Garibaldi Express: Hair and Fur Plugin Beta [Commercial]

mjc1016

futurebiscuit said:

mjc1016 said:

The curves are very, very RAM intensive...more so than anything else with this.

I need to write some documentation at some point about better management of memory with garibaldi.
Memory usable while rendering the example files should not exceed 2.5GB with 100% of curves when I've tested them on MacOS/Win 64bit.
On particular 32bit machine setups processes may be restricted to using 2GB of memory. If you are finding it hard to render the examples then reduce the render percentage in the garibaldi daz studio parameters.

As mentioned in the beta email, on the website and in this forum a 64bit machine with 4GB of memory is currently recommended as the minimum requirements for the current early beta versions.
I sorry but I can't guarantee a good experience for using the Garibaldi Express examples with anything less at the moment.
Hopefully memory usage can be optimised with time, but I can't promise miracles.

One of the nice things about WINE...I've got 'full' access' to the 4 GBs, but with the example, it will 'eat' 3.85 GB of RAM during a render...which basically means everything else is dumped to swap space, but still chugs along. Without the shadowmaps, it is a little 'tamer', but still memory intensive.

I'm having a problem with creation...basically, I can get any single section to work, but moving from, let's say, painting to the next step, I get a crash. I'll email you a dump later.

I suppose I could always dump it on the media center box, create there and use on my machine...(now, if I can get the kids away from the TV, maybe I'll give it a go...).

futurebiscuit

RKane_1 said:

I had a strange problem with the paint and distribute section in that there was a visible line where hair was not created and I painted and repainted the areas but to no avail. The hairless line was along a section where the face uv map and the body uv map meet.

Yes there is a known issue with the paint tool leaving a 1 pixel gap at uv seams (this will cause a slight bald strip on the hair but is almost impossible to notice in final output normally). It will be fixed in later betas but is not a priority.

The main issue here is that the distribution preview is using the wrong surface normals. I made some changes for beta 3, so now during hair transforms on animated/morphing meshes a more stable custom generated surface normal which are used to re-orientated the hair. Unfortunately this change seems to have propagated into the distribution hair preview. This will be fixed in the next beta.
It does not affect the styled hair output as the direction of the style curves set the direction of the outputted hair.
So it's basically a previewing glitch.

futurebiscuit

ecocam said:

Pushes selected guide hairs toward a perpendicular orientation to the surface. The bias for this tool is closer to the root of the hair than to the endpoint."

Sounds like the effect when using the surface attract tool set from -1 to 0?

futurebiscuit

Alisa Uh-Lisa said:

I haven't had time to even look at all the tutorials which I think will make a huge difference - all I've done is open it up and play for a second. Seriously cool, though I have a LOT to figure out...

Unfortually I haven't had time to make more than the simple introduction tutorial as I hoped.
After I get the next beta out I'll hopefully have some more time to do this.

futurebiscuit

MrPoser said:

Here is a ponytail.... but when I add a texture to genesis... the hair vanishes..
Yes, this is a known issue when the UVs maps settings are changed. The uv maps in daz dictate what part of a character is in which surface it appears.
I've almost finished writing a solution to this which will be in the next version of the beta.

futurebiscuit

fivecat said:

MrPoser was correct, it is the UV set -- I just tested it.. I had gone from Genesis Female to V4 and that had affected the hair. So you need to start with the UV set you intend to use before adding the hair.
At the moment that what I would recommend.

Does anyone know how to make the hair texture follow the base texture?

1) Create a new colour texture in the Garibaldi paint workspace.
2) Use the export button. This will save a directory containing the textures as png image files for each surface.
3) Edit the image files in your favourite image manipulation program such as pasting in existing surface textures (make sure the saved image files are 1024x1024 png files of the orginal file names).
4) Use the import button in the garibaldi paint workspace to load the directory of edited image files back in as a new garibaldi texture. Make sure you use a new texture name and select colour from the popup menu.
5) You can now select these textures in the colour options in the garibaldi distribution workspace.

nieman151_516f901a4a

futurebiscuit said:

fivecat said:

Does anyone know how to make the hair texture follow the base texture?

1) Create a new colour texture in the Garibaldi paint workspace.
2) Use the export button. This will save a directory containing the textures as png image files for each surface.
3) Edit the image files in your favourite image manipulation program such as pasting in existing surface textures (make sure the saved image files are 1024x1024 png files of the orginal file names).
4) Use the import button in the garibaldi paint workspace to load the directory of edited image files back in as a new garibaldi texture. Make sure you use a new texture name and select colour from the popup menu.
5) You can now select these textures in the colour options in the garibaldi distribution workspace.

