DA dForce Mane and Tail - Hair Color Question

Gordig

Is a dForce coat for Horse 2 and/or Centaur in the cards?

Daventaki

Design Anvil - Razor42 said:

A grazing pose is one of the more difficult for this kind of mane. But I found the best settings to look at for a pose like this is the duration and gravity settings of the simulation. For this render I pushed the stabilisation time up to 15 and reduced gravity to .8.

Thank you! Will definately give that a try!  I did turn up gravity but didn't think about increasing stablization (duh).  Lots of other great suggestions and tips also!!

@Oso3D love the rainbow hair!

Design Anvil - Razor42

Gordig said:

I'd never done this level of editing on dForce hair before, but between Thicket Shapes and Pixie Dragon, I managed to put feathers on a calf.

Now that is different! :D

Design Anvil - Razor42

Gordig said:

Is a dForce coat for Horse 2 and/or Centaur in the cards?

I'll have a look into it, but no solid promises at this point in time. I'm a little concerned a full coat may push some systems too far, But I will do a few tests.

Design Anvil - Razor42

Daventaki said:

Design Anvil - Razor42 said:

A grazing pose is one of the more difficult for this kind of mane. But I found the best settings to look at for a pose like this is the duration and gravity settings of the simulation. For this render I pushed the stabilisation time up to 15 and reduced gravity to .8.

Thank you! Will definately give that a try!  I did turn up gravity but didn't think about increasing stablization (duh).  Lots of other great suggestions and tips also!!

@Oso3D love the rainbow hair!

You're welcome~! :)

MelissaGT

I've been working on a piece and struggling with getting the forelock to not cover the eye. Everything looks gorgeous, but you don't want to not be able to see the horse's eye. My next attempt is going to involve a wind node to hopefully billow the mane and forelock away, as the current pose I'm using, the horse is turning his head to the side. I've been simulting a timeline so far. Oh how I wish I could just grab that one chunk that insists on sitting over the eye with mesh grabber!

I also noticed that if I bump the horse subd up beyond 1 (I usually want to use 3), the mane stars to disappear and the tail is completely gone. Re-running the simulation doesn't help. Not sure if I'm doing something wrong there?

Design Anvil - Razor42

The subD thing is pretty strange, it may be a bug in DS of some kind.

I did find that it only happens when the View SubD level is pushed out to 3 (Outside the default limits of the figure), whereas it works fine when the Render SubD Level is pushed out to even 4 while keeping the view SubD lower.

So all I can suggest is keeping the View SubD level at 2 or below and you can put the Render SubD Level at 3 or 4 for that higher level of detail in your final renders.

Design Anvil - Razor42

Regarding the hair over the eyes, one trick you can try is creating a kind of shield to protect hair from falling over the area during simulation.

Here I used a stretched sphere and parented to the Horses head and then changed the display settings for the sphere to Visible in Render: OFF. It may look a little weird but should help keep the hair more in areas you want.

Then pose your Horse and hit Simulate, the hair should be blocked from falling into this area leaving a gap to keep the eye visible. You could enlarge the sphere to expose more of the face also if you prefer.

MelissaGT

Oh, I like both of these tricks! Do you recommend not simulating from a memorized pose and just going from a stationary position?

Design Anvil - Razor42

It really depends on the pose tbh, I have used a little of both and tend to run with the resulting look I like best.

Though it is best to Simulate as a transition from the memorised base pose if the pose sees some of the guide hairs pushing into the figure mesh, as this tends to trap them there when the simulation runs looking a little odd. 

Artini

Great tricks - will have to play with the mane, myself.

 

Daventaki

Ok so after playing awhile I somewhat got what I was after.  At first I tried to do a timeline and it just wasnt going right. I don't know why the difference because I also used from memoried pose.  And then I went into SBH editor and added some hair to the horse all over.  Not the greatest work and lots to learn, I think ive only played with the editor a couple of times.  Its kinda hard to see but look along the legs and back, it looked a whole lot thicker in the editor.

BIG Shout out to those who make SBH because it takes some kind of patience!!

L'Adair

Design Anvil - Razor42 said:

Regarding the hair over the eyes, one trick you can try is creating a kind of shield to protect hair from falling over the area during simulation.

Here I used a stretched sphere and parented to the Horses head and then changed the display settings for the sphere to Visible in Render: OFF. It may look a little weird but should help keep the hair more in areas you want.

Then pose your Horse and hit Simulate, the hair should be blocked from falling into this area leaving a gap to keep the eye visible. You could enlarge the sphere to expose more of the face also if you prefer.

I suspect it's easier to keep the helper object visible while you're working with it, but if you want to keep the object in the scene and not see it, you can also set Visible in Viewport to Off, while keeping Visible in Simulation set to On. Then if one inadvertently clears the animation, the helper object is still in place when running the simulation again. But you don't have it staring at you while working on your scene.

I've been tinkering with SBH for a centaur coat. I've come to the conclusion it needs to be in sections that can be hidden if not in the scene, as it really is a drain on resources. (And I'm not even half finished!) It might be different for dForce Hair, though. As I'm not a PA and don't have the tools, I can't test it.

MelissaGT

It took a while and it's not the best angle to show off the mane, but here is the first piece I've done using it. I did also include a copy of the DH2 mane blended in on the right as I couldn't get the dForce mane to fall right on that side. I suspect I picked a very awkward pose for my first try, lol.

