Creating Morphs for Zbrush Fibermesh Hair

daz3d_348ddd02b7

Hi,

I am wondering how I can add different styles to my fibermesh hair created in Zbrush.

Here is what I did so far:

• Loaded V8 to DAZ
• GoZ > V8 to Zbrush
• Created Fibermesh hair in Zbrush
• GoZ > Back to Daz
• Now I have my hair in DAZ

But how do I now add different styles (morphs) like wind, length, bangs, etc. as a morph to my orignal created hair? So later I could load the hair for another figure and set differnt morphs.

Thanks,
Alex

Syrus_Dante

Hi, you are thinking at least two steps ahead.

You now have the fibermesh hair in your DazStudio scene but its a static object. You first need to 'fit' it to the Genesis 8 Female figure base shape. You have used the Victoria 8 shape that is actualy not the base shape of the genesis 8 figure but a character morph for genesis 8 female.

The best would be to start over with the Genesis 8 Female figure base shape before you start using the Transfer Utility to create a so called conforming figure out of the static fiber mesh hair. Once this is done the conforming figure hair item can be 'fitted' to the figure. This will enable you to fit this hair on different character shapes. Lateron you can create additional hairstyle morphs.

I've tried something like this before but with no useable results. I was starting like you by creating a fibermesh hair on a character morph, was using the Reverse Deformation setting in the Transfer Utility but this gave me ugly distortions because some of the hair strands stretched to big polygons.

This is the main issue, you don't want the smale polygon strands that the fibermesh is made of to stretch with the variouse morphs you project onto this mesh.

I've read somewhere that there is a solution for that, haven't tried this yet but had planed to do so someday. If I remember right the idea was to first create the fibermesh hair in ZBrush with a very short length. Use this as the base mesh for your Transfer Utility morph projection attempts.

The idea is the short hair mesh is close enougth to the head mesh so that it can pick up all shaping morphs and rigging weightmaps evenly distributed on the short strand meshes by using the Transfer Utility projection. Then go back to ZBrush and turn up the length and use this as a length morph. Don't change any other values of the fibermesh hair in ZBrush because you would need the same "vertex count" for all morphs you export. Good luck.

daz3d_348ddd02b7

Syrus_Dante, thank you very much for the detailed information. I highly appreciate that. Very usefull!

My point was less the fibermesh part but how do I add several morph sliders to the base. Let's assume I want my hair only work for a certain figure (I am not a content maker so it's personal use only). So I do not care that much on transferability to other characters. But I want to make that hair (or in fact any other zbrush created object) more reusable on the same figure. Instead of creating a lot of different props for every change I would prefer creating a more versatile prop with more options.

 

LazyRenders

The process for creating morphs is basically the same as creating the original figure...

Make your desired changes to the figure in zbrush.   Perhaps use layers and morph targets in zbrush during that process.  Once you have the desired changes you can do one of two things.  Either use GOZ to bring the figure back into Daz or export the figure from Zbrush as an OBJ file.   If you go down the GOZ route a dialogue will appear asking if you want to load as a new file or create a morph.  In your case you want a morph.   If you go down the export route you load the new object agianst your daz object using morph loader pro.  I tend to use the morph loader because you can load multiple object files at once creating the morphs.

 

 

Syrus_Dante

You can read my post like a checklist of common pitfalls. What you are trying to do is not an easy task and I don't know how skilled you are in DazStudio or ZBrush. Its something the experts like the content creators knows best. But I guess everyone has its own workflow and technics. I can only give you hints to avoid common mistakes, and a bit of what I know about this so far.

Actualy I gave up on my fibermesh experiments with ZBrush and Daz Studio. First I had problems with the distortions caused by the character shape morphs. Second a head full of fibermesh hair can be very recource heavy depending on the length and if you turn up the hair density to get some volume. Also the more vertices you have to deal with in the hair geometry the more work it takes to create fitting or styling morphs. Use an additonal scullmap so the head dosn't look too bald and turn down the hair densety to a proper vertex count. Actualy you could tweak the fibermesh settings to an extend that you get traditional strands hair out of the fibers. I saw some youtube video on that. Maybe start with some simple example like eyebrows and see if you get it to 'fit' and follow expressions.

To create such conforming "wearable" items out of these props, for what ever figure or character moprh, you first need to use the Transfer Utility. Set the current figure as the Source and the fibermesh hair or whatever as the Target and choose what to 'transfer' with the Projection Options. As the result the static prop mesh you have imported becomes a conforming figure 'fitted' to the source figure. If you don't use the Reverse Deformation setting and you don't dial the genesis figure back to base shape that would work for the current character shape.

I quickly found a good starter tutorial on youtube

ZBrush : FIBERMESH : How to easily groom hair in ZBrush : PART 1

ZBrush : FIBERMESH : How to easily groom hair in ZBrush : PART 4

Use the Move Brush press B-M-V and Elesticity lol his accent makes problems to pronounce it, he means some Brush Stroke setting called Elasticity or I would try the Move Elastic Brush press B-M-E. With those brushes you can style the hair. To have more control with the brushes it would be best to create various patches of fibermesh 'sub-tools' for different parts of the hair like the bangs. Another thing I maybe would use are the Layers for different shapes. Open the Layers in the Tool pallet and press the New button, the new layer appears as Untitled and is immediatly in record mode. Anything you sculpt with the brushes now is saved to this morph layer. Finaly I would see how to merge all the fibermesh sub-tools. If you had used moph layers this could get complicated. I would first turn up the desired layer duplicate the sub-tool and export the merged subtools idealy you could get seperate Polygroups / Face Groups for the different hair parts. This will make it easier to create morphs in DazStudio lateron.

Transfer Utility settings

If you have a character shape applied to the base shape figure choose Source: Item Shape: Current.

In general I would also use the Reverse Deformation setting in this case for clothing items made for another character shape. In most cases this will produce unwanted distortions that you have to deal with by additional sculpting in ZBrush for example with Mesh Polish, Relax, ect. So its better to start with modeling fitting items around the figure base shape, even you are not a content creator and plan to fit it to other characters.

Under general options you can uncheck almost everything except Weight Maps and Morph Targets. In the Morph Targets: Extended Options: From Source: you can choose Shaping and Pose for the first test to shorten up the transfer process and to see if you can get a conforming item.

Lateron you could also transfer selected morphs that first have to be set to Favourits in the Parameters pane on the Source Figure. But as soon as the Target Item is 'Fit To Source Figure' (see Post Transfer Options) or if you manualy fit it to the Source Figure, Daz Studio will try to project any extra morph that you dial up in the source figure to the conforming figure. Those moprhs are called autogenerated because they got generated on the fly as needed and they are nowhere saved as morph assets, you need to do this manualy from the main menu File...Save...Morph Asset.