Thanks, I'm off to try it now.

SimonJM

My first bash ...

futurebiscuit

mjc1016 said:

One of the nice things about WINE...I've got 'full' access' to the 4 GBs, but with the example, it will 'eat' 3.85 GB of RAM during a render...

Wow I don't know what WINE does but that does not sound right at all. I just did a quick test render of one of the examples and the memory peak was around 1.75GB of RAM.
During preview in the Garibaldi editor even with 100% and hair as mesh it only peaks at 2.2GB. With normal non mesh hair at 100% is less than 1GB. But using 100% preview with this amount of hair is not recomended anyway.
That scene uses about 370MB when in the daz workspace, a blank scene with genesis default figue uses about 250MB as comparision.

This is with Windows 7 64bit. I know Mac OS X is slightly more memory hungry but not much.
Like I said before WINE won't be supported, so use it at your own risk with Garibaldi.

mjc1016

I'm going to do some more runs later...

futurebiscuit

MrPoser said:

This is a nice looking system but it easily overwhelmed my system if I do more than a simple hair or work with a character instead of the bare genesis.

If all you need is simple smooth'ish hair try turning the segment length size up in the interpolation options in the garibaldi style workspace.

nieman151_516f901a4a

I tried using a hair texture with a brightly colored bong figure so the hair would have obvious color changes. For anyone trying this, be aware you'll need to flip your texture in your image editor (it is vertically flipped like in zbrush). It seems to work okay so it'll be nice for animal fur.

futurebiscuit

fivecat said:

I tried using a hair texture with a brightly colored bong figure so the hair would have obvious color changes. For anyone trying this, be aware you'll need to flip your texture in your image editor (it is vertically flipped like in zbrush). It seems to work okay so it'll be nice for animal fur.

Do you think it would be best if I flip the textures during import and export to conform to the Daz texture convention?
Glad you got the import/export feature to work. Seems to be working well for you.

nieman151_516f901a4a

futurebiscuit said:

fivecat said:

I tried using a hair texture with a brightly colored bong figure so the hair would have obvious color changes. For anyone trying this, be aware you'll need to flip your texture in your image editor (it is vertically flipped like in zbrush). It seems to work okay so it'll be nice for animal fur.

Do you think it would be best if I flip the textures during import and export to conform to the Daz texture convention?

It doesn't matter to me, as I have to use photoshop anyway to prepare the images, but it probably wouldn't hurt to flip the texture on import/export. One less thing for people to get confused over. ;-)

foleypro

fivecat said:

I tried using a hair texture with a brightly colored bong figure so the hair would have obvious color changes. For anyone trying this, be aware you'll need to flip your texture in your image editor (it is vertically flipped like in zbrush). It seems to work okay so it'll be nice for animal fur.

In Zbrush you have the option to flip the UV map...

But maybe on import for this plugin an option to flip UV's from ZBrush would be nice for folks that don't know about this feature in ZB...

foleypro

futurebiscuit said:

But I don't know how to animate this hair.

You could go in and add a rig with extension bones and add limits on XYZ...I have done it when I have used Fiber Mesh in DS...
This wouldn't be any different...
I have exported out as OBJ file in DS..Have to re-uvmap ...

Mattymanx

Mattymanx said:

futurebiscuit said:

Mattymanx said:

I noticed I can only use this on Genesis atm. Will the plugin be updated to support other figures in the future?

It should work on any daz figure, modern or legacy.
Send me a email detailing the character you're having issues with and hopefully we will be able to resolve the issue for the next beta.

Let me try again. I did not poke at it for long.

Ok, it does work with any figure. I am not sure what I did wrong the first few times.

Has anyone else tried using this on Geografted parts for Genesis? I tried on the genitals and DS crased on me each time. Yet I could then delete that hair and create a new node for Genesis and it worked.

nieman151_516f901a4a

A quick try at a furred jaguar (Lynne's jaguar morph and texture on Millennium cat). I think fur looks better with a reduced primary specular strength. I also changed the specular color. Importing maps is a bit confusing -- I would like to see an easier method of importing maps for distribution and hair color.

nieman151_516f901a4a

Mattymanx said:

Has anyone else tried using this on Geografted parts for Genesis? I tried on the genitals and DS crased on me each time. Yet I could then delete that hair and create a new node for Genesis and it worked.

