Where is most Daz hair made that is sold in the store?
RexRed
Posts: 1,323
Where is most Daz hair made that is sold in the store?
Is it made in the Daz Strand Based Hair Editor or in some other program?
Any good tutorials on making professional looking hair for the Daz Store or for our own figures?
What is the very best place to make hair for Daz models with morphs various materials and such?
Post edited by RexRed on
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dForce hair may be made with the Strand Based hair tools, but it may also be made in an external application. Other hair can be made in a very braod range of tools.
Is it possible for non-PAs to import hair made with curves as SBH?
No, the mesh could be imported as curves (given an application that would write them - not all will) but not as Strand Based Hair as I recall.
Is Daz hair made in Zbrush, Blender, Maya?
well I know PhilW makes his in Carrara
I bet you could use Poser too as that also can be imported as polylines which is how I am entirely guessing the curve based hairs are created ising whatever plugin the PAs have access to
because why else does DAZ have the option to convert hairs to polylines under edit geometry
as for cloth based Dforce hair which any of us can make and I actually prefer
you can use any app, Arki has Hexagon tutorials for sale
All of the above and more, depending on the creator.
I create my hair with Blender and I use Photoshop for the textures.
https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/user/5207251866353664#gallery=album383281&page=1&image=1235664
https://www.daz3d.com/gallery/user/5207251866353664#gallery=album383281&page=1&image=1210560
A 3D object is made with a 3D modeler. To answer your question one would have to list all 3D modelers which wouldn't make sense. Hairs are made with "a" 3D modeler. Which one doesn't matter. (except of course Strand-Base hair, fur, etc which is done withing Daz with their pretty efficient Strand-Base editor).
Instead of answering by a 3D modeler, I'll answer by a keyword that will, after a lil' Google search, answer all your questions : hair cards.
Tons of tutorials around. Free and paid ones. A "hair card" is probably the simplest 3D mesh imaginable : basically a strand of 2 or more quads linked by 1 edge only. What's complex is to create believable shapes which is usually done with the help of curves/guides, particles, (geo)nodes. Tools I love, bought and use : 3D Hair Brush, Hair Tool. It's never necessary to buy anything with Blender as the Vanilla version is already outfreakingstandingly good. But it helps.
https://www.blendermarket.com/products/blender-addon--3d-hair-brush-v3
https://bartoszstyperek.gumroad.com/l/hairtool
Don't be fooled by the name. I've used "hair cards" in games to make fur, leaves, feathers, beard, grass, snow, lichens, mosses, high pile carpet, twigs, etc. Possibilities are limitless.
A few interesting facts :
- Now that physics are everywhere, tubes (cylinders) tend to behave better for simulated hair than flat hair cards polygons.This multiplies the polycount by at least 3. So model your meshes wisely to avoid reaching unnecessarily high polycounts.
- protip : when creating hairs be sure to specify a different material ID for the very first polygon of each hair strand. This way it'll be 1 click easy once in Daz for you or anyone to make your Hair dForce compatible. A f&@#%cking shame that so very very very few hairs are made this way...
Thank you very much for the detailed responses to my inquiry!
I feel terrible because I really do not understand the difference between strand based/fiber mesh and card-based hair (is card-based the same as cloth-based?). I buy just about every kind of hair I can find and stick it on my characters change the colors and use Dforce when necessary. I would like to slowly learn how hair is made beyond what I know now. I do notice that some hair looks like wavy flat planes/cloth or cards, while some look like individual fibers. Both types can be perfect in their own applications.
Not to criticize other modelers, but I have watched a few YouTube videos on each hair process in Blender, Maya and Zbrush. I have to say that Maya seems to be the one I like best although, Blender has some features I like as well.
What I like about Maya is that it has layers so parameters can be changed in steps.
Zbrush has some nice tools for shaping hair.
What I like about Blender is the new beta version has a drag and drop hierarchical view which seems really complicated but almost unlimited.
