Anyone else seeing a change in hair buying decisions since 4.11?
JonnyRay
Posts: 1,744
I'm finding myself more "careful" about buying new hair products already. Take OOT's new Untamed Curls Hair. I love OOT's work. And I love unique hair styles (I have enough long straight or wavy hair and ponytails, but something fresh and different catches my eye). This would have normally been an "auto-buy" for me.
But I paused on clicking the "buy" button wondering if there would, at some point in the near future, be a strand based hair of a similar style that I would end up using instead. Similarly with the recent big mega sale, I actually starting removing some hair products from my wishlist thinking that those could well be replaced by the new tech sometime 'soon enough' that it wouldn't be worth buying a standard transmapped hair style.
Is it just me?
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Comments
I've been trying the new stand based hairs .. for me it seems like it has great potential, but isn't there yet. Now when OOT comes out with a stranded hair...
There certainly would be others like any new technology it appeals
oddy I am the opposite owning Zbrush I actually prefer the transmapped hairs as much less resource intensive and this Dforce and Stand based hair is looking heavier still on my poor PC, that given many love things to be as resource hogging as possible with HD everything!
Not really, at least at first? The first of the new line of dforce hairs were, for the women, very simple, classical designs while their male counterparts were pretty much not the kind of thing I have a use for. I'm drawn to elaborate, fantastical looking women's hair and male hair that is either businesslike and professional, mediterranean curly, or shaggy in a "fantasy character roaming the forest kind of way." Except maybe for the last two styles, I expect those to be kind of complicated to make with strand hair, and possibly difficult to figure out dforce settings for, so it may be a while before my hair-buying habits change.
From what I've seen so far, I don't really think it looks very natural. The harilines are messy and don't look like the hair is growing out of the head. The hair that OOT has been selling for a long time has natural looking skin parts and hairlines. I'll buy hers, but I'm not ready for the strand-based hair yet. It still looks stringy and there's not much shine.
I am not currently interested in strand-based for people's heads. D-Force is too much for my computer, and like Odaa, I am more into elaborate hairstyle (especially braids). In my view, strand hair is more interesting for adding to animals, props, and people's ears :-D I am still debating the upgrade to 4.11, as it does not appear to add functionality for what I like to do, and potentially endangers my workflow and sanity levels.
I'm loving what I see others do with the strand based hair, though I've been too busy with other things to spend much time with it yet.
My favorite PA for hair is RedzStudio, and I buy her stuff when it releases, budget allowing. There are several other PAs I like who do hair and I'll continue to purchase from. dforce is cool, and having hair-specific-dForce hair is even more cool. But when I decide to buy hair, dForce is not the deciding factor for me. I like hair that will fit to both male and female, G3 and G8 is a selling point, too.
But most important to me is the style. If the style fits my needs, I'll buy the hair. If it's also dForce, great. If not, oh well. I'm getting it anyway.
(I should note, however, that I don't do animations, and I don't need hair to move naturally from one frame to the next.)
Not even OOT's can tempt me; although her hairs look great, there are many poses that take too much effort to get something believable.
I won't be buying any more non-strand dforce hair.
I saw what was on offer, and hoped OOT was releasing a strand based hair... Sadly not.
... I am eagerly awaiting more releases.
Considering how easy it is to change from G8 to 3 and the reverse; it doesn't influence my decission.
I expect it will take a little practice from the PAs; I'll be encouraging said practice by purchasing .
@OP
I expect that 4.11 will deter some because of the Iray requirements; only computers did struggle, some now will be even worse.
I know. I do it all the time. But I also like to support PAs who take the extra time do it for me, and thereby save me a bit of time in my workflow.
It's the little things that mean so much.
I've got so many hair products, I don't NEED any more. And if it takes more work or tweaking to get hair to behave, I'm not interested in even trying it. As a non-technical person, when things start getting complicated, and I already have tons of products which are easy to manipulate and look really good, then I won't buy the more technical offerings until they're either glitching in price or ultra discounted. It's just related to the amount of effort BUT also the way it looks, and as others have mentioned, I've seen some results which were definitely MEH.
Can someone direct me to that strand hair test thread? I forgot to tag it (stupid me)
found it
To be honest, Linday's dforce hair drastically changed my hair buying, it's about all I use other than redzstudio fibermesh hair.