I just tried the M5 genitals and it crashed studio for me too. That's the only geografted figure I have for genesis.

shaaelia

Changing the UV maps back to V4 worked well. Here's the hair I was working on before:

ekoham

futurebiscuit said:

ecocam said:

Pushes selected guide hairs toward a perpendicular orientation to the surface. The bias for this tool is closer to the root of the hair than to the endpoint."

Sounds like the effect when using the surface attract tool set from -1 to 0?

It´s similar, but not equal. The atract tool moves a lot the endpoint of the curve, the 'Puff roots' tools would act like a gradient, affecting more the base vertices and less the tip vertices. I guess that the atract tool is more like a kind of reset tool.

The problem is that when brushing the curve we tend to flat it over the scalp.

You also could provide the option to retain or not retain the curves lenght in the puff roots tool.

Finally I want to report that under Windows7 64 bits the slider of Style>Comb Brush Settings>Fallof is not responsible, we need to set the value manually editing the field.

The figure that is attached will illustrate better my request :

foleypro

Observation...

I think it would be Awesome to be able to go full screen instead of a window...(I am getting old and the eye's are not what they used to be)

Would also love to be able to have a basic Rig for short,Medium,Long hair/fur...(I can supply that if needed)

Also the ability to call upon the GOZ,Morph loader Pro, PSP or PS in the work flow would really be nice...

araneldon

@ecocam that looks nifty. Also I think it'd be nice to have a comb brush that affects the tip more than the rest.

Edit: and configurable angle for the curve tool would be good too.

Had a quick play today, below the result.

futurebiscuit

foleypro said:

jerrycrow said:

But I don't know how to animate this hair.

You could go in and add a rig with extension bones and add limits on XYZ...I have done it when I have used Fiber Mesh in DS...
This wouldn't be any different...
I have exported out as OBJ file in DS..Have to re-uvmap ...

I don't understand what you mean here... any daz studio deformers do not directly effect garibaldi hair.

futurebiscuit

Mattymanx said:

Has anyone else tried using this on Geografted parts for Genesis? I tried on the genitals and DS crased on me each time. Yet I could then delete that hair and create a new node for Genesis and it worked.

I'm not familiar with how the geograft feature works. Sounds like your changing the topology of the mesh you are applying the garibaldi hair to. That's not something I expected to happen.

futurebiscuit

Shaaelia said:

Changing the UV maps back to V4 worked well. Here's the hair I was working on before

The UV issue will be fixed in the beta 5 release happening later today.

foleypro

futurebiscuit said:

foleypro said:

jerrycrow said:

But I don't know how to animate this hair.

You could go in and add a rig with extension bones and add limits on XYZ...I have done it when I have used Fiber Mesh in DS...
This wouldn't be any different...
I have exported out as OBJ file in DS..Have to re-uvmap ...

I don't understand what you mean here... any daz studio deformers do not directly effect garibaldi hair.

What I mean id you would have to Rig the hair with bones to allow animations or different styles in DS Viewport...

Maybe down the road you can have a Tab inside of garibaldi that would allow us to attach a Hair rig to Garibaldi hair before transformation over to DS...Or even have Preset rigs that a user can click and get the Basic hair rig applied..Short,Medium and Long hair with a special rig for Afro's and such styling of hair...

futurebiscuit

ecocam said:

It´s similar, but not equal. The atract tool moves a lot the endpoint of the curve, the 'Puff roots' tools would act like a gradient, affecting more the base vertices and less the tip vertices. I guess that the atract tool is more like a kind of reset tool.
The problem is that when brushing the curve we tend to flat it over the scalp.

Yeah, having the curves become flat over the surface when aggressively combing is a issue. Something like this tool sounds like a good solution. Although I doubt there is time to get it into version 1.

Finally I want to report that under Windows7 64 bits the slider of Style>Comb Brush Settings>Fallof is not responsible, we need to set the value manually editing the field.

Yeah I'll fix this in the next beta, thanks.

Mattymanx

futurebiscuit said:

I'm not familiar with how the geograft feature works.

That makes two of us!

If you cannot find info on geografting in the SDK then you may want to contact someone at DAZ for more info.

Mattymanx

Colour me confused cause atm it is not crashing at all when I apply hair to a geografted part.