Carrara Hair

Mosk the Scribe

Can you adjust the length of the root in Carrara Hair?

I ask, because I'd like to keep the very root thick, but for short hair, it looks like I'm seeing mostly the root instead of the tapering / thinner end.

 

Also finding it it hard to modify once many guides are in place - for instance, if there's an area where the hair's not dense enough, I've tried adding with density tool, buit often seems to have no effect.

Even if i remove guide hairs in the area so I can set down new ones and add density, often doesn't fix the thin hair in that area.  Was wondering if Carrara stops recalculating after certain amount of hair or guides have been placed.

Overall has been a frustrating experience - getting pretty close, but having certain problems that look like they should be trivial to fix, but that don't quite work as intended.

 

Just started from scratch on a genesis head that I turned into an object, and carefully placed guides for bald areas in beginning and then other guides for rest, and worked much better.

Going to import that back into main scene now and see if I can parent to real head as a haircap.

I don't even need dynamic hair - just a close match to a real person.

Wish I knew what was going on behind the scenes - and should have started from scratch earlier.

Have had problems with genesis cap not exactly fitting my morphed head - and that leads to own set of problems - and in deforming the cap to fix placement issues, created issues with transparent spots on render.  

Wouldn't mind the learning curve except this is for an active project with a deadline, and the hair has led to unanticipated delays.

Would welcome any pointers (have watched the videotuts by John Stark - and again, I don't need dynamic hair in this case) 

Jonstark

I freely admit I'm pretty rusty as real life has kept me away from rendering in general, and more specifically it's been a little while since I fooled around in the hair room, but I wanted to advise you can change the perceived thickness of the hair within the hair shader itself, there is a specifc section of the shader that let's you make the root much thicker than the ends, and set it how you like, You can't really adjust the length of the root exactly, but with finessing the thickness settings you can make it so that it's thick for a longer distance before it begins to taper/thin, etc.

The density tool initially flummoxed me, but once I realized that 'adding density' doesn't actually add any hairs, just repositions the ones that are already there, if you want higher hair density in certain area you may need to increase the total number of hairs overall.  My cheat in the vids is that I like to use a hair cap to 'cover the thin balding areas' and then I can render much faster with a lower hair count as the viewer can't really see the difference, but that only works for hairstyles where they are supposed to be thick and not give the appearance of thinning.  For a balding hairstlye you won't have the same option and might just have to go with a higher number of hairs (ironic that a balding hairstlye might require more hairs to be rendered).  Alternately you could use 3d paint to take a haircap and make the areas you want to be thick to be visible, but paint some transparency in the areas you want to be especially thin, that would let you 

Mosk the Scribe

Thanks, Jonstark. After starting over - and fixing my haircap ahead of time - was able to get something workable.  May do some additional testing in the future, but that will have to wait till after this project.

Stezza

You can try different options when starting with the hair... either geometry or UV based ectt.. they make a difference

 

also divide your hair base into sections eg.. sides, top, back and adjust the flow of hair that way.. remember you can adjust individual lengths of guides if need be or group of guides which always helps..

edited forgot to post example of the hair I just did.. this took around 5 minutes to get this far.