Hair that won't look terrible when I bring the model to After Effects

matthewbelinkie

I'm an After Effects editor, trying to impress a client by putting a 3D face in the video. I pretty much just work with Element 3D, an After Effects plug-in that can render obj files. To get a usable 3D character with a detailed map, I installed Daz and bought some basic content (the Genesis 8 basic body with the Nora hair). After exporting an obj, I opened it in Element 3D... and it WORKED! Mostly! The issue is that Daz has an engine for rendering hair, but exporting to obj forces it to make the hair a solid mesh, which ends up looking really artificial. Much more artificial than the face, which generally looks great. I'm a little at a loss here. I picked the Nora hair because it's the simplest style I could find. I'm considering if I can use a hat instead, covering up the hair entirely.

Alternatively, I can try to load the model into Cinema 4D (a version of which comes with After Effects). That DOES have transparency support so I might have better overall results. But I'm actually having less luck exporting from Daz to C4D. When I try to do the obj export and import that, I get the model but none of the materials. All the materials are see-through. When I do the fbx export, I get the materials but not the model! Meh.

The real solution here is probably to learn the rendering tools in Daz so I can do my animations there. But I don't have time to really delve into the program right now. I just want to take one of the beautiful models and work with it in After Effects. Any suggestions? I'm attaching an image of the best I can do so far. It's not terrible, but you can see how the hair is the weakest part of the render.

Thanks guys!

 

Richard Haseltine

You could also edit the materials in C4D, though I can't give you any pointers there. The Surfaces pane in DS shows the current settings for the selected model and surfaces (in the Editor tab).