Hairy Decision
LeatherGryphon
Posts: 11,651
I see that DAZ has a couple of hair plugins on sale today. I'm tempted to buy but need some reviews before I make a decision.
I don't use Studio4 very often so I'm not fluent in its use.
What's the difference between "Garibaldi Express Hair" and "Look At My Hair"? Which (if any) has hair templates for DAZ males? Which is easier to use? Which is compatible with both Carrara and Studio? If compatible with Carrara, which version of Carrara is required? (I have Carrara8.)
Are there any frustrating "quirks" with either?
Gad, this is about as complex and trying to decide on a new computer!!! :-(
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Comments
AFAIK, both GB and LAMH are for DS. Cararra had it's own hair dynamics long before either of these plugins came into being.
LAMH does have a free player and at least a dozen presets for use on common DAZ models (the mammoth, horse, and gorilla are three of them).
You can download the player and try it with the presets to see if you even like it. If you go with the full LAMH, it overwrites the player.
I don't know if GB has a demo or not.
I only have GB and only used it once http://itiseyemeeszark.deviantart.com/art/Brian-Posing-For-the-Camera-377347086 and http://itiseyemeeszark.deviantart.com/art/Brian-377346493 due to my crappy computer. But the difference between them is not much but LAMH can do thinker stands leading to grass, horns and various other things that your imagination can think of. GB is just for hair, think and thickish. Those Spines I made are at the max thickness in GB.
Either way both have a learning curve that requires some time and dedication. If anyone is looking for a quick hair fix then these are not for you, The results you get reflect the time spent. Personally I cannot wait to have a proper play. I could spend hours tweaking each hair into place...some don't have the patience.
Besides the learning curve, how resource intensive are they? I tried Poser's dynamic hair a couple of time back in the P5 days but the render times where long and the results far from worth the time.
Cool image! But a word to the wise, don't ever back Brian into a corner. He looks formidable!!! 8-o
LOL Thanks LeatherGryphon.
icprncss I can't remember how many verts the GB hair has but it wasn't many but those images we at the max for a 32bit 2 GB ram dual core old Vista system. I don't have GB installed at the moment so I cannot check. But from what I have read being Renderman curves instead of actual geometry they need less resources than using meshes and transmaps. I loved how quick it rendered a full head of hair. I play with a short hair do on Genesis before making those images. No clothing or props just lights but it sure did render quick compared to transmapped hair.
I too am curious about computer horsepower needed but I suspect that it's time that I'm going to have to bite the bullet and move my experimental installation of Studio4 from my secondary machine (dual-core, 4GB) to my primary machine (quad-core, 8GB). That in itself is an issue.
I run Studio3 for almost all my work (I love Studio3 and its operation is second nature to me. Whereas, I find Studio4 very very confusing and clumsy.) . Studio3 is on my primary machine now. I do NOT want to booger my Studio3 installation nor my huge Studio3 library "content" & "runtime" and system "Registry" by installing Studio4 on the same machine. Will I be able keep Studio3 and Studio4 on one machine and keep the Studio4 "content" & "runtime" completely separate from the Studio3 resources? Does the Windows "Registry" get confused or exhibit "cross-talk" between the two products?
Garibaldi and LAMH are built to use the Renderman Ricurves feature and will only work natively in a Renderman compliant engine. Both have the ability to export to .obj but the .obj will not look as good as the original hair. LAMH has better support for .obj export.
The Garibaldi author has stated that his only interest is to create a hair product for DS. The LAMH team have a grander vision for how far they can push the technology.
If you are using Carrera, you would be better off using the Carrara dynamic hair. While the interfaces are quite different, the hair creation process for all 3 is quite similar with a similar learning curve.
Render times for Garibaldi hair are similar to what you would get with one of the fibermesh hairs in the store. However, the AoA advanced lights (ambient and spot) have flagging abilities that can dramatically reduce the render time. In another thread, I showed that rendering a particular scene with normal lights took an hour on my machine. Using the AoA lights flagging ability, the same scene took 5 minutes with no lose of quality.
