On the search for real quality hair - possibly in the v4 sale?
kleinefotoman
Posts: 81
Hello Everyone,
Most of the time only using the hair items which came with the daz people bundle's gives quite poor results. With the V4 sale still going on and wanting some quality hair I hope that some of you might know some real quality which might be on sale.
I heard about quality hair from DigiCalimero, called 'wild hair', which you can't get anymore. other than that I don't know any ohter hair wich is good.
So..... can you guys help me to create a list of real quality hair which is obtainable in the daz store?
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Not easy to give specific models, not knowing your tastes and/or requirements, but any hair by Neftis http://www.daz3d.com/neftis3d Mairy http://www.daz3d.com/mairy or Valea http://www.daz3d.com/valea
The best thing you could do would be to go up to the menu at the very top of the page, go to Shop and Hair, then sort it by your desired cost and browse the models.
I am especially searching for woman hair. from chin length to hip length. I do like all kinds of hair.
I will try to explain what I mean with quality hair. When you look at the hair flocks you usually see a straight row of 'individual' hairs which are obviously just some fake duplicated hairs. when the hair is close to the head without using the hair morphs which came with it, it might look good enough. when you try to use the morphs you start to see some really ugly strips of hair. it might curl the right way, but it mostly is just layers of rectangles with some painted hairs laying really parallel.
When I say quality, I mean hair which doesn't really show the layers of rectangular hair, but gives you more the idea of seeing individual hair strands, laying and looking natural. Another thing I think quality hair should have, is lots of hair morphs for the creative use of it.
I don't really know how to say it better.
Thank you for giving some vendors names which might have quality hair.
No attack on for example neftis 3d, but for an example on the obvious layers I will use the "Josie Tails Hair for Genesis 2 Female(s)". I really love the design of this hair, but the layers become apparent in the curls. Of course it is not fair to compare it to a straight hair like 'wild hair', and I can understand that it might be impossible to create realistic curly hair. I just used it as example.
Unfortunately strand-based hair is very "expensive" in terms of the system resources it uses, and - particularly in the past - was not something most users' computers could handle. It was also hard for PAs to create. There are now a few strand-based hair models, mostly created using the Fibremesh tools in Zbrush, but the problem of system demands remains. You don't say which application you are using, but Poser has built-in strand-based hair (and there are a limited number of products using that), Carrara has a similar system with a few hair sets using it, and DS has two add-ons (Garibaldi Express and Look at My Hair) for strand-based hair - all of these avoid the worst of the system load by generating the final hair only when you render.
Aha, so that is the reason there are so few realistic looking hair items. Thanks for explaining it. On which system resources does it have a big influence? I have intel i7 4770 with 16gb memory (will become 32). At the moment I use the graphics card of my processor (hd4600), but i plan taking a better graphics card like the nvidia GTX 770 (or maybe even a Titan). would those specifications still be no good for a strand based (or fibremess if you call it that) hair items?
Do you know PA's who do use that?
Neftis does have some Fibremesh hairs, if you sort by release date they will be among the more recent products.
Fibremesh and the like tend to have very high polygon counts so they are slow to load (especially in DAZ Studio loading Poser-format files), make the view port sluggish and demand a lot of memory and processor power for rendering.
...viewport performance (which is in OpenGL) is handled by the VRAM on the GPU. so the more you have the smoother the camera moves/transitions.
While spendy, the Titan does give you a full 6GB of GDDR5 which should significantly improve viewport performance.
I will soon be upgrading my system to dual Radeon 7950s (in SLI) each with 3GB GDDR5 as I am beginning to exceed the VRAM of my current GPU with the increased complexity of scenes I am creating (resulting in sluggish performance and occasional crashes to the desktop while working in OpenGL mode).
I have been learning to work with the Garibaldi hair system and while odd to see just the strand indicators in the viewport, am getting nice results post render. The one drawback with these is you need to style the hair in the plugin to fit the pose as there are no "morphs" available like modelled/transmapped hair allow. I imagine you could save as a .obj and rig that, however doing so will significantly boost the final polycount.
so the VRAM is the main limiting thing right now I guess. It might be the reason that "valle alpina" from HowieFarkes was really, really sloooowww when I loaded it and rendered it. It even misplaced a lot of trees. I haven't tried to use it since then. But now I know the real reason: my hd4600 igpu. I have assigned 1gb to it, but that is only virtual vram.
