dForce Hair (as well as strand based hair and the strand based hair editor) in public beta

Richard Haseltine

Kerwin said:

thd777 said:

Kerwin said:

Wendy_Carrara said:

 

I've been looking for this seperate iray shader but looking in the surfaces tab I can only find "DAZ-studio Strand-Based Hair RSL"... none of the inputs seem to want to take a map input... perhaps this needs to be edited in the Shader mixer?

-K

The IRAY Hair shader is part of the dForce starter essentials update. You need to download that.

TD

 

Added: Here is a quick example with some hair painted on a shere and a random texture added:

How does this work on a model with multiple surfaces & multiple UV's like G8, for example?  Or is it better to create a seperate fiber zone for each of the models underlying surfaces?

Thanks again--with the right shader, the fibers are look 100% better in my test case.

This is ana rea that is being worked on in the move from Garibaldi to Strand-base hair.

WendyLuvsCatz

Well I need to experiment but from what I can ascertain you can grow the tips without growing the roots so an obj export/import then making it Dforce surface and dialing the root surface stimulation strength to zero on head hairs at least should make them functional dfordeable hairs like Zbrush ones I have done are, I do find those painfully slow though and just about impossible for animations as they will chew all my RAM but so does readymade  Dforce stuff already existing and much of it explodes to boot.

Padone

IgnisSerpentus said:

Its only natural to make some things developer based only. Any business with good sense would do the same.

I don't know .. If you tell it makes sense to charge for extra addons then I may agree. But this is another story. We're talking about having access to the full features only if you are a PA. People not interested in being a PA but wanting to create something for personal use, even commercial personal use, can't use DAZ Studio for that. You have to export to Blender or Maya to get yourself free to create. So essentially DAZ is chopping itself down. Not a great move in my opinion.

Leonides02

Oso3D said:

Working on a set of fur that can be applied to a variety of anthro characters. (This is several HFS shapes with Anubis skin texture)

 

I didn't notice this before, but that looks fantastic, Oso. Insta-buy!

Leonides02

Oso3D said:

Last week, we had no hair system. This week, we have strand hair.

Net win.

Says the PA who gets all the tools!!!

I kid, I kid... (kinda) 

IgnisSerpentus

Padone said:

IgnisSerpentus said:

Its only natural to make some things developer based only. Any business with good sense would do the same.

I don't know .. If you tell it makes sense to charge for extra addons then I may agree. But this is another story. We're talking about having access to the full features only if you are a PA. People not interested in being a PA but wanting to create something for personal use, even commercial personal use, can't use DAZ Studio for that. You have to export to Blender or Maya to get yourself free to create. So essentially DAZ is chopping itself down. Not a great move in my opinion.

Well DAZ Studio isnt a modeller. Want to model clothing? You need another app for that. Want to model anthro? You need another app for that. How bout buildings? Yep, you need an app for that. You need an app for morphs... for texturing... for doing uv's.... etc. As someone who has spent literally THOUSANDS and THOUSANDS on apps for "that" I can see where DAZ could have locked up a lot more stuff. Like dForce clothing, for example.

But they didnt.

Perspective and whatnots.....

Up until recently, it couldnt even do hair. You needed an app for that.

I know the rebuttal will be, but we dont wanna be a PA... we just wanna pay for it. Well, sacrifice for your craft comes in all forms.... not even just shelling out thousands and thousands. You just have to decide whats worth the sacrifice. Clearly, this isnt.

And while we are speculating about the why, maybe this is less about locking up things from customers, and more about other marketplaces. Keeping certain things to your own kingdom, that makes your kingdom better, is perfectly sensible. Even if others dont agree

(and no Im not saying those are the reasons... only DAZ actually knows the reasons)

But before this spirals into a dark abyss of arguing and changing no minds, Im just gonna leave it here.

