Better short hair for men
Serene Night
Posts: 17,647
I honestly find myself a little bit frustated with the state of male hair G3M. I was checking out the latest mass effect game, and thinking, gee, that style looks so much better than the men's hairstyles I have to use...
There seems to be a lot of problem areas for men's hair, and men's hair styles in general seem really unrealistic to me for some reason especailly short style.
For example, frequently the hairlines frequently don't look right. If the hair is fiber mesh, it looks thin and sparse and odd particularly in the front. There are a lot of mohawks and long hair, but not a lot of practical short styles. When there is a short style, it fits oddly around the ears, or doesn't have correct fit around the face, lacking sideburns, or masculine shaping (designed for a smoother female hairline) or is odd up on the forehead like the character has no hairline. There are shadows or gaping areas. Sometimes the nape looks odd or hairlines look weird. There aren't enough adjustments to correct these areas, or increase hair volume on the top, so sometimes certain styles make the head look tiny because of the shape or style or that it is too flat and matching the volume which should be there with that style.
Fibremesh, although nice, can look pretty bad on its own.. Lately even some of the better Pa's have been producing odd fiber mesh styles which just don't look real and the hairlines in particular in the front look really bad with thick hairs and sparse hairlines.
I'd really like just some normal short all purpose men's haircuts that have some fits and adjustments and look real. I don't really want fiber mesh, I just don't want big hair, vampire hair, thinning hair, or hair with the hairspray look. Just average thick short hair. Pretty please?
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Wow... I hadn't noticed any of that in mine, but maybe my closeups aren't close enough for it to become a problem. At the risk of you showing me something I can't unsee, could you post a screenshot of two or three of your complaints?
Well.. I don't want to call specific vendors out, but if you look at the latest male hair new releases where the hair is short and the hairline is visible, it isn't difficult to see that the hair doesn't look very realistic especially where it joins with the scalp. The hairs are just too big, and look stiff and thready like grass rather than hair. Women's styles tend not to have so much of an issue because they are longer and cover the hairline with falls and waves of hair.
But men's styles have tighter lines, and for example the fiber mesh hairs in the forehead are too large and look funky. Basically, not good for closeup. Maybe from a distance, but nope... IT looks odd.
HEre's a way to look at the hair in the store. You can see the styles of hair. Review some of the high and tight styles. Most of the issues I have are clearly visible in the promo art.
https://www.daz3d.com/hair
The hairline shape is one of my own longstanding issues. I mean, I get why it happens: a really really really really really REALLY huge majority of all clothing and hair is for females, because that's by far the larger market. Most vendors don't want to exclude a huge amount of sales, so they'll make shorter hair so that it works for females, even if it's meant primarily for males.
The difficulty being, of course, men and women have different hairlines. Men's hairlines arch forward at the temple and curves in above that, while womens hairlines curve in or go in a sort-of-straight line from the forehead to around the ear. Men have more dense sideburns because it's basically part of the beard.
Because they're meant to serve a sort of unisex purpose (whether or not they're really designed for it), the vast majority of "men's" hair has female hairlines. One thing I remember vividly, and being thoroughly amused by -- though I don't expect the vendor was -- was the raft of complaints about Xanadu Hair for G2F, precisely because the hairline read too male. And they weren't really wrong; it was and remains the only female hair I've bought for the express purpose of using on males. (My own complaint about it was purely state-of-the-tech related; fibermesh hair from even just two years ago was so incredibly RAM-heavy that it was really hard to use unless you had an epic computer, which I did not, and do not. Alas.) Vendors need to go where the money is, and to keep the majority of the customers as happy as possible, which, as far as hair goes, means that it's designed so it can be used on females without looking too strange even when it says "male" on the cover, so to speak.
Honestly, for the vast majority of hair, I'd be OK with a morph to move the temple forward and back. In both male and female hair, so that we can use them as needed without it looking strange. (Mind, I'm not saying that the other things you mention aren't issues, just that I'd be really happy if this one could be addressed, especially since it seems like it would be easier to do. SAV had exactly that morph in some of her hairs, though almost all of hers were long enough not to really need it very often.)
I think you summed this issue up nicely. Iray's realism is pretty unforgiving though to unrealistic hair, so at some point PA's will need to step up their game. We have so little men's hairstyles as it is, that having only a few really decent ones is really difficult. Plus with the way shadows work, having hair that is over-articulated like some fiber mesh is, can look really bizarro.
IT seems like the men's offerings in some way are getting worse not better.
I could use some shorter styles sort of like Kaden Alenko's. Just sort of universal short thick close-cropped cut.
Hair is what I have least of from the DAZ Store, male or female, because it is so 1) inflexible and unrealistic and 2) Too darn expensive for me to buy 50 women's or men's hairs that are the same style in slightly altered poses. And for men, LOL, honestly, it looks like the PAs are using their sons' bedhead hair after seeing them getting up in the morning on a year of weekends as a style guide.
I'm hoping the LAMH 2.0 functionality improvements will improve what we have on have on offer although I still can't afford and am unwilling to buy countless varieties of male bedhead hair and the classic long straight female tresses.
