sorry, but I don't use a Mac -- I couldn't begin to tell you what to do about it. Hopefully, someone else here can.
iirc, it is basically UberSurface(2?) without the Ambient Occlusion. the aoc kills render times with trans mapped hair and is unnecessary in said hair I believe.
This does not necessarily hold true to geometry based hair like LAMH or Mec4D's Unshaven, etc... as again it is my understanding that it is specifically trans mapped and AOC which do not play nice together.
I could give a more definitive answer but I'm being lazy and not verifying any of this. Anyone with a better knowledge of this feel free to chime in :)
So I'm a little confused. Does this mean we only need to install UberHairShader_1.2_ds.exe in DS 4.5 Pro, since the other two are for an older version and the metadata is already in the UberHairShader_1.2_ds.exe anyway?
Edit: I guess that would be UberHairShader_1.3_ds.exe now, as I read that it has been updated.
So I'm a little confused. Does this mean we only need to install UberHairShader_1.2_ds.exe in DS 4.5 Pro, since the other two are for an older version and the metadata is already in the UberHairShader_1.2_ds.exe anyway?
It's been a couple of weeks since I checked for an update, but as far as I know, as of today, "UberHair Shader Upgrade for UberSurface" for the PC consists of four files:
10164_UberHairShaderDS3_1.3_ds.exe
10164_UberHairShaderDS4_1.3_ds.exe
10164_UberHairShaderDS4MetaData_1.3_ds.exe
10164_UberHairShaderTutorial_1.3_gc.exe
Assuming you're running some version of DS4, all you really need to worry about are 10164_UberHairShaderDS4_1.3_ds.exe and 10164_UberHairShaderDS4MetaData_1.3_ds.exe. It sounds like you've got the previous version, so you might want to reset your downloads and grab the new files.
Sarsifus, thanks for the quick and precise answer! Now it is clear.
Not a problem -- I'm very glad to be able to help. UberHair is a really cool product. You apply it to hair pretty much the same way you apply the Human Surface Shader to skin, and it does wonders to improve the look of hair in DAZ Studio. Have fun...
I need some help, please. I purchased UberHair and installed 10164_UberHairShaderDS4_1.3_ds.exe in DS 4.5. So far, I'm not getting the beautiful results of your example in this thread. I can barely see any change. I'm using Pure Hair Crazy. My lighting is from the new Urban Recreation HDR sets by Dimension Theory. It contains UberEnvironment and distant light. I even threw in some extra spec-only lighting to see if that would help, but I don't see much impact, it only got lighter.
This is what I did:
Selected PH Crazy in the Scene Tab
Applied the preset for the PH Crazy color I wanted
Selected all surfaces of PH Crazy in the Surfaces Tab
Double Clicked on the UberHair Upgrade Shiny.des in the UberHair shader. I also tried soft and silky.
I didn't change any of the Occlusion or Raytrace settings
I can see that the shader changed some setting in the surfaces, so it did something, but the render is unimpressive - nothing like your beautiful example. Can you give me some tips, please?
In the images below, the one on the left is the default DAZ shader. The one on the right is the UberHair Shiny. I also rendered closeup views, but they didn't show any better results. I'm stumped.
Here's the link to omniFreaker's documentation (I would strongly urge you to copy each page as a PDF):
http://www.omnifreaker.com/index.php?title=News
And here's the link to his UberHair product documentation:
http://www.omnifreaker.com/index.php?title=UberHair
Applying the UberHair presets is pretty much exactly like applying the Human Surface Shader presets -- if you know how to use one product, you've got a good grasp on how to use the other. But from reading your description, it looks like you've missed one crucial piece of information that seems to get everybody the first time out.
