How to create "Hair cards"?
duckbomb
Posts: 585
Hello! Just a quick question looking for other 3D enthusiasts opinion here...
I've been working throughout the years to become less dependant on marketplace items to provide the exact right items I need for my scenes. First, I started with becomming less reliant on morphs and props, and so I learned ZBrush/substance painter so that I can create my own props and modify them as I like. Then, I picked up Marvelous Designer to handle all of my clothes. I basically only use clothes that I've made myself or edited from assets purchased from other stores.
Now, however, I'm running into an issue with hair. I do know that I can get realistic results going strand based, and that there are industry standard tools that help me to create dynamic hair based on curves, but I'm more interested in creating hair the old fashioned way.
I don't intend to move away from DAZ (which, understandably, some of you may suggest) because I like the "asset management" and how simple it is to set up scenes, but I do want to move to a place where I can create my own hair styles and have full control over them.
Does anybody know what kind of process the popular card-based hair vendors use to get their results?
Alternatively, does anybody know of a way that I can create more dynamic hair, like in ZBrush, but have it saved out as an asset (with textures) that I can then import to my scenes as a prop or something?
Essentially, I want to keep using DAZ for my overall scene management and setup, but I'm looking for software to learn to free myself from the need to rely on vendor-created hair in every situation.
Please note, I support our vendors and am not looking to cut them out of my own workflow, but for main characters and such it's nice to have a little more control over what I can produce...
I'm interested in your thoughts!
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Comments
Search youtube, google etc for "real time hair" tutorials. Be prepared for a lot of work.
I have been looking online, but I asked here, specifically, because we use DAZ, whereas most of the tutorials and stuff online are centered around much more professional software. I was hoping there would be a specific software or direction someone could point me in, but given the interest in my question I suppose this is not the right place to ask.
As you suggest, I'll just start online and figure it out from there.
Basically a hair card is a strip of geometry. UVmap it and unfold said uvmap. Then to texture it one applies either hair images, painted hair images, etc.
This free utility can provide hours of fun making hair textures: https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/g1m6P/fibershop-realtime-hair-card-texturing-tool
There is also this product which has a free demo:
https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/j7PY/hair-strand-designer-v1-7-0-full-perpetual-license-free-demo-and-sample-set
And here is one set of free hair groom photos: https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/nOPWB/groom-photo-reference-free-malin-03
And for what it's worth, there is this free card plus a video tutorial which is also on YouTube where one can apply the subtitles for translation.
https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/DM8k/free-hair-cards-texture-atlas
And yes, we can create and save hair that is made inside of Daz Studio :-)
https://youtu.be/DjH1BnKzLmE
"I have been looking online, but I asked here, specifically, because we use DAZ, whereas most of the tutorials and stuff online are centered around much more professional software. I was hoping there would be a specific software or direction someone could point me in, but given the interest in my question I suppose this is not the right place to ask.
As you suggest, I'll just start online and figure it out from there."
You can use any modelling software you like or are proficient in. The concepts are still exactly the same. A uv'd plane, an alpha/opacity map, a difuse map, time, and tolerance for repeating the task over and over.
*edited to add a link*
https://www.daz3d.com/complex-hair-creation-part-1-modeling ;
Not to self promote, but I also made this very crude guide on SBH Editor in Daz Studio: https://www.deviantart.com/uncannyvalet/journal/Creating-Strand-Based-Hair-Daz-Studio-957594505 ;
Since you mentioned you already have ZBrush, you might want to check out "RealTime Hair V2 ZBrush Plugin
I haven't used it myself but the reviews look pretty good
i would expect that the concept of 'real time' hair is going to be changing soon, so is it even worth learning hair cards as a long term skillset? I suppose using hair cards with texture and opacity map can be a bit easier to arrive at a desired appearance sometimes, so maybe it will always be a worthwhile approach, at least as supplementary approach to strand hair for parts where it's hard to get strands to behave.
well Zbrush fibermesh can be scaled up into noodles of hair than can be transmapped and Dforced like cloth
video
Self-promoting can be good, yes. I was not aware of your tutorial and now we all are, thanks :-)
I'm glad that I had purchased the Garibaldi plug-in way back when because it has the "unsupported" .obj export option available. However the SBH Editor will be keeping up-to-date with D/S and can be saved out in some fashion so all is well.
Awesome! THank you for the replies! I have to admit, I didn't realize that there was so much flexibility here... I'm learning that my basic assumptions of how hair cards work and how to create them are off base. I thought I'd need to do something specific to get hair from something like ZBrush to be regular polygons for something like DAZ, but now I'm understanding that it's a bit less complicated (at least in that one regard). I'm also realizing that how I currently UV unwrap my objects (props in ZBrush and clothes in MD) won't work here, because I need more control of where the textures go and how the tiles are lined up.
THis has been very helpful, I'll start at the tutorials and links listed above. Thank you very much for your input!!
Thank you! OK, so this is where my presumptions were off base... I had assumed that there was something specific I needed to do or watch out for when trying to integrate other workflows into something for use with something that was to be as simple as a prop (essentially) within DAZ. This is great, thank you very much!
LOL I literally have this exact link opened up in a different tab since yesterday trying to figure out if this would work or not. This is a good example of where I was confused... I had assumed something like this wouldnt work because I need actual, texturable geometry, but now I'm seeing I really should just be looking as to how to convert it. I do think I'll look into this, I feel very comfortable with ZBrush compaired to other platforms. THanks!