I appreciate Serene Night's unwillingness to name specific PAs with regard to niggling details, and to say PA X has not produced a really great men's short hair style would certainly be inappropriate. However I do agree that there is a general lack of good short hair styles for men. Most of the Men's hairstyles seem to be following a theme and so have a specific style that is limited in application. Mowhawks, Fade/Undercut, Pompadour, Ponytails and Quiffs might be great for specific applications, but where are the normal everyday hairstyles for everyday normal working guys?
The attitude of society may be sexist when it comes to womens and mens hairstyles but that is the way things are! In general what is acceptable and what is normal for women's appearence is far wider in range than what is acceptable and normal for men. Sexist? Sure it is! Tell me what isn't? How many female nipples do you see in society compared to male nipples, that's sexist too, but hypocricy is rife in society, so we deal with it. In exactly the same way, society says the range of acceptable hairstyles for men is smaller than women, so please PAs please provide us some more acceptable and normal mens hairstyles.
The styles I'm looking for don't look very complex to me. Maybe they aren't made because they aren't exciting enough? There is no stray hair, no mohawks, it is actually very close to the head so you can wear a helmet, but not a buzz cut so no visible scalp.
Maybe a styled few inches? There needs to be sideburns though, and a hairline, just not a thin receding one unless it is optional.
This screenshot sort of shows what I'd like to see. You've got a nice hairline, there are sideburns, the hairline goes in. This is a game screenshot, but the hair looks better to me style-wise, even though it doesn't have the polys because its just regular, useful and masculine, without a female hairline.
Yeah, I saw some typical mail haircuts in the DAZ gallery that were very good in practical styling but it looks like they were painted on in post.
@serene night,
I agree with you completely!!!
I now develop my own content , but have not made any attempts at hair yet
But in Desperation, I have recenty retasked an ancient poser4 era, freebie hair for Mike2,
by bringing it into my modeling program and refitting it to the G2& G3 Males. and exporting out to re-rig in Daz Studio.
It a shame that a 15 year old freebie hair prop looks better than many of the male hair offering being sold in the store today.
That looks really nice wolf359, I like the simple clean lines of that.
I can understand why many PA's might not want to make such simple hair styles; they are not exciting, just ordinary and common (except they are very UNcommon as hair pieces!).
However, in such cases I would hope that DAZ3d would step in and get one of their resident artists to toss off a few normal every day hairstyles, to support the community. They can be quite simple as they are short enough not to move much as the head moves.
Perhaps the same argument can be used for other common items of clothing and also common props?
I can imagine the argument that releasing cheap simple hairstyles (or clothes or props) might reduce sales of the more complex and or specialised styles that PAs are producing. If that is the reason, then please can some PA make a complex hair figure that changes into 5 different simple hairstyles at the click of a button, with great textures. I'd buy that!
I'm not so sure that a "simple hair" like the one Serene Night showed us is really as simple as might be supposed.
I think until there is more focus on making dedicated male products, we're probably going to have unrealistic men's hair, and hairlines as modellers will continue to try to make short hair for men which is designed for the female head in a unisex fashion.
That said I agree that designing a shorter realistic hair with a masculine hairline might be challenging because of the close fit and the transparencies involved.
A few nicely designed but shorter styles would certainly be useful to those of us however who are seeking to make realistic men with shorter hair and want to avoid the problems in fiber mesh hairlines we are currently seeing.
Well I haven't bought the Dante Pro Bundle yet and may not but the Dante Pro Bundle exposes another problem with Fibre Mesh hair that I've seen in multiple products: the hair looks more like bird feathers than hair.
If that isn't fibre mesh hair, sorry, but the bird feather look of it makes me think is is.
Johnathan hair and Thomas Hair are quite similar in design. Thomas has more wave, and a bit more defined temple. But the shape around the ears is pretty much looks the same.
Idiris hair looks a lot like Colin hair. But perhaps a bit of Leandros.
Neither style really looks that unique to me and has been done before.
I have to support Serene Night on this one. I haven't really zommed in on hairlines per-se except in a couple of instances but I do wish they had more receding temples morphs often. That aside, I have looked at overall shorter hair styles for men and they tend to be longish.Several recent ones were sort of 1970s era inspired it seemed, which meant they were a bit shaggy. I tend to like to render modern military or cold ware era spy and sci-fi stuff from the 1960s (james Bond, Star Trek, you know - Mad Men style stuff) and finding a basic side parted short hair tapered to a buzzcut at the neckline and longer on top but neat, not shaggy is darned hard to find. Even a cut like JFK had where it was very full on top was always impecably neat and combed except when he was on a boat or something. I'm talking about wanting (and willing to buy) a well kempt hair like any of the pics below. Which, by the way, would generally work in modern business settings too which is why I inclded a couple of moder equivalents. I would think they would be easier to make than complex fibermesh or strandy transmap hairs, I want a little dimmension to it but the neatness of the styles means the strandiness would only have to be a little to be convincing although the more modern variations tend to be less neat (no V05 or brill cream or whatever in the hair). Yet they seem to almost never be made. Curious.