Allycatz

I can't say I'm very keen on dHair here if for my purposes it's not going to be much more than LAMH or Garibaldi with a slightly better user interface and less crashes. I mean, one of the things I'd have hoped to use this stuff for would be a render of that old Mantiraptor model equipped with bristly quills drooping under their own weight and having a hard no to being able to do that is surprisingly discouraging.

Oso3D

Leonides02 said:

Says the PA who gets all the tools!!!

I kid, I kid... (kinda) 

Well, for what it's worth, while dynamic hair is definitely nice and having the extra functionality is useful... there's still a TERRIFIC amount of stuff that's just been handed to users. You could easily whip up a bunch of furs and simple hairs in moments, and once people become skilled at it... hoo boy!

 

Oso3D

Allycatz said:

I can't say I'm very keen on dHair here if for my purposes it's not going to be much more than LAMH or Garibaldi with a slightly better user interface and less crashes.

Having used previous hair systems a lot... I think you are really underselling the impact 'less crashes' makes. The new system is really stable (I can't think of a crash I've had other than 'wait, how many hairs am I trying to render?? Oops).

Also Strand/dForce Hair renders significantly faster and with less load than any other system I've tried with Iray in Daz.

 

Allycatz

I'm not underselling, I'm just desensitized to crashes or low performance. LAMH crashes if you look at it sideways and my experiments with enabled dforce for hair exported from it are a great way to choke out nvidia drivers. Despite this I'd still have to use it for certain effects since as far as I can tell this new option doesn't support geografting like LAMH does and without physics for end-users I'm not going to have the patience to work through the fiddly process of lining up the density maps for the two models to make it work.

WendyLuvsCatz

Sorel said:

Someone on the octane forum tested to see if the new hair system would render in the daz octane plugin and it sure does. :D

The latest one I assume 

sadly I am still on Or2 4DS and that definitely doesn’t see it 

missuskisses

Wendy_Carrara said:

Well I need to experiment but from what I can ascertain you can grow the tips without growing the roots so an obj export/import then making it Dforce surface and dialing the root surface stimulation strength to zero on head hairs at least should make them functional dfordeable hairs like Zbrush ones I have done are, I do find those painfully slow though and just about impossible for animations as they will chew all my RAM but so does readymade  Dforce stuff already existing and much of it explodes to boot.

If you do figure it out and can post a short tutorial, I would be ever so grateful.

I have to try again, but when I exported a strand hair to .obj file, what I reimported appeared to be nothing...

Tottallou

 

missuskisses said:

Wendy_Carrara said:

Well I need to experiment but from what I can ascertain you can grow the tips without growing the roots so an obj export/import then making it Dforce surface and dialing the root surface stimulation strength to zero on head hairs at least should make them functional dfordeable hairs like Zbrush ones I have done are, I do find those painfully slow though and just about impossible for animations as they will chew all my RAM but so does readymade  Dforce stuff already existing and much of it explodes to boot.

If you do figure it out and can post a short tutorial, I would be ever so grateful.

I have to try again, but when I exported a strand hair to .obj file, what I reimported appeared to be nothing...

To export as object you need to turn the Preview PR hairs on

Sven Dullah

missuskisses said:

Wendy_Carrara said:

Well I need to experiment but from what I can ascertain you can grow the tips without growing the roots so an obj export/import then making it Dforce surface and dialing the root surface stimulation strength to zero on head hairs at least should make them functional dfordeable hairs like Zbrush ones I have done are, I do find those painfully slow though and just about impossible for animations as they will chew all my RAM but so does readymade  Dforce stuff already existing and much of it explodes to boot.

If you do figure it out and can post a short tutorial, I would be ever so grateful.

I have to try again, but when I exported a strand hair to .obj file, what I reimported appeared to be nothing...

I have only used Garibaldi thus far, but this happens if you export it the usual way, by hiding everything but the hair in the scene tab. In the Garibaldi editor there's an export option that does the job. And you don't need to hide everything else.