Here's what omniFreaker himself writes:
UberHair can be used two ways. You can apply the !UberHair Base preset to simply apply the shader in its default state, or the smart Upgrade presets can be used to upgrade existing hairstyles by doing the following:
1. Select the Hair object in the Scene outline or in the 3D view.
2. Select all the Surfaces in the Surfaces Pane.
3. Apply the preset that comes with your original hair product.
4. Apply the one of the !UberHair Upgrade presets to automagically convert your ordinary hair to UberHair with the desired shininess.
Pretty good, but let me clarify a step:
3. While holding down the CTRL key (on a PC), double-click on the UberHair preset you want (base, silky, shiny, etc.). A dialogue box will pop up, asking you to REPLACE or IGNORE. Choose IGNORE.
This is crucial, and for some reason, it gets left out of the discussion -- a lot. The UberHair presets will still kinda sorta work if you don't follow that rule, but they won't work the way the vendor intended them to, and you probably won't be satisfied with the results. Use the clarified rule I gave you, and you should see extra channels and options appear in the Surface tab. Good luck...
Thanks for helping. I have a render going now, so I can't try the CTRL trick. I am familiar with that for the HSS, but I thought that was not necessary for UberHair, because the documentation says (emphasis added):
" SmartPresets
Upgrade existing hair shaders with a simple double click. Texture maps are preserved, and intelligently re-purposed to give you the most out of the UberSurface shader without having to futz with the controls all day. The smart presets do more that just keep your current texture maps--they will also do the following:"
Are you sure the CTRL trick is still needed? Maybe the product was updated to not need it anymore, based on the way I interpret the documentation here http://www.omnifreaker.com/index.php?title=UberHair. Anyway, I can try the CTRL trick tomorrow after my render finishes and see what happens. I'll report back.
I decided not to buy uberhair because I thought the same results could be achieved with Ubersurface/2. Is this wrong?
Nope -- that's it. The same trick you use to apply the Human Surface Shader presets (hold down CTRL, double-click the preset you want, then choose IGNORE from the pop-up dialogue box) is the same trick you use for the UberHair presets. You should see some extra channels and options appear in the Surfaces tab, but not nearly as many as you do with the HSS. I took DS4.5P off my machine a couple of days ago, and I was having to do that with UberHair up 'til the last render I did with it. (If you've been following some of the other threads these last few days, I'm switching to Poser -- I love DAZ Studio, just not DAZ.) Have a good one...
I'm sure you could achieve similar results with some experimentation. I'm sorry, but I'm not proficient enough to help you more than that. The UberHair and HSS stuff is something I myself went through just a few weeks ago, so it's still pretty fresh in my mind.
iirc, it is basically UberSurface(2?) without the Ambient Occlusion. the aoc kills render times with trans mapped hair and is unnecessary in said hair I believe.
Uber Hair does use Ambient Occlusiuon and it has a channel with an On/Off switch plus as Gedd said it is a good idea to Turn it off when Applying the Hair shader, makes render a little more quicker.
Nope no need to use CTRL when appling any Uber Hair Presets only the Base requires CTRL to preserve the textures maps. But for me I just select the Hair, select the surfaces and hit one of the Presets, done.
As for the question of Uber Surface or Uber Hair. For me for the price Uber Hair saves me a lot of time settting up colours, specular etc. Uber Hair will read your loaded Hair texture maps and adjust all the channels to suit.
Obviously this one hit approach may not work for every lighting situation but for me it works very well most times.
barbult I see you are using DT's new HDR product which could the the issue. As I mentioned above presets can work well for most but in some cases you might need to adjust.
To expand on what Szark said, I had just tried UberSurface last night to check this exact thing and found out it's not as easy to convert UberSurface to a hair product with existing textures as it sounds.. So it appears it comes down to ease of use and speed, ie how much is your time worth vs how much do you want to force yourself to learn a complex product in-depth before getting the results you want.
[Edit] I forgot using Ctl, so I was attempting to rebuild the textures from scratch ;p
Might want to try applying UberSurface and see how quickly you get results you want. The UberHair is basically a set of presets that are tuned for quick results, like many products actually (Render Throttle, etc...)