I think that is true. I want to hopefully avoid the fur or feather look. Hair that is short should not be so articulated that ever fiber is visible as look like animal fur or feathers
Short styles like those depicted would be welcome. :-). I like in particular number 3 and 5. I do want less receding hairlines and more full head of hair but more receding lines should be possible once a fuller head is developed using morphs.
One area that current styles needs attention is adjustment morphs around the ears. A number of recent styles have no adjustments there and a lot of odd looking space where the invisible cap fits the scalp. Most people aren't bare above the ears unles sbald or specifically shaved in that region.
I was in a meeting of about 50 people this afternoon, the majority of which were men as it happened. Looking around, I saw many different short hairstyles and only one person had a "bird's nest with shaven sides".
No shaggy dogs, no fancy quiffs, no ponytails! I realised that none of their hair-dressers were 3d hair designers!
Anyone recognize this hair? I suspect most have it.
No, but I'll add it to my wish list unless it's some ancient M3 hair that can be scaled and manually fitted.
The uploaded file name says Armani Hair, so that is what I'd guess.
Armani by default is a popadour-ish style. It has some squish morphs to reduce the top. By default it does not appear to be the same hair, but perhaps some of the morphs included tame it to a more short length. I honestly haven't looked at it too much before because it is pretty big hair and not particularly a fashion I see anywhere.
Duh on me, well the file name said it all but I would have not guessed that is Armani Hair because I have it and the icon for it in DAZ Content Library looks like cheap dyed feathers your child might of won at a State Fair or something.
Given that, alot of the bad hairs I've been ignoring I'll have to try and see if applying different hair shader settings and such can make them look reasonably groomed.
Yeah, I had the same reaction to it initially.
It does have a sizable number of adjustments for a hair that's included in the Genesis 3 Starter set, and I used a number of them to get it this far down; I may play with the limits on it to see if I can get it lower yet.
Neftis does pretty well with hairline morphs, and she has some older, fairly neutral men's hairstyles like Preppy Hair and Mature Mark. They take Iray hair shaders pretty well, parent correctly to Gensis 3, and from there it's just a matter of scaling and translating (and using the forehead/sideburns/nape morphs) to get them to fit. 3Dream/Mairy were also a great team (I say were, they don't seem to have too many recent joint projects even at Rendo, and their last work for Daz dates to Genesis 1), and I seem to recall them having morphs for more masculine hairlines as well.
This is not to deny the validity of your complaints about what's currently being released, just to point out that there may be an attitude of "why bother, there are perfectly good older versions of the 'boring' hairstyles, and creating something to replace them just isn't going to sell as well as the fantasy stuff
Neftis recent work for men's hair have not appealed to me as the fiber mesh is thin in front, and very obviously fiber mesh and looks less natural and soft than their earlier work. That is too bad. I own all of it, including the recent stuff, but I have been disappointed with the realism and the softness and haven't used it as much as I probably would if it were not fiber mesh.
One technique I have been experimenting and this may work with older hairs is to use a good skull cap, such as the one that came with 'the business hair' at rendo, and parenting the hair to the skull cap. In the businss hair's case, it has a ton of morphs on the skull cap and around the ears, to make adjustments a bit easier. This seems to work for hairs like the Johnathan hair which recently came out. I Also use Nadino's freebie forehead minimizer which can adjust the height of the hair. Too often the hairline is pretty low on the face, giving the men a routinely low hairline look. This combined with the pa's tendency to make eyebrows really high, gives the men really small foreheads which doesn't look realistic to me.
I do think that there should be some standard guidelines for how men's hairlines look and how hair should fit. This should include proper hairline and adjustment to the areas around the face and temples.
@Serene Night. Much as I personally think that many of the existing mens hairs are a disaster, I don't agree that PAs should be restricted in what they want to make and sell. Just because I think a hair figure is terrible doesn't mean that many other people don't really like it and benefit from it. Freedom of expression is restricted enough as it is, let's not make it any worse. However, the question of "fit" is another matter entirely; this is a quality control issue. I would encourage DAZ3d to reject hair items that don't fit properly and don't have at least a minimum set of fit adjustment morphs.
Not saying that at all. I support freedom of expression.
At any rate, I have no control over what Pa's do, besides buying their products or choosing to avoid them. From what I gather DAZ store managers do have control over what is published here, and their standards are pretty strict.
That said I don't think marketing women's hair products as male content is fair to the customer either.
It is entirely a fit and standards issue which the store needs guidelines for... which is what I mean. If the design is for a man, there should be men's fits, and hairline options. If its for ladies I would expect the same.
I can only imagine the outrage which would occur if the situation were reversed and all of Victoria 7 hairstyles were mostly styles worn by modern men with only masculine hairline options. This is just an issue that needs to be addressed.
I'm learning alot about hairlines from the images posted and the discussion. Glad it was brought up! I'd like to see more curly styles, not just wavy- curly. We are pretty limited in those too. I agree the unisex hair does the men a disservice, their hairlines are different at the hairline and temple.