Wonderland

IgnisSerpentus said:

I personally want to thank all the people, who are being understanding about the situation. I know that its probably disappointing on some level, but its really nice to see so many people showing they understand that its a business, and decisions have to be made for the good of that business and all concerned. I also commend your ability to look at the bright side, and see everything that is still available to you. The hair is truly amazing, even without dForcing it.... and that is to say nothing of all the other awesome features DS has going for it.

We have DAZ to thank for that.

I think DAZ is really magnanimous and generous with its sharing, and keeping at least most things free for all. You won't find that in most software packages, or even companies. But at its core, it is a business... and it spends a lot of money developing these new features. Its only natural to make some things developer based only. Any business with good sense would do the same.

I do understand that completely but don’t understand why they tease us with great tools without proper documentation on how to use them. If they are giving us all these great tools (not just the new hair, but other advanced tools), it would be great to have the ability to use them without having to search all over the internet, forums, YouTube, DeviantArt, etc... to figure out how to use them... I think that’s more frustrating than just saying certain tools are PA only... Not that I want them taken away. Maybe they could just say that anything created with certain advanced Daz tools can only be sold at Daz if accepted or for personal use (renders) only. I would sign any contract saying that if they would just give us documentation with a great PDF manual with screenshots.... 

WendyLuvsCatz

I will try it when I get around to human heads

at the moment still fiddling with animals and pelt

this was a marmalade cat Garfieild markings but the result seems a bit odd given all white colours with the texture maps in the dual lobe channels

Kerwin

>>>This is ana rea that is being worked on in the move from Garibaldi to Strand-base hair.

Thanks Richard.  Now thatr I have found the right iray node, the results are coming along nicely.   I look forward to the solution for multiple Udims in the same underlying geometry.   

IgnisSerpentus

Wonderland said:

IgnisSerpentus said:

I personally want to thank all the people, who are being understanding about the situation. I know that its probably disappointing on some level, but its really nice to see so many people showing they understand that its a business, and decisions have to be made for the good of that business and all concerned. I also commend your ability to look at the bright side, and see everything that is still available to you. The hair is truly amazing, even without dForcing it.... and that is to say nothing of all the other awesome features DS has going for it.

We have DAZ to thank for that.

I think DAZ is really magnanimous and generous with its sharing, and keeping at least most things free for all. You won't find that in most software packages, or even companies. But at its core, it is a business... and it spends a lot of money developing these new features. Its only natural to make some things developer based only. Any business with good sense would do the same.

I do understand that completely but don’t understand why they tease us with great tools without proper documentation on how to use them. If they are giving us all these great tools (not just the new hair, but other advanced tools), it would be great to have the ability to use them without having to search all over the internet, forums, YouTube, DeviantArt, etc... to figure out how to use them... I think that’s more frustrating than just saying certain tools are PA only... Not that I want them taken away. Maybe they could just say that anything created with certain advanced Daz tools can only be sold at Daz if accepted or for personal use (renders) only. I would sign any contract saying that if they would just give us documentation with a great PDF manual with screenshots.... 

Well I think its because its so new, and the features have been in flux as a result, that there isnt much in the way of documentation yet. I know Rob has posted some information here and there, maybe even more than Ive seen (might be worth checking around the forums for) We are kind of having to figure it out, too, by trial and error, if its any consolation. I played with it one day... and while a lot is pretty intuitive, some left me confused. But Im in the middle of a pack, so I dont have a ton of time to devote to it atm. I wish I did tho... Im dying to really give it a whirl.

Kerwin

Oso3D said:

Leonides02 said:

Says the PA who gets all the tools!!!

I kid, I kid... (kinda) 

Well, for what it's worth, while dynamic hair is definitely nice and having the extra functionality is useful... there's still a TERRIFIC amount of stuff that's just been handed to users. You could easily whip up a bunch of furs and simple hairs in moments, and once people become skilled at it... hoo boy!

 

It's definitely one of the fastest fiber/strand tools with pretty accessible controls to the guide curves.  I was somewhat confused about the relationship between dForce and long hair, but I see you sculpt up some pretty long static models that don't need physics simulation to look good.   