Oh well, reality does have its cost, or time, or money (oh my goodness how extremely expensive is that Titan Z).
I guess I will never get higher than the Titan black, which costs already more than I actually would like to pay.
...the Titan Z is basically 2 regular Titan GPUs wired together. Kind of a waste of money if you are not a power gamer as the CUDA threads mean nothing unless you are going to use a GPU based render engine like Octane. Also because it is 2 x 6GB GDDR5, Octane (or whatever other GPU based render engine you have) would only use 6GB of the VRAM available for rendering, though it will take advantage of the total number of CUDA cores available (something like 5,700) which determines rendering speed.
The Quadro K6000 has a full 12GB GDDR5 on a single unit, but it is even more expensive at around 5,000$ (depending on vendor).
Come on guys, are Neftis 3d, Mairy and Valea really the only ones with possible quality hair in their shop? I hoped to get at least some names of some items itself. With around 1200 items there should be some.
http://www.daz3d.com/hair
As it was suggested before, it is really the best to have a look for yourself in the store. Look for a style that you like, then have a close look at the promo images, which tell you much about the quality. The "Whats Included and Features" tab shows you a list of all the included morphs.
And if you buy an item that really does not look or work like expected, remember that you can return it within 30 days and you get your money back.
I love the realistic hairs from 3D Universe here at DAZ, especially the V4A4 Bun Hair (there is a K4/A4 version with Kattey too) and the bun hair from Jaycee Complete set (very similar, but one large bun instead of two smaller ones, so it looks more like younger adult style) , the hair fom Charlize set is great too. Usually I find it quite easy to use the older ones with Genesis/G2F here. Some promos (e.g. older V4A4 Bun Hair) don't do the quality fully justice, the hair looks awesome and less flat when rendered with quality light and setup, eventually using some additional texture sets for more versatility.
Other hair that is a must have for me are all those from Aeon Soul over ar RDNA, but specifically Fantasy Drops Hair and Santa Monica Hair with their add-on packs. These should talk for themselves if you look at them.
3D Universe might be part of the PA sale next month, Aeon Soul only does one sale per year, I think around christmas.
The trouble is that it's going to be a matter of taste - I buy a lot of hair from AprilYSH, Valea and Goldtassel but I've seen other people criticise their products (and I complain about the baked-in specular highlights in a lot of Valea's hair). There have been other artists who have enjoyed great popularity but whose work I don't like. It comes down to which compromises you regard as acceptable and which you regard as deal-breakers.
Definitely. And any recommendation will be influenced by that, though some hair just looks better or more realistic than others, not talking about the style but the look when it's rendered (at least if you don't want to improve images using a lot of postwork). Personally I don't like 'realistic' hair that looks unnatural cause of missing details like loose strands that real hair usually shows - or they show hard edges on curves (where it changes direction, not sure about correct description in english) instead of a nice 'flowing' strands.
I forgot two more products I'd recommend, one of them in the V4 sale.
The first is Mavka Hair by smay here at DAZ, which looks awesome if you like that style and is a steal even at no-sale price. Second is Akina Hair by SWAM/DAZ, which promos look awful and don't do the hair justice at all. The promos even made me NOT buy it and I only got it when it was on big discount later to give it a try - and render quality surprised and pleased me, it looks awesome on reality/luxus renders too. Without the colored strands and parts it can look quite decent - I like it in full black for young asian women renders.
Mavka Hair might be part of PA sale next month too, Akina hair is 80% discounted currently.
To me, the overall look and style of hair is more important than some small quality issues. I postwork my renders a lot, and if the hair does not look right in some details, I can usually correct this in a few minutes in Photoshop.
Also be aware that Auto-Fit sometimes can destroy a lot. So if you use a hair made for Genesis or V4 and it looks perfect on those figures, Auto-Fit can create some nasty bends if you use it on G2F. Not always, but sometimes.
...I have a number of April's hair props, and some have even become a bit "iconic" to some of my characters (I frequently refer to her Paxton Hair as "Leela Hair"). One thing I like is the consistency in colouration throughout her entire hair library (and every one has at least one shade of red if not red as the default colour) as well as the many "real world" styles she offers.
