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Question about changing dForce hair length *Solved*

Fae3DFae3D Posts: 2,560
edited October 2023 in The Commons

There may not be a way to do this if you aren't a vendor, but I thought I'd ask.  I'm working with Oso Fox for Daz Dog 8 with dForce Hair (which I adore and use all the time), and I want to make the fur shorter to fit better on younger, smaller foxes.  Particularly, the area around the neck looks really long with the morphs I'm using.  Is there any way to "cut" the dForce fur a bit?  There are a lot of settings, and I really don't know what any of them mean.

Post edited by Fae3D on

Comments

  • crosswindcrosswind Posts: 6,986

    If there's a separate surface for the neck, you can tweak PS Reduce Length Amount and PR Interpolation Segment Length to shorten the fur length. However, there's only a holistic Coat surface, so I'm afraid you have no way to make it as only PAs have the toolset to modify surfaces on such dForce hair / fur, AFAIK...

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,011

    You can alter length either through scale maps or PS reduce length as Crosswind mentioned.

    Reduce length is very much like cutting the fur short: the fur will retain it's overlal shape until that point. Scaling adjusts the size of the hair down, so any shaping or curve to the fur scales down with it.

    No, you can't modify surfaces as a non-PA, but you shouldn't need to; for this kind of dForce Hair, there are control maps for a lot of things.

    If you want to do it by scaling, you will want to create a copy of the scale maps and edit them, then load them in. Essentially, slightly darken the area around the neck, ideally with the map loaded into some 3d paint program like Substance Painter. (You MIGHT pull it off with Photoshop, but that can be tricky)

    Note that editing a map like this involves a LOT of trial and error. So so so much trial and error.

    If you do it by reduce length, then you basically want a black map with a white patch around the neck, and you can set how much to clip the fur by with the PS Reduce Length Amount hard value.

     

     

  • crosswindcrosswind Posts: 6,986

    @Oso3D, thank you for the info. !  I'm happy to know that and gonna experiment it with the Scale maps yes

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,011

    An important thing about dForce Hair is that there are two generation modes: root radius and target surface.

    Root radius hair is pretty much directly based on the created hair guides. It's great for human hair, carefully made in some application and groomed and whatnot, and appears close to as is. You can make it more dense, but the extra hairs are basically clones.

    Target surface generates hair that mostly follows the guides, but opens up a lot of options to add variation and clumping and all sorts of generative elements. It's less exact, but you then have loads of possibilities. For example, I have multiple sets of scale maps to create a different look. With my anthro fur, I can create maps to trim fur where there might be clothes.

     

    A lot of people making human hair go for the first option. For my purposes, generally full body fur, I like having the tweaking and adjusting possibilities of the target surface. 

    (there are some annoying aspects to target surface: it can be very reluctant to generate hair in certain spots, necessitating creating wild density maps to compensate. Annoying af but the benefits make it worth it)

  • Fae3DFae3D Posts: 2,560

    Thank you so much, crosswind and Oso3D!  I was able to make do with just shortening the whole coat using the PS reduce length, with it shorter all over it looks good, no need to fix the neck.  However, I'll keep the map idea in mind, as I love to render furry animals, and I'm sure that will come in handy in the future.  And Oso3D, another thank you for all the wonderful things you make, you're one of my favorite PAs ^_^

  • crosswindcrosswind Posts: 6,986

    Thanks again Fae3D and Oso3D , I've learnt a lot from this thread! Good stuff and happy rendering ! laugh

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