-K

wolf359

AllenArt said:

Let me start off by saying that I don't mind paying for software. I paid for Poser for years. Having said that, I appreciate the software for free, BUT:

The fact that Daz think that giving us the ability to create something and thinking we won't still buy it ready made, just tells me they still don't know all of us very well even after all these years. This crowd buys anything and everything, regardless if we can make it or not. There is but a very small segment of users that are even capable of content creation, even when they have the tools. Remember that elusive thing in Poser called the cloth room? Yeah, it went virtually ignored for over a decade even though it was the best thing since sliced bread. IT also has dynamic hair, which also still goes unused. My point - Daz apparently still doesn't know its audience.

Laurie

Daz haz every right to restrict their IP
to specific "strategic partners" which is what the PA's are,after a fashion.

This is a very common practice particularly with technology based businesses.

This notion of this being some sort of "betrayal" or "underhanded"
is understandably held by people with no experience in business partnerships
that involve IP ownership.

Daz Studio is a pure "Loss leader" product.

It's very existence is predicated upon having external  limited "partners" using certain content creation
tools that will only be deployed to sell Daz store content....here..at this commercial outlet  
not at Hivewire or Renderosity or giving it away on ShareCG etc

That said, as a person who does not buy their content at all anymore
( as most of you know), I offer this perspective as an outlier who does not give Daz inc 
one bloody dime. 

I personally think that Daz has been extemely Liberal & Generous with regard to their export/import features
particularly compared to companies like Reallusion who charge a near $$punitive premuim$$
to get anything in or out of Iclone.

For those of us already  financially invested  in expensive full 3DCC packages Like  Maxon C4D, Maya or Lightwave.
or time/learning curve invested in Blender,
Daz studio and its Genesis  figure framework is an extremely cost effective way to get high quality characters
and elaborate sets& props into our programs.

Most of you are still image makers,( lets be honest).

Eventually you will learn to use the styling tools to make the spline base hair look draped
naturally for your stills.

For those wanting to render  dynamic hair animations within Daz studio
you will have to buy Dforce ready hair from the store.

(as you already have been with old trans mapped Dforce hair in some cases)

or convert your static strand based creations to meshes and use dforce on those.

Sure...My spline based hair in C4D is Dynamic by default
however I paid $3500 for the privilage

How many, PA created , DForce,
Strand  hair sets would you have to buy from Daz
before reaching my costs??

mal3Imagery

wolf359 said:

AllenArt said:

Let me start off by saying that I don't mind paying for software. I paid for Poser for years. Having said that, I appreciate the software for free, BUT:

The fact that Daz think that giving us the ability to create something and thinking we won't still buy it ready made, just tells me they still don't know all of us very well even after all these years. This crowd buys anything and everything, regardless if we can make it or not. There is but a very small segment of users that are even capable of content creation, even when they have the tools. Remember that elusive thing in Poser called the cloth room? Yeah, it went virtually ignored for over a decade even though it was the best thing since sliced bread. IT also has dynamic hair, which also still goes unused. My point - Daz apparently still doesn't know its audience.

Laurie

Daz haz every right to restrict their IP
to specific "strategic partners" which is what the PA's are,after a fashion.

This is a very common practice particularly with technology based businesses.

This notion of this being some sort of "betrayal" or "underhanded"
is understandably held by people with no experience in business partnerships
that involve IP ownership.

Daz Studio is a pure "Loss leader" product.

It's very existence is predicated upon having external  limited "partners" using certain content creation
tools that will only be deployed to sell Daz store content....here..at this commercial outlet  
not at Hivewire or Renderosity or giving it away on ShareCG etc

That said, as a person who does not buy their content at all anymore
( as most of you know), I offer this perspective as an outlier who does not give Daz inc 
one bloody dime. 

I personally think that Daz has been extemely Liberal & Generous with regard to their export/import features
particularly compared to companies like Reallusion who charge a near $$punitive premuim$$
to get anything in or out of Iclone.

