Hair converter add-on for Blender

Krys Kryngle

Padone said:

We're also trying to make better hair materials. Any contribution is welcome, especially from @jcade @Krampus and @Cinus I'd like to get some advice.

https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/issues/291/better-hair-materials

Personally, the principled hair bsdf using melanin concentration is enough for me.  I still have not found a good recipe for blonde, but I have not tried very hard either. 

The biggest issue I continue to encounter with the Diffeomorphic hair tool is the limit on how many parent strands or parent particles it imports.  If I import a hair mesh from DAZ and it has too many, Diffeo will import and convert some/none of the strands.  Is there a way to raise that limit, or at least make it clear what the limit is so I can try to reduce the number of mesh ribbons before conversion? 

For example, imorting Monica hair, I know i have to delete about half the mesh for Diffeomorphic to import.  Figuring out how much to delete without changing the look of the hair takes quite a bit of time and experimentation. 

Plus, a higher number of parent/guide hairs looks better in my opinion.  It allows for smaller, more natural clumping around the guide hair.

Krys Kryngle

SoulMyst said:

Actually been having better than expected results with this hair tool, wow. Thanks for creating this!

 

Agreed.  Very good tool.  Something else that has been working well for me is saving the settings for each hairstyle and just loading those settings back in after the hair conversion.  If you save the settings in a text file, then just import and run the text file in Blender, it will apply the values you assigned in the text file.  Saves a lot of time and allows us to share 'recipes'. 

For example, I can convert Monica hair using either Diffeo or Cinus's hair tool, import the txt file, run it, and I have good looking hair within a minute. 

Credit goes to @nicstt for this idea. 

[for diffeo settings, change 'hair-01' to 'particlesettings' (I think).  Blender or text editor can do a find and replace]

Please share if you get any settings that work well for you!

Padone

Hi @Krampus, I don't seem to have any issue with Monica. Below the settings and the rendering with the new materials where I used the principled option. Please download the latest version since there are improvements both for speed and materials.

 

For rendering I used the following options. I like your shape suggestion since it seems better to me than the blender default.

 

nicstt

Love the plugin. Great job. I especially love the single strands that are available.

OOT's Lainey hair.

rkrusty

davidtriune said:

this plugin works great! 

some tips:
-the principled hair shader seems to be the best shader for hair. I like setting the randomize roughness value to 1
-randomize the particle roughness (not material) a bit to make it look more natural and keep it from looking too straight. i use around 0.01-0.05. it has a "messy" effect which I offset with clumping. 
-strand shape seems to be incorrect in the manual. negative values make it thicker at the root while positive values make it thinner at the root, not the other way around. i like to use -.08

-the hair diameter in blender seems to be 10x too large. the average hair diameter is around .05mm according to google. but if you plug in .00005m the hair follicles will look too thick. if i use .000005m it looks right. I don't know if this is a bug with blender.

What's your node setup for the skin there? Looks great

Padone

nicstt said:

Love the plugin. Great job. I especially love the single strands that are available.

info. Recently single strands were added to diffeo too.

https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/issues/329/select-strands-by-width

DAZ_sam

@Cinus I am gonna have to keep an eye on this discussion can't wait to test out your add-on myself! 

nicstt

Padone said:

nicstt said:

Love the plugin. Great job. I especially love the single strands that are available.

info. Recently single strands were added to diffeo too.

https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/issues/329/select-strands-by-width

This is good news.

davidtriune

rkrusty said:

davidtriune said:

this plugin works great! 

some tips:
-the principled hair shader seems to be the best shader for hair. I like setting the randomize roughness value to 1
-randomize the particle roughness (not material) a bit to make it look more natural and keep it from looking too straight. i use around 0.01-0.05. it has a "messy" effect which I offset with clumping. 
-strand shape seems to be incorrect in the manual. negative values make it thicker at the root while positive values make it thinner at the root, not the other way around. i like to use -.08

-the hair diameter in blender seems to be 10x too large. the average hair diameter is around .05mm according to google. but if you plug in .00005m the hair follicles will look too thick. if i use .000005m it looks right. I don't know if this is a bug with blender.

What's your node setup for the skin there? Looks great

thanks, same setup as my post here: https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/424721/show-us-your-blender-renders/p2

I just used different textures (texturing.xyz)

 

 

GutoCrafts

thank you so much for creating this tool and distribting it for free!

ben85

Awesome work, thanks a lot for sharing it. I didn't expect such perfect results as it even works when parts of the hair are braided like this one https://www.daz3d.com/jocelyn-hair-for-genesis-3-8-female-s

One thing i've noted is that it won't mess with any subdiv modifier on the mesh, i think it would be neat to have an option in the conversion tab to automaticly apply/discard subdivision on the scalp mesh

edit: maybe also an option for automatic segment count would be possible, derived from the max strand length

jHuntley

well I am using Blender 2.92 and the daz bridge says only goes to 2.8 is there another way to get into blender?