I have run many tests now, and I see no difference between holding down CTRL or not holding down CTRL with soft, silky, and shiny. I haven't tried Base; I'm not sure what Base is for. I believe Szark is correct that Ctrl is not needed with the smart presets for UberHair,
All I can say is that's the only way I got it to work on my machine (Win7 64-bit, 2.7 GHz dual-core, 6 GB RAM). Simply double-clicking on the presets left hair looking like plastic; using the CTRL key is what gave the results in the demo render I posted.
All I can say is that's the only way I got it to work on my machine (Win7 64-bit, 2.7 GHz dual-core, 6 GB RAM). Simply double-clicking on the presets left hair looking like plastic; using the CTRL key is what gave the results in the demo render I posted.
What version of DS are you running? I am running 4.5 Pro. I wonder if that makes any difference. I still haven't managed to get the nice results you showed. I know there are lighting related bugs in 4.5. I wonder if they are causing me problems. If you get those results in 4.5, then it is something else I am doing wrong. Wrong hair product, wrong lighting type, wrong lighting angle, etc.
Sarsifus, I finally see a difference between CTRL an no CTRL on the UberHair!!! Thanks for persisting with your point of view.
It all depends on what hair you use. I was using hair products from Valea - Pure Hair Crazy, Pure Hair Classic, etc. When I switched to Finger Wave Bob hair by goldtassel, I saw a drastic difference. I examined all the surface settings. The difference is that Finger Wave Bob has a Specular Strength Map. The Valea hairs do not. Clicking on UberHair Shiny without the CTRL key deletes that specular strength map. Perhaps that is a bug, since the UberHair docs say it keeps the maps. Without that map, the specular channel went wild. I will post three images (no post work except adding the annotation for settings used). Pardon the garish lighting.
So, you get the benefit of the improved Uber shader system, but without the tweaked settings. I assume this is the same for all other Uber shader products. Personally I think I'm going to stick with surface 2 and just play with the settings myself. Strangely enough I get a lot of pleasure out of experimenting and finding what works best, though it is nice to have the short cut sometimes. I wonder if there is a way I can save shader settings - any one have an idea there?
Yes, Save as > Shader Preset.
Quoting from Mclean in this thread:
A Shader Preset is simply a single material, as opposed to a Materials Preset which is multiple materials. Shader Presets can be applied to any selected material(s), regardless of name, whereas a Material Preset will only apply to materials with the same name(s).
So, for example, if you save a Materials Preset for a human figure, it will only work on another figure with those materials. That’s why I said saving a Shader Preset is better. You can apply it to any materials at all, no matter what names they have, and it will work on human figures, buildings, props, etc.
To save a preset
1. Select any prop or figure.
2. Select any material on it (in the Surfaces pane).
3. Set up the material the way you want it (white or whatever)
4. Go to the Save menu (in the content pane) and choose Shader Preset, then name it.
To apply a preset
1. Select a prop or figure.
2. Select the material(s) you want to affect. (To select more than one material, hold down CTRL and click their names)
3. Apply the Shader Preset you saved
Note that you can also choose to save a Custom Preset in the dialog. That means you could (for example), only choose to affect the Diffuse Color by making it white, but leave all the other settings unchanged. That would leave things like Bump maps in place. To do that, just choose Custom, expand the channels and only check the ones you want to affect.
Folks, please don't ever take anything I may say to be gospel. I'm just as prone to being wrong as anyone else, and if I am, please say something -- I'd rather someone pointed out my mistake(s) than for me to continue making an ass of myself. Anyhow, I'm glad UberHair seems to be working, and to be honest, it never occurred to me that different vendors have different methods of setting up their models, so UberHair's results may vary. Personally, I like how it works with LittleFox's and Goldtassel's models. Have a good one...
I don't think anyone took it that way Sarsifus. I think you had some valuable contributions to the topic. We all learn through interacting together ;)