Thin Hair Issue

iancmiley

I purchased Shanda Hair for Genesis 2 female, but I'm running into some issues. Her hair looks too thin in both Daz3d (the one with the blue background) and in 3ds max. I'm going to design a futuristic helmet around her, so I don't want to make her hair any bigger.

​Normally I would simply adjust the morphs to make her hair bigger so it looks less thin, but when I do that, the helmet looks too bulky. Is there a way to make the hair thicker? Is there some sort of dial or trick to make the hair less transparent, without making it bigger?

I'm mainly concerned about the sides and the back, especially around the neck.  

Richard Haseltine

You could try adjusting the gamma value of the opacity map, which would make it more solid. I'm not quite sure which kind of thicker you want - deeper as measured in mm, or desner as measured in apparent number of strands.

barbult

In the Iray render, are you using an Iray shader on the hair? The other option, other than changing the gamma value, is to change Cutout Opacity to a value greater than 1. If you can't move the Cutout Opacity slider past 1, click on the little gear on the Cutout Opacity slider and uncheck the box to use limits. Try 1.5 or even 2.

You might also look at the translucency settings. Try setting Translucency Weight to 0 and see if that helps it.

iancmiley

Thanks guys!
​Barbult: By Cutout Opacity, do you mean Opacity strength? I couldn't find it in the surfaces tab, only opacity strength.

Richard: If I wanted more strands, is there a way to do that? And is there a way of changing the gamma within Daz3d or is it better to use photoshop?

FeralFey

OK. There was a similar hair issue for someone else that I was just helping with. This may or may not be the same situation, but please bear with me as I ask these questions. Are you using the hair on Genesis 2 Female base or have you applied a character morph? If you've applied a character morph, try removing it first and seeing if the hair looks fuller. If this is the case, then I know what the problem is. The hair might not include morphs to accommodate the morphs in the character shape you have applied.

And if this is not the case, forgive my intrusion. :)

barbult

iancmiley said:

Thanks guys!
​Barbult: By Cutout Opacity, do you mean Opacity strength? I couldn't find it in the surfaces tab, only opacity strength.

Richard: If I wanted more strands, is there a way to do that? And is there a way of changing the gamma within Daz3d or is it better to use photoshop?

If you see only Opacity Strength and not Cutout Opacity Strength, then you are probably not using Iray materials on the hair. Do the hair materials claim to be Iray materials, or are they old 3delight materials that you are rendering in Iray? Or did I miss the boat completely and you are rendering in 3Delight?

SixDs

There appears to be something very wrong here. I have the hair and so I opened DAZ Studio and tried to reproduce the effect shown in the images. Rendered in 3Delight the hair is very full when properly fitted to G2F. OK, says I, lets see what happens when I scale the hair down to accommodate a helmet. So I did, and the hair still renders much fuller than shown in those images. Short of sinking the hair completely into her head, I'm not certain I can replicate the problem. It could be Iray, Barb - the hair comes with 3Delight and Poser materials only, but I don't think that kind of result should be seen anyway. I've rendered hair in Iray before just using the auto conversion and never seen anything like that. I think we need a screenshot of the surface settings.

Having said that, since I usually always find myself outside the box anyway, given the issue and not knowing what is causing it, I do have two suggestions for thin hair. Try creating a new node instance of the hair, then translate that ever so slightly forward or back and/or down or up. That should double the strands visible without significantly increasing the size. I don't know whether you are intending to use this in DAZ Studio or 3DStudio. I'm not really versed in the second, but I'm guessing that it has some similar functionality. Failing that, you can always simply load a second copy of the hair and do the same thing - its just a little heavier on resources than the first approach.

iancmiley

I think the problem was I was relying on the Shaping Morphs too much. When I created a new node, and left the shape morphs relatively the same as the default, and just scaled the hair down, I got much better results. The hair is much thicker, and you can't see the scalp anymore. That said, the hair around the neck is still a bit transparent looking in 3ds Max. I think its a problem with the render settings in 3D studio Max. Maybe there's a way of setting up the Iray materials and using Cutout Opacity Strength just so that area looks more full. Anyway I'll keep trying to fix this.

SixDs

Is your intent to use this ultimately in 3D Studio or DAZ Studio? If you are using Iray shaders in DAZ Studio and then attempting to import them into 3D Studio for Vray, then that probably won't work. Its not the render settings that will cause the problems but the surface settings which will differ between the two render engines. Can't help you with Vray.

If you are working in DAZ Studio and converting the hair from the default 3Delight shaders to Iray, what are you using to convert? The built-in DAZ Iray shaders, like the base uberenvironment? Check and see what the translucency settings are since that can make the hair appear more wispy.

Anyway, happy tweaking! .

iancmiley

Good idea. I'll try to tweak the transparency settings in Daz3d.

​I'm planning to ultimately use this in 3D Studio Max 2016. So maybe its an issue with exporting, or the surface settings in 3ds Max.

​Anyway, thanks for all the help, SixDs!

samurle

iancmiley said:

 Is there a way to make the hair thicker?

Double it up.  Clone two copies of the hair and see if that helps.