 

brainmuffin

jHuntley said:

well I am using Blender 2.92 and the daz bridge says only goes to 2.8 is there another way to get into blender?

 

Diffeomorphic: http://diffeomorphic.blogspot.com/

cfazio4

Cinus said:

Install the add-on like you would install any other blender add-on.

The add-on can now convert most hair made of “hair cards”. The hair cards must consist of faces with 4 vertices (quads). It cannot convert hair with triangles or n-gons. It will also fail to convert cards that fold back on themselves or cards that do not start on or near the skull. Toulouse hair is an example of such hair. It will convert the hair, but some cards do not start at the skull, so the generated root particles will be wrong.

Once the add-on is installed, you should see a “Hair” menu in the right-hand side of your 3D view (assuming you are using the default layout). It should look something like what is depicted in the attached Hair.jpg image.

How to use:

Import a Daz model with hair using either the Diffeomorphic or DazToBlender add-on or whatever other method you prefer. Most of my testing was done with the Diffeo plugin. I am not sure the hair converter will work if you use DazToBlender with the “Size * 100” box checked when importing the model.

You must separate the hair cap from the main hair for the converter to work. It’s the same process that Thomas Larsson documented very well here https://diffeomorphic.blogspot.com/p/hair-version-15.html

Make sure you are in Object mode.

Select the hair mesh.

Switch to Edit mode.

Select any face on the hair cap.

Press Ctrl+L and then press P and then Enter.

A new mesh should have been created. Rename the new mesh to Cap, or “Hair Emitter” or something similar. The name is not important. The “hair cap” will become the particle emitter.

If there is a Subsurface modifier on the hair cap, remove it. It’s not strictly necessary, but I think particle hair looks better without it. Blender seems to have issues if you disconnect and re-connect hair with a subsurface modifier on it.

Once the hair and cap are separated, you can convert the hair.

Switch back to Object mode.

Select the hair mesh and while holding in shift, select the hair cap. It’s important to select the hair mesh first.

Select the “Hair” menu on the right-hand side of the 3D viewport.

The hair converter has three parameters:

Segments: Number of segments to create per particle. The default is 10. For shorter hair, you should decrease the number. For very curly hair, increase the number. Max is 20, but 14 should work well even for long curly hair.

Single Strand Width (m): This value is used to determine which hair cards will be converted to single particles with no children. If you set the value to 0, then no “single hairs” will be created. If you set the value to the max then most of the hair particles will become “single hairs”. The default value of .001 should work for most hair, but for AprilYsh hair I get the best results by setting it to 0 and then using the Random and Threshold settings under Roughness to add loose hairs.

Strand Radius (m): This value will be used as the child particle radius. If a hair card wider than 2 * Strand Radius is encountered, additional particles will be created in order to fill the card with hair. A value of .008 works well for most hair.

In order to kick off the conversion, click the “Convert Hair” button.

After a few seconds, the converted particle hair should appear.

The converter will hide the original hair mesh once the conversion is done.

You should see a “hair-01” and possibly a “single hairs” particle slot in the Particle Settings panel when the hair cap is selected.

If you want to have all of the particle roots directly on the hair cap, you can use the “Disconnect Hair” and “Connect Hair” option in the particle settings. This will change the look of the hair. It usually lifts the hair up a bit because a lot of hair cards start well below the hair cap.

The converter will create a material for the hair particles called “ParticleHair”. It uses a Principled Hair BSDF shader for Cycles and several nodes for Eevee. In order to change the hair color for Cycles, change the Melanin value. Smaller values for light hair and larger values for dark hair. See this for more info https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/shader_nodes/shader/hair_principled.html

For a better hairline, especially for darker hair, use j cade’s node setup. It improves the look of the hairline considerably, but does increase the render time somewhat. You could also use a thinner root than tip as @Krampus suggested, but that will change the look of the hair and you may or may not like it.

For Eevee, change the colors in the Diffuse BSDF and the Glossy BSDF nodes to get the desired color.

You should play around with the hair settings to get the best look. The Clumping section together with the “Radius” under Children can have the biggest impact. I suggest using a “clump curve” that looks something like the one in the attached “Clump Curve.jpg” image.

Changing the Endpoint (under Children->Roughness) to .001 or .002 can improve the look too, but that depends on the type of hair.

To add “loose hairs” for meshes that do not already have a lot of thin cards, use the Random and Threshold settings under Roughness. For most hair, a Random setting of .05 to .07 and a Threshold setting of .6 to .7 works well.

The material for the original hair cap is left in place. Sometimes it looks better without the hair cap. If you do not want to render the hair cap then switch off “Show Emitter” in the particle settings of the first particle slot (can be found in the Viewport Display and Render sub panels)

Take a look at this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ge1qWMG-U90. It’s a little annoying, but it explains the hair settings thoroughly.