The one fantasy hair I have by April, Vayne Braid, is actually nicely done and while a bit involved to pose by hand, offers quite an array of styling options.
I agree about Neftis' hairs and have a number of those as well. The only drawback is they sometimes are limited in colour options so I often have to create my own colour maps.
...I manually fit and parent all older generation hairs to Genesis/G2 to avoid this occurring. It also then allows me to freely use any morphs that come with the hair. I've been manually cross fitting hair ever since I started in this years ago and the process has pretty much become second nature to me.
I agree too on the style being important for the most part. However some hairs like the "Pure Hair" series, while offering some nice styles (like Pure Hair Wild" which finally had a nice long ponytail I as looking for that didn't distort when posed) in some cases seemed to lack enough "natural" details and map depth, particularly along the hairline and scalp area.
Definitely. And any recommendation will be influenced by that, though some hair just looks better or more realistic than others, not talking about the style but the look when it's rendered (at least if you don't want to improve images using a lot of postwork). Personally I don't like 'realistic' hair that looks unnatural cause of missing details like loose strands that real hair usually shows - or they show hard edges on curves (where it changes direction, not sure about correct description in english) instead of a nice 'flowing' strands.
I can't deny that it is Greatly affected by taste. But what bad4u tells here is exactly what I tried to say. I like having hair with great detail.
I looked up the 3D universe items, the Bun Hair items do look nice, although they indeed do look a bit flat, I might try them when they are on sale. The hair from charlize is a bit difficult to judge in the store. As it is called short hair ,the long style more looks like the ranger hair, is it really the same hair? The longer style does have some curls I see, which do make the layers again visible.
I have to say I do like the 3d universe hair. I have their character Sadie, which has beautiful looking hair, but unfortunately it is just one object which can't be restyled.
The hair items from Aeon Soul are really nice. The fantasy drops, desir and santa monica do look really nice. Although the extreme curls in the santa monica add-on should be avoided I think. I hope I can keep my restraint till Christmas :lol: (or whenever he does have a sale)
Although it is not really the style I would use, when I saw the Mavka Hair, I was like " oh my goodness... wow! that is really nice hair". Style or not, this seems to be quality.
About the Akina hair. To be honoust, I was checking it out yesterday when filling up the free $10 of V4/M4 stuff when buying one of the final days of summer items. It is a odd style hair. Hearing you say that the promo's are worse than in actual use make me being interested in it. I will try that one out. Although it is an odd style, it is attracting.
@ Richard Haseltine
hair from AprilYSH: to me, some look beautifull to me, others don't get much attention from me.Well, that is indeed just taste. These vendors do give a lot of variance in hair. Mainly the odd ones do get my attention. I didn't give a close inspection to all those items, it is at this moment just to much to inspect it all (also applies to other vendors). Some items absolutely don't attract with their promo images, while they might give some nice look after all. I was wondering for a while which hair was used in "Pop Diva". although I tried to look through the entire long hair items I never really found it. I just learned yesterday that it is Kione Hair. It is just such an unattractive promo image that I just overlooked it before. I think the criticism you talk about also might have to do with this.
Valea: idem, cant really much about this, some nice, some not. Didn't really feel the urge to inspect it (taste based I guess). Quality has yet to be judged.
Goldtessel: most of the hair is beautiful. I guess he has more of my taste. Quality: I haven't inspected them good, but on first look, it doesn't seem to be bad. But if not fully inspected this might become a fake quality judged by taste. So I really need to at least inpect it more thoroughly, to be able to say anything about the quality.
@ XoechZ
I guess, the discussion about quality till now overlooked this point a bit (at least on my side). Yes, in the end, the complete image with some ps work in it will be thing people will appreciate more than an image which is unbalanced in quality because all attention got to the refinement of some hair strands 99% of viewers won't ever notice. I guess as long as it is not a close-up, not much ps work should be involved.
Saying this I realise I don't even know how much work it might cost to correct such a thing. I almost never use ps. Do you have a tutorial of or something on how to correct it in photoshop?
thanks about the warning about auto-fit. I haven't really tried much with G2F yet.