For those of us already  financially invested  in expensive full 3DCC packages Like  Maxon C4D, Maya or Lightwave.
or time/learning curve invested in Blender,
Daz studio and its Genesis  figure framework is an extremely cost effective way to get high quality characters
and elaborate sets& props into our programs.

Most of you are still image makers,( lets be honest).

Eventually you will learn to use the styling tools to make the spline base hair look draped
naturally for your stills.

For those wanting to render  dynamic hair animations within Daz studio
you will have to buy Dforce ready hair from the store.

(as you already have been with old trans mapped Dforce hair in some cases)

or convert your static strand based creations to meshes and use dforce on those.

Sure...My spline based hair in C4D is Dynamic by default
however I paid $3500 for the privilage

How many, PA created , DForce,
Strand  hair sets would you have to buy from Daz
before reaching my costs??

Ditto.

WendyLuvsCatz

I did finally get the mesh to work in Octane, not the UV's sadly

 

and here are my LAMH 3delight and Strand Iray cat comparisons video

barbult

Not every hair experiment is a success!

 

Quasar

I'm also upset that we won't be able to drape strand based hair or get the tools needed to convert it for draping. Remember when DAZ had different versions of Studio, the free version, advanced version and pro version? The pro version was the most expensive but included all the tools available at the time for creating content for Studio. Anybody could buy the pro version if they thought the price was worth trying their hand at creating content, even if it was just for personal use.

Then DAZ made the pro version free for everyone, which was awesome. Now any of us can make the content we want to use if we want to take the time and make the effort to learn. After practice, maybe some of the people who learn become PAs, which is great for those of us who don't have the time or patience to learn.

But now DAZ is holding back features like HD morphs and dForce hair just for PAs because the pro version is free, and the only way to get them is to become a PA first. I get that DAZ and PAs want to earn more money from hair, especially since there might be a decline in conforming hair sales. However, there should be a way to get the creation tools without being a PA if DAZ doesn't want to include them in Studio Pro. Perhaps they will be willing to sell them as add-on plugins eventually. They could even create a bundle of current and future tools they don't want to include in Studio Pro. Call it "The PA bundle."

Oso3D

Quasar said:

However, there should be a way to get the creation tools without being a PA if DAZ doesn't want to include them in Studio Pro.

Why?

 

 

missuskisses

Tottallou said:

 

missuskisses said:

Wendy_Carrara said:

Well I need to experiment but from what I can ascertain you can grow the tips without growing the roots so an obj export/import then making it Dforce surface and dialing the root surface stimulation strength to zero on head hairs at least should make them functional dfordeable hairs like Zbrush ones I have done are, I do find those painfully slow though and just about impossible for animations as they will chew all my RAM but so does readymade  Dforce stuff already existing and much of it explodes to boot.

If you do figure it out and can post a short tutorial, I would be ever so grateful.

I have to try again, but when I exported a strand hair to .obj file, what I reimported appeared to be nothing...

To export as object you need to turn the Preview PR hairs on

That makes sense. Thank you!!

narkfestmojo

This is just a beta for us to find bugs and take a look at what is coming.

It's possible the dforce conversion process just isn't ready yet (even for a beta) or that they arn't sure how they want to implement it.

They might have just been excited to show it to us and didn't predict you'd see malice where there is none.

Allycatz

We already have PAs and Steve up above talking about how it's going to be a PA only thing like HD morphs and showing off some wips so no this isn't a misunderstanding. It's also not malice for Daz to embrace the whole walled garden ethos, though personally I don't think it's a good idea for them to do so.

TheKD

Yeah, there goes my interest in the newest toy. Dforce part is the only reason I would use the new one over lamh or a nice OOT head hair. Dissappointing.

WendyLuvsCatz

well I got halfway

I exported an obj but no surfaces exported so I made them in UUW3D (insert UV mapper/modeller of choice, it has a nice vertical UV)

but sadly after making it a Dforce dynamic surface and turning down the simulation on my roots it crashed DAZ studio sometime running the animated sim I did, I was out shopping