It is now possible to create several different particle systems for the hair if you choose to do so. If you select a subset of cards before running the conversion, the converter will only convert the selected cards. It will not remove any converted particles, just add new particle slots for the selected cards.

This is handy if the hair has braids. You could first select all the non-braid strands and then run the conversion. Then select all the cards that make up the braids and run it again. You will end up with another particle system for the braids that will allow you to tune the braids to your liking.

This is also handy if you want to create separate particle slots for bangs, etc.

I tested the add-on in Blender 2.83.3 and 2.90.1.

Good luck with your hair conversions. Your computer should not explode when you run this converter, but I make no guarantee :).

Please post pictures of successful (or not so successful) conversions here.

 

 

Seems very high quality, but having trouble with Selena Top Tied Hair - it is only grabbing a part of it?

 

Is it due to how the hair folds on itself? I am using daz to blender bridge for import. 

 

 

Cinus

@cfazio4 Apologies for the late reply. I have not checked this thread in a while. I'm fairly certain that the issue you are having is caused by the hair band. You should separate the band from the hair. 

Select the hair mesh, go into edit mode. Click any vertex on the hair band. Click Ctrl+L and then P. Choose "Selection" and then esc. The band should now be separated and you can go back to object mode, select the hair and then the hair cap (while holding shift) and then "Convert Hair".

Daia

Thank you so much for this!

I tried your add-on converter on Voss Hair, I tweaked the settings a bit, I think I could get better results but to be honest I don't know much about the particle system and I was just following what was said in the posts of this thread.

Here's a comparison of renders using the same hdri (one is blender cycles with hair particles the other one is daz iray with default hair shaders). Both without post work. I'll keep playing around with it but I think it gives great results with just a few clicks.

 

 

 

790437456

thanks for the amazing add -on!!

but why the hair root become the hair tip?

how can i invert it

Jimbow

Thanks for this script which is very straightforward to use. This is Ali's Hr-082 after splitting the neck, bun and sideburn wisps. I especially like how you can add particle sets to the same emitter. Top job, mate.

 

jhandy

can the hair be animated, or does it move in animation.. tried mutiple ways with failure

Padone

With diffeomorphic you can convert dforce/sbh to particles then animate. It is also possible to convert/animate transmapped hair but the result will vary depending on the hair design. That is, Some hairs are not designed to be animated and may have, for example, all the strands originating from the same point, that does fine for rendering but not for simulation.

https://bitbucket.org/Diffeomorphic/import_daz/issues/978/does-hair-dynamics-work-with-mesh-hair

brasil.br

hey guys, which addon are you using to make these fantastic hairs?

 

neogemini

Cinus said:

@cfazio4 Apologies for the late reply. I have not checked this thread in a while. I'm fairly certain that the issue you are having is caused by the hair band. You should separate the band from the hair. 

Select the hair mesh, go into edit mode. Click any vertex on the hair band. Click Ctrl+L and then P. Choose "Selection" and then esc. The band should now be separated and you can go back to object mode, select the hair and then the hair cap (while holding shift) and then "Convert Hair".

Hi Cinus, thank for your addon. But i had same problem with cfazio4 even though i had deleted head band from hair. Please help me with this case, thank you so much.

Cinus

Hi @neogemini. What hair is that? Unfortunately some hair has geometry that my addon cannot convert. If I own that hair I can take a look.

mjoe67886

wheres the addon download link?

csaa

mjoe67886,

Here's the Github page - https://github.com/jobutsu/DazHairConverter

Cheers!

mjoe67886 said:

wheres the addon download link?

csaa

I found good use for the ideas and the suggestions in this thread. It turned out well worth the effort!

For a G8.1F figure imported with Diffeo, I wanted to use the Bowl Cut Hair for Genesis 3 Male. Problem was the hair on the nape came out too sparse.

Until I read this thread and looked into hair particles, I never could add a mat of hair fuzz to make up for the bald areas. Keeping in line with the bowl cut look, there was no need for long tresses. Just a buzz would do. So after some trial and error, I got the result I needed.

Here are the hair particle settings I tried. Pretty much everything else I left at default.

 

Cheers!

facy-_-sedated

I have tried to install the addon in version 3.3 and downloaded version 2.9 and the addon does not appear after installing it, I really want to use this addon! I have not found anything similar on the internet does anyone know what I can do? Can it be opened in newer versions of blender?

Silas3D

Apologies if this has already been covered, but is it possible to get the hair back into DS after conversion without having to export as a huge obj?

Padone

No.

trebor_gb_37ba5b8bb6

For the life of me I cant seem to install this addon! Blender 3.2, installed zip file then trying to find the actual thing?