I still have the 4.11 beta going since I am never an early adopter and seeing what issues others have been having has me waiting a little longer to play with the strand based hair. I like some of what I have seen, but for the most part it reminds me of what i saw with the poser dynamic hair room. Hopefully offerings will get better as time goes on and PAs/iusers have more time to hone their skills with the new hair.
Totally agree.
At the moment, no. My dForce capable PC is my less powerful by far. My fast, powerful, PC dates to 2014 and doesn't understand Open CL, so can't use dForce. As it's not connected to the net, it's difficult to do anything about updating it - especially as I'm not exactly sure of its spec.
The strand hair looks interesting. I suspect a Mohican will be the most popular hair style for a month or two in people's renders while they work out how to do it themselves.
Regards,
Richard.
True enough
Nope, so far the new hair looks odd at the hairline
No, but I render men with mostly short hair. I don’t care or want dforce hair.
I care more whether the pa has made a men’s hairline than whether it is dforce friendly. Too many male hairlines aren’t correct and it is a major bugaboo of mine since it can be jarring to look at.
*nods* Yes, basically how I feel. I haven't noticed the hairline issue in a long time. It was a big problem with G3 men hairs though.
I really don't think the D-force or stand-based hairs are going to replace the conforming hair models we have already. I'm sure we'll see oodles more of both and I suppose that's a good thing. Variety and all that...
I agree with you about dForce hair. I bought the Sanjay hair that is dForce but it doesn't do a thing different after you simulate it. I like the hair style but I'm confused why it was made to dForce. I haven't had much luck with women's dForce hair either so I'm sticking with what I already have and hoping dForce and strand based don't take over the market.
I'm not really interested in the new hair technology and haven't bothered with it yet. In a year or two I might be more interested and be picking up what's new (now) while it's on sell (in the future) because there's even newer hair technology out. I tend to stay behind, but that's okay with me.
I think the strand-based hair looks good for some hairstyles that are 'greaser' or 'wet-look' or 'shiney-moose' styles but the dry styles are lacking so far. Also the really highly sophisticated professionally coiffed styles are completely lacking.
As far as the new dForce hair styles that I've scene they look like woven cloth to me more than real hair.
For fibre-mesh hair I do like RedzStudio but it does look dry and frizzy and too uniformly one color so can look a bit plastic.
The trans-mapped hair can look good and realistic but you're stuck with a tiny subset of poses except for some short styles and the fact that it is trans-mapped alone is not a guarantee of quality - I find the majority of it no better than strand hair or fibre-mesh hair.
I've only seen one so far that I would even consider using. So, I'll stick with the tried and true for now until the tech improves. If I invest at all.
Laurie
I'm expecting that we'll soon see hybrid hair that mixes the better elements of dForce and traditional hair, just as there are a lot of outfits that combine them,. Especially given the fact that the new ponytail hair is actually two pieces and it wopuld have made just as much sense to do the front/hairline with the less resource intense transmapped version.
Whew! I didn't want to rain on anyone's Strand Based Hair parade as they are just gushing over it in another thread and the whole time I'm looking at the results thinking, Yeah, the birth of new technology/capabilities is exciting but when did "hairplug hairlines" become sexy? I just couldn't see what everyone else was seeing. I guess to me the Emperor just seemed fat, ugly and naked. <shrug>
That said, they are not ALL all bad. Shaved sides seem to work great, beards work great, animals are showing potential, but in my opinion have taken a step backwards in quality. Maybe I just got spoiled with Look At My Hair, but I am sure great and amazing things are just around the next Strand Based Hair corner.
My buying habit are still the same: if the hair looks like something I will use and the price is right then I might buy it, strand-based / dForce hair or not.
To be fair, many of us with LAMH can't do any better. (Speaking for myself, I can't do much of anything with LAMH, and I've had it for years.) I depend on the talent of others to provide presets for my animals. I assume there are some out there, but I'm not familiar with any LAMH on human figures.
Do you have links to some images where the human figures are wearing LAMH hair? I'd like to see how they compare, maybe pick up some ideas for when I try my hand at SBH. Or even try again to learn how to do more than lengthen or shorten fur in LAMH!
Regardless, Strand-Based Hair is a new tool. On the one hand, it's going to take time to master, and on the other, (I'm strongly hoping for,) continuing development and further refinement of the tool by Daz.
iirc, the furrythings website has some user-uploaded human hairdo presets using LAMH.