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Looks great, Phil. If you have not done so yet, you should also start a thread in the PA Commercial forum.
Phil, this is an excellent classic bob with a fringe! This hairstyle really suits Stephanie.
I owe you for your wonderful plugin!
Now done!
Tim might know if this kind of stuff works, but he has an ongoing coming soon thread, a Facebook presence, etc. I follow his Daz forum coming soon thread in the PA forum so sometimes get notified when it gets updated.
Any hints on what the unique morphs are? Are they for styles, or for wind, both, other?
There are both style and wind morphs. Because it starts as a Carara dynamic hair, I have used brushing, cutting, wave, frizz and kink parameters to generate a range of interesting morphs, which give great variety to the hair both individually and combined. Some of these would be very difficult to achieve with conventionally modelled polygon hair.
Veronica, do you have a coming soon thread in the PACommercial forum? If not, should consider the next time one of your products is close to hitting the store, and consider keeping it longer term. Of course, I wouldn’t know, and it might be a waste of time, but it does seem like it could help a little without too much risk or effort. Again, encourage Tim to correct if I am being naive.
Ted, my idiosyncracy is never to say anything in advance, just out of superstition.
i am a firm believer in “if anything can go wrong, it will, at the worst possible moment.” Also known as Murphy’s Law., I always respect people being prudent.
I *seem* to sell less if I don't post about it, although I don't have definitive numbers, and there are lots of other factors in play (like March Madness etc. events, for instance) . . .
I vacillate between having a single thread for everything, and having a thread per product. Last year I had a single thread; this year I'm back to separate ones. I don't know if this makes a difference. (this is for the thread in the Commons). With a single thread you need to keep changing the title, or it isn't relevant, and then people can't find discussions about earlier products. With multiple threads, people are not automatically subscribed, so may not see it. Decisions, decisions!
I usually post in this forum a few days before I post in the Commons, mostly because my thread here gets more engagement, and often I'll post different images (more Carrara-specific stuff here, for example). We don't generally know the release date until about a week before, and there's no point posting before you have a date, cos people will forget. We're discouraged from saying what the actual release date is.
Alexandra 8 with Paige Hair
I like it!
A couple more promo images to show alternative styles that are included.
Looks excellent, Phil! I applaud your creativity in using Philemo's genius plugin, and turning Carrara hair into a sellable DS product. :)
A few months ago, you said:
"This plugin has come on tremendously over the last few weeks and is now much more reliable and useful for producing polygon based hairs. Doing this strand by strand (which is how most hair models are still done!) is tedious in the extreme, and so this method provides a much more natural and easy way to make hair models, which can be used in any other program (including Daz Studio and Poser). I wouldn't be surprised if this plugin by itself attracts quite a few people to using Carrara."
Does this now open the gates for other PA's to follow your lead?
lovely work PhilW congrats!
Potentially yes. I have to say that there is still a fair amount of work to go from the output from the plugin to getting to something saleable - but it is a lot easier and faster than doing it all manually! So yes, I hope that it does attract the attention of hair makers to try out Carrara.
Well, I finally decided to take a stab at creating a transmap for prop hair. For my first attempt, I grew some hair on a grid, turned the grid upside down, applied a white-to-gray gradient for color with vertical scan lines, adjusted the length variation and density, and rendered to a black background. OK , not the greatest, but it was just the first test.
Back in the days of Poser 4, I had a prop hair tutorial. I think it was by Kozaburo. Having a hard time finding it on my HD again. From what I remember, the author of the tutorial created a 3-4 dot brush and then in photoshop drew vertical lines, stopping before the bottom. The author then did some layering of colors between gray and white. It seems I should start with the draped result from my dynamic hair grid, then do more adjustments in Photoshop along the 3-dot brush approach.
Just a first try of the drape dynamic result without adjustment in an image editor.
Quick Tip - Have a horizontal black bar at the very top of your transmap. Otherwise, the frayed edges of the hair will have a blocked off end.
Comparison with top black horizontal bar and without
A little preview of a new product that I am working on which also started life as a Carrara hair, converted with Philemo's wonderful plugin and here modelled by Alexandra 8 HD and rendered in DS with iRay.
@PhilW, you have really shown the best uses of this amazing plugin.
However, I want to show how a toon fan might put it to use. I started this for a monthly chllenge but other things got in the way. I am posting the hair related tests here. I want hair for a toon character that is going to start curly, dive in water, and then be wet/draggled.
I created a silly toon character. I created a hair cap and grew and brushed some hair. I used the frizz and kink shaders to give the hair an interesting look. I reduced the hair display percentage. I then used Philemo's hair plugin to convert to an obj. That created the base toon hair.
I then returned to the dynamic hair. I entered the hair modeler and used the dynamic function to straighten the drape. I edited the shader to reduce or eliminate the frizz and kink. I used the conversion plugin again to create a new draped mesh. I saved this new version as a carrara file and note the location.
I returned to the scene and selected the first converted hair object. I entered the modeling room. I selected all and created a morph area. I created a new morph. I selected edit morph and clicked "load" and browsed to my saved draped mesh.
The hair can now be morphed or animated for getting wet.
Some examples of toon renders using the morph dial
Super sweet - thanks for posting your experiments and explanantions!
@Diomede - thanks for your kind comment and a good description of using it to set up a morph.
Does anyone know (because I have tried and failed) if it is possible to export a morphed object as a new OBJ when you have set up the morphs yourself? For example with the hair above, let's say you have created several different morphs using the mthod that Diomede has outlined, each loaded from a separate OBJ. Now you put together a style by combining several of the morphs, and you want to create a single morph for that style. You SHOULD be able to export that shape, using the "Morphs and Skinning" option in the OBJ exporter, but it doesn't seem to work with your own morphed objects. Any advice welcomed!
How many polys is too many polys?
As with many things, the answer is "it depends"! If you aim for a poly count of up to 100k, most systems will be able to handle that without any problems. If you are coming up with over a million polys, most systems will struggle with that number, although some programs are more adept at handling large poly counts than others. Between those two, I would take a "suck it and see" approach depending on how you are using it - if whichever program you are using is starting to be slow and unresponsive while using it, aim for a lower poly count.
I have a new hair coming out in about a week's time, and like my last couple of hairs, it started life as a converted Carrara hair using Philemo's plugin, so I thought that I would share a little preview here.
Looks great, Phil. The plugin may be a good start, but your skills make the magic. Congrats to Philemo and yourself.
Don't know why I am only now seeing your previous question about the morphs. If I get a chance this weekend, I will do some tests unless you already have it sorted out.
Thanks for the kind words. And yes, if you can find a way around this, I'd still be most interested.
Congratulations Phil, on another fine product! It has a very nice shape.
I do have a question for hair experts like yourself. The hair seems very flat. Are you going to add highlights/shininess?
Here is a pic of a real model to illustrate what I mean.