dForce Hair - Less than Ideal Experience

vijayasimhabr

For a couple of weeks, I have finally started buying a few dForce desigend items. Clothing and Hair, of course. The clothing dFroce things, are amazing. I love them. 

However, dForce has been a hit and miss. The hair appears to be thin, especially near the forehead. I could try different poses and what not, and keep experimenting, but after dozens of simulations and hours, dForce simply looks bad, from almost every angle. Each time, it's the same issue. There is not enough hair where it should, so the model appears to have thinning hair. I am not even using any hair morphs or styles that come with the product. Just attaching it to the model as it is and running the simulation. Vanilla usage.

I thought, I was making a mistake, until I saw this product listing. 

https://www.daz3d.com/dforce-neroli-hair-for-genesis-8-and-genesis-3-females

The promo images are from the vendor (who assume must be an expert with Daz, unlike me). Even the vendor cannot seem to avoid a small patch of thin hair on the forehead. Is this vendor and me, both suffering from isolated issues of incorrect dForce usage? Or, dForce Hair really is not good? Perhaps the technology is not as mature as dForce clothing, may be?

Wish to know from other users. 

Meanwhile, even when I using dForce hair, I have gone back to using AutoFit without dForce, and its far better. At least there is no thinning, bald effect. 

FSMCDesigns

Pretty sure what you are seeing in the promo is how the PA wanted it to look, but I agree that it doesn't look all that great.

There are two types of dforce hair, the old cloth based types and the new strand based which is what this hair is. Strand based tends to be on the thin side as you have noted, but the cloth based one are really beautiful looking, but take more resources.

Check out the dforce hairs from Linday, they are awesome!!  https://www.daz3d.com/linday

 

Daventaki

Agreed about some of the hairs, but I love dforce hairs because it makes them look more natural.  Chevybabe25 did change the hair caps on Neroli Hair theres a thread here. Chevybabe25 is also fast to respond and give help.  If you search for Neroli hair you will find a post from Chevybabe25 in Novica's Art Studio thread that has some tips on adjusting the hair.  Chevybabe25 also has a thread for her dforce hairs that has tips in it also.  Lindays hairs are awesome as FSMCDesigns states!

vijayasimhabr

FSMC and Daven,

Thank you for your response. Thank you for the additional notes and recommendations. I will look into the suggested products, and pick them up in my next purchase cycle. 

I will also look at the threads. 

Frinkky

Biggest problem I've found is that hair just does not conform to custom/more extreme morphs resulting in hair inside the head or just plain distorted - I can't see a way to re-seat the SBH on the scalp mesh. If there are morphs to bring the hair out it doesn't simulate properly. Not to mention I think a lot of the materials shipped with hair just don't look right. Quite often even the promos are a blurry mess (I assume this is too much reliance on fill hairs and not enough on guide hairs - fill hairs just interpolate between guides therefore not enough difference). Short body/vellus hair looks about the best use so far. A shame, because if these issues were solvable I'd be on this like white on rice.

vijayasimhabr

Frinkky

Thank you for sharing your experience on the hair thing. That's precisely what I am going through. After my fabolous experience with dForce clothing (the final effect is suble but elegant), I too had high hopes for dForce Hair. 

Now, I will still buy and use but with reservations. 

chevybabe25

There is some serious beauty in dforce hair, but you have to know what you are doing and have a strong enough computer to handle it.  If there isnt enough hair in one spot, you just add more.  The key is knowing how to do it :)  I have a dforce hair thread that I want to encourage everyone that has any interest in these hairs to read through. Yep, its kinda complicated and takes some time to learn, but the pros outweigh the cons. Stop in, and ask a question. Im here to help.

https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/380281/chevybabe-s-dforce-sbh-hair-thread/p1

Also, that promo you linked to was not done by me, but by an outside daz artist.  Looking at it, Im betting he turned down the tesselation to render it on his machine.  Which there lies the other problem. These hairs need resources. They are heavy :( 

Gordig

Frinkky said:

Biggest problem I've found is that hair just does not conform to custom/more extreme morphs resulting in hair inside the head or just plain distorted

Personally, I've only seen that on toons with extremely large heads, and a lot of mesh hairs don't work right on those, either. 

vijayasimhabr

Chevy,

I must confess, that store listing images, with that patch of hair on the forehead...ewww...that sort of killed my mojo towards that product and also dForce in general. It was like a 'impression' on my mind. I am not able to drive that out of my mind, unfortunately. It's like a memory scar :) But I understand the artist who made it has made a mistake. 

A very visible mistake with repurcussions to sales, unfortunately. 

Further, I will check out that thread. As with so many other things with Daz 3D (and 3D art in general), there is a bit of learning curve. I ended up learning up HDRIs only a week ago, and that happened accidentally when I was playing around with Sun/Sky settings. So, I am sure, I will eventually figure out the dForce Hair thing. Initially, I remember, I gave up on dForce clothing as well! Now, I love it, especially when I am working with complex poses where regular fitting looks odd.

I am not out of the dForce Hair camp. However, perhaps, I just need to play around witih the one hair I already own before I start buying more hair things. Also, unlike clothing, to me at least, non-dForce hair seems to work just fine on most of the occasions. Without all the extra work load of simulation and processing hair. 

But, yes, I promise, i will revist the dForce Hair in a few weeks/months. Thank you for your advice. 

chevybabe25

No worries, Jay. Yeah, the original skullcap in those promos was not a good choice.  I don't blame you for feeling the way you do. I want to stress that knowledge is power, and I don't mind sharing what I know :)

vijayasimhabr

Chevy,

Thank you as well for understanding my concerns.

But, I have buying non-stop on daz, almost every week. I will be back for some dForce Hair sooner rather than later :)