"AoA Advanced Lights" which product is that? I did a search for that phrase and ended up with 120 products! 8-o
None with the exact title. :-(
Arghhh..., light sets, shader sets, I'm sooooo confused!
I'm usually satisfied with basic DAZ lights & textures. (I've actually gotten pretty good with them :-), but if some product dramatically cuts down the render time for hair, I should investigate it.
Look under Vendors for Age of Armor. The product is actually Advanced Ambient Light (or something close to it).
I too am curious about computer horsepower needed but I suspect that it's time that I'm going to have to bite the bullet and move my experimental installation of Studio4 from my secondary machine (dual-core, 4GB) to my primary machine (quad-core, 8GB). That in itself is an issue.
I run Studio3 for almost all my work (I love Studio3 and its operation is second nature to me. Whereas, I find Studio4 very very confusing and clumsy.) . Studio3 is on my primary machine now. I do NOT want to booger my Studio3 installation nor my huge Studio3 library "content" & "runtime" and system "Registry" by installing Studio4 on the same machine. Will I be able keep Studio3 and Studio4 on one machine and keep the Studio4 "content" & "runtime" completely separate from the Studio3 resources? Does the Windows "Registry" get confused or exhibit "cross-talk" between the two products?
I have installs of DS1, DS2 and DS3A. I had DS4.5 but had some issues that required a clean windows install. I pulled to old drive and did a clean install on the new drive but haven't up DS4.x back on yet. The DS4 interface and I never got along. Since I'm also use multiple versions of Poser, I tend to use external runtimes and only install content to any of the main app folders that must be installed there (scripts, plugins, and some light sets for the most part). If the product has a Poser core installer, you can install it to your DS3 Content folder as you would have in the past. The problem for most newer products is they are in duf and anything less than DS4.5 can't read them.
You can keep the DS3 content folder and DS4 MyLibrary completely separate. However, this can negate the use of the DIMM as an install manager. I know there are ways to get it to install to certain places but if you want full control over where your content ends up, it's best to do it manually. Time consuming and a pain in the tush but if you keep an up to date back up after you do it, it's worth it.
I never had a registry issue. I don't know about the CMS or the metadata. I never got it to work right and gave up after a while. Half the time my stupid install of DS4.whatever-the-version-number-was-at-the-time had goofy looking thumbnails similar to Poser's shruggy guy (actually the shruggy guy made more sense).
As already noted, if you go to vendors and select Age of Armour it will be the first 3 products listed. There is the advanced ambient and advanced spotlight as well as a bundle with both. These lights give you much of the functionality of UE2 with faster render times. With the flagging options, you can tell the light to use different settings for different surfaces or even ignore a surface entirely.
Stop it I can't afford them yet and you are just making it worse. ;) I am so looking forward to playing with those lights. I have been reading the main thread and I love what I see and read. Being a light freak these will be like candy to me. So please stop it. :P
...since I picked up both the AAL and ASL, I rarely use UE anymore.
I've played with Garibaldi enough to become comfortable with its interface. For GB (as well as I believe, LAMH), you pose the hair by basically "styling" it within the plugin's interface. Yes,it takes a little more effort, but allows for more control than posing or morphing sliders do. Also it (at least GB) has it's own collision detection separate from Daz 4.6 so even long hair isn't prone to possible distortion like conforming hair is because of the application's collision detection.
The difficult part I can see for some is with the way GB hair is displayed in OpenGL mode. It looks nothing like normal conforming hair content so your character will appear bald with just a set of green lines indicating where the hair is. Takes a little getting used to at first.
Thank you all for the excellent information.
I've ordered "LAMH". :-) decision for LAMH was prompted by the fact that I already have "Tauran2" which has an LAMH template I can play with. And I like playing with Minotaurs. Hairy ones would be even better. :-(
Budget restrictions precluded getting the "Advanced Ambient Lighting" too. :-(
I decided not to move my Studio4 to my primary machine yet. I'll see where I get with LAMH before delving any deeper into Studio4. I'm still very leery of Studio4. If it takes an hour to render a hairy image, so be it. It's on my secondary machine so it can render unattended for days if necessary. However, if it runs out of memory I'll have to revisit this situation.