I see you are a carrara user
you need to try Carrara dynamic hair
Ringo monfort and PhilW have nice ones in store and Holly Wetcircuit has great tutorials on how to do your own
hop on over to the Carrara cafe, link in Dartanbecks carrara forum sticky
also have a great bunch of peiople on carrara forum
I had same issues with Vale Alpina, a heavy scene that one
in the end deleted all but camera and terrain, edit removed unused objects and shaders, moved my camera using terrain, saved that camera to object browser and added to new version of scene
Glad to know I am not the only one having trouble with that scene. Didn't think about using an empty scene to position the camera, good idea, I will try it again.
Unfortunately I haven't done much with carrara til now. I tried to model a japanese style building in it. The results till now are awful, I have to admit. I am absolutely not the best in 3d stuff. I just bought "Learning Carrara 8.5" from infinite skills a few days ago (with the 55% off). I hope it gives me a bit more understanding how to do it right. After some busy years I finally have a little bit time to try some more with 3D. To be honest I like daz studio a bit more because of the simple use of it. I tried to load a figure in carrara in the hope use some of the powerful capabilities of carrara. But there was issue with the skin, having partly a gray tone. After some struggle I hopped back to studio where every thing is simple. Trying to do something difficult as dynamic hair was out of the question for me after that.
I see indeed some nice dynamic hair. the promo image of "dynamic desire hair" looks really stunning. The enchanted hair though (which seems to belong to the v4 sale) does look a bit like the rectengular layers hair items to me. and except the carrara hair belonging in the v4/m4 sale, all the hair looks beautifull. Oh well, I guess I shouldn't judge to soon. I still haven't used my platinum club coupon of this month so I guess I can use it on the ModaCuts items and the enchanted hair without losing to much money ($0,27 or so i guess). Can I use carrara hair for v4 also on genesis models?
I thought moda cuts came with Carrara, does some versions but I upgraded
http://www.daz3d.com/look-at-my-hair
http://www.daz3d.com/garibaldi-express-hair-system-for-daz-studio
I think a combined approach, especially for men's hairs, would probably be the best approach to reduce the demand on system resources. Use a fiber mesh for the details at the hairline and a solid geometry for the rest.
Hmm, okay. I guess I should be able to see it under 'Hair', under 'objects' then? it has three folders under it: DAZ (which has only DAZHairCap); other (which has nothing in it); Samples (which has: Blonde ND; Red Flow D; Red Flow ND; Spiral Ponytail; White Blonde); Victoria 4 (which has nothing in it).
The name doesn't show up in the DIM. Maybe they removed it?
look at my hair and garibaldi: Well to be honest, I actually purchased both. I installed Look at my hair which is good for animals. I did some research when I purchased them. since look at my hair seemed to be good for animals I couldn't help but buy it. garibaldi seemed to be better when you use it for humans. After I purchased them someone told me they don't work together, to install only one of them. So I never installed garibaldi. For months I haven't had more time on hands than to buy stuff I want and nothing else. So DIM shows 413 to download right now. Even Daz studio update from a few months ago isn't installed. I didn't have time to look into what should be done before upgrading (don't know what results it may have on for example the purchased and installed add-on's).
This all may seem weird to you guys. Me asking about quality hair while having the software to make them myself. Point is, adding pre-made hair in a scene takes less time than making it and it is probably better hair than I could make myself I think.
That might indeed solve a lot of complaint and give quality results. Good Idea, TimG. Have you tried that to do yourself?
If I had the skills and the software, I would. I've been thinking about buying ZBrush, but as a hobbyist it's difficult to justify the spend - especially to my husband.
Download em you slack bastard :lol:
(Teasing not a personal attack)
You can grow hair from presets for genesis from freebies on LAMH furry things, none so far for g2f&m
CAN make some for hair caps too
Use a remade hair grown on the cap surface only
Look for Svevas 'SV Postwork - Hair Tutorial' at Renderosity, it explains how to do and comes with PS hair brushes. If you hurry you can get it 70% discounted, but only for few more hours.
Thanks for the tip.
Do you maybe also know if the texture tutorials apply to daz studio too?
Not sure which ones you are talking about ..?