Design Anvil - Razor42

melissastjames said:

It took a while and it's not the best angle to show off the mane, but here is the first piece I've done using it. I did also include a copy of the DH2 mane blended in on the right as I couldn't get the dForce mane to fall right on that side. I suspect I picked a very awkward pose for my first try, lol.

Wow~! Beautiful work and great details~!

MelissaGT

Design Anvil - Razor42 said:

melissastjames said:

It took a while and it's not the best angle to show off the mane, but here is the first piece I've done using it. I did also include a copy of the DH2 mane blended in on the right as I couldn't get the dForce mane to fall right on that side. I suspect I picked a very awkward pose for my first try, lol.

Wow~! Beautiful work and great details~!

Thanks!

DreamWeever

Design Anvil - Razor42 said:

I love the mane, and am impressed by how fast it simulates.

But... can I make the hair shorter? Not every horse has this luxurious a mane ;-)

The appearance presets have a few shorter /thinner hair presets. You can also reduce the amount of hairs generated to give a thinner look to the hair or adjust the length more directly in the shader/dforce settings.

Would this also be where you go for adjustments to make it even longer than the long preset? 

Design Anvil - Razor42

Hi DreamWeever,

Yes, there are two long length presets here for the Mane, Mane Long and Mane Very Long which will grow tha mane out. And if you find you want to make the mane even longer you can adjust the Style and Movement Property - Mane Lift 02 after you have applied the Mane Very Long preset. By decreasing the Mane Lift 02 property further into the negative the Mane will continue to grow. It's generally best done before the dforce simulation for more preditable results. Hope this helps. 

 

 

 

DreamWeever

Design Anvil - Razor42 said:

Hi DreamWeever,

Yes, there are two long length presets here for the Mane, Mane Long and Mane Very Long which will grow tha mane out. And if you find you want to make the mane even longer you can adjust the Style and Movement Property - Mane Lift 02 after you have applied the Mane Very Long preset. By decreasing the Mane Lift 02 property further into the negative the Mane will continue to grow. It's generally best done before the dforce simulation for more preditable results. Hope this helps. 

 

 

 

Thanks, yes this does help. Is there anything that ould do the same for the forlock?

 

Design Anvil - Razor42

Yeah there a few things you can do with the Forlock. But I guess you would call them a little experimental as the results are not always predictable.

Start by again applying the Mane Very Long Preset. Then find the Style and Movement Property - Forelock 03 and we are going to need to unlock the preset limits on the property for this.(This is the part where things can get a little unpredictable, as you can dial items well beyond there intended or tested limits, but you can't permanently break anything and you can just dial it back down if things get a little wild). To do this click the small gear icon on the property preset and then untick the use limits check box as pictured below. Then dial it down to -200% or so.

You can do this with any of the presets that are locked and get some pretty wild results by playing around with negative values.

For the pic below I also added a wind node, changed a few other property presets and increased the Additional PR Hairs Density to 3 times the normal amount of hair on the Surfaces tab.

DreamWeever

Design Anvil - Razor42 said:

Yeah there a few things you can do with the Forlock. But I guess you would call them a little experimental as the results are not always predictable.

Start by again applying the Mane Very Long Preset. Then find the Style and Movement Property - Forelock 03 and we are going to need to unlock the preset limits on the property for this.(This is the part where things can get a little unpredictable, as you can dial items well beyond there intended or tested limits, but you can't permanently break anything and you can just dial it back down if things get a little wild). To do this click the small gear icon on the property preset and then untick the use limits check box as pictured below. Then dial it down to -200% or so.

You can do this with any of the presets that are locked and get some pretty wild results by playing around with negative values.

For the pic below I also added a wind node, changed a few other property presets and increased the Additional PR Hairs Density to 3 times the normal amount of hair on the Surfaces tab.

Thanks, lots to play with then :) 

Pendraia

I've had daz horse 2 for years. I didn't like the original mane.

I've been holding off on purchasing at the moment as I want to be able to afford Genesis 9 morphs and maybe a few other items when the items start appearing in the store.

This is so tempting...

DreamWeever

Design Anvil - Razor42 said:

Yeah there a few things you can do with the Forlock. But I guess you would call them a little experimental as the results are not always predictable.

Start by again applying the Mane Very Long Preset. Then find the Style and Movement Property - Forelock 03 and we are going to need to unlock the preset limits on the property for this.(This is the part where things can get a little unpredictable, as you can dial items well beyond there intended or tested limits, but you can't permanently break anything and you can just dial it back down if things get a little wild). To do this click the small gear icon on the property preset and then untick the use limits check box as pictured below. Then dial it down to -200% or so.

You can do this with any of the presets that are locked and get some pretty wild results by playing around with negative values.

For the pic below I also added a wind node, changed a few other property presets and increased the Additional PR Hairs Density to 3 times the normal amount of hair on the Surfaces tab.

Took a bit of playing with things and fiddling with settings but I got it to mostly do what I wanted it to do :) Thanks for the pointers

 

Design Anvil - Razor42

You're welcome. I Love the render, the lighting really sets the atmosphere off nicely. Puts me in mind of the Kelpie myths.

You did well with such long hair too. Both the mane and tail look fantastic.

Thanks for sharing it here.

DreamWeever

Design Anvil - Razor42 said:

You're welcome. I Love the render, the lighting really sets the atmosphere off nicely. Puts me in mind of the Kelpie myths.

You did well with such long hair too. Both the mane and tail look fantastic.

Thanks for sharing it here.

No worries and thank you, I thought you might like to see what I was trying to do :)