Also the Daz hair editor is really nice once one gets used to its processes.
I hope I am not coming off as one who knows the slightest bit about this subject. I am still very new at it.
I feel like I am on the precipice of learning 4 (or more) different languages all at the same time.
Each program is a huge learning curve but knowing Daz inside and out (to some degree) is a big help.
There are the extremes, Maya is very expensive for a roughly 4 gigabyte application and does not sell a perpetual license like Zbrush that I could see.
Zbrush is very expensive but very powerful while Blender legitimately rivals them both and is free.
It appears that Maya is the industry standard, but I hate how this term industry standard is bandied about and often the industry's standard is more complex than one single program.
Daz is also free, and the hair created in the Daz hair editor is really nice. (other than my artistic talent trying to use it well).
Hair is created in these programs, morphs are created (which to me are tiny animations) How you get the hair you create to autofit your characters in Daz is like magic to me. Presto and there it is!
...and the textures are made and probably Photoshop is indeed the best place to make textures.
Then they are all imported into Daz Studio and saved as, I assume, a .duf file or some other asset file format proprietary to Daz.
Please, the next time you make hair, record a YouTube video showing how it is done in your respective applications... (While I go look for a Greek dictionary.)
Names come from copyrighted tech developped by different companies, that's all. The difference ? Not the same 3D apps.
Hair card is simple 3D modeling. So it's a common name given to that very old and very efficient technique.
Fibermesh is ZBrush. Similar to Strand-Base hair. Can be converted easily to hair-cards.
Strand-Base hair is Daz. You brush a few guidelines and hairs will populate empty space around those guidelines.
The way Fibermesh or Strand-Base hair works is very similar to tons of other Hair & Fur methods in the 3D world.
The MAIN difference between hair cards and other methods is that Fibermesh, Strand-Base, etc : can be brushed like real hair making it a bit more fun to create hair shapes, than manually modeling/scattering hair.
BUT a lot if not all methods, at the end, can be converted to hair cards anyway.
Best plugin for hairs in Maya is Ephere Ornatrix, but it'll cost you an arm. Blender add-ons are excellent and much cheaper. And, as an old user of 3DS Max and Maya, my advice is f...k Autodesk. They're dinosaurs with thousands of century old bugs. They don't give a flying f...k about their customers. I moved to Blender and that's the utter best decision I took in the last 10 years. I don't say Maya is bad, very far from that. But with Autodesk Products, UIs are so old and messy that I spent 20 years of my life looking for things I already used, because I couldn't remember where they were. Autodesk shortcuts are objectively the dumbest ever. Impossible to remember all that shite. Whereas Blender ! You learn the basics in 2 days. Shortcuts are the same everywhere. It's just insanely better. The community is great, and the UI is by very far the best I've ever used, just excellent and always improving.
I never regretted abandoning Autodesk, not even once.
Definitely yep. Very simple to get the hang of it in 2 minutes. Pretty good. I just regret that the brushes are really limited. Compared to Blender Vanilla, or even (much!) better Blender + 3D Hair Brush.
No need to repeat you're new. We've all been, it doesn't change in any way the value of your question. In 3D anyway, everyone's new everyday. It's a constantly evolving technology. And you can be a 3D modeler for 20 years and still learn new things daily.
Probably even 200 times more than you can imagine. Only 3D app I kept after I moved to Blender is : ZBrush. Couldn't live without it a single day. It's a monster. And the BIG thing is that there is still 0 true competition. ZBrush is not the best in its category, it's the only one. The enormous power of their CPU-only 2.5D technology is unmatched in the 3D world. And you can handle 30 million polygonal objects with ultra-complex real-time operations without sweat. Blender's sculpting tools are the closest to Zbrush you'd get, and what it can do is already great. But damn it's soooo sloooooow. ZBrush rules. It revolutionized (with Marvelous Designer) the way movies and games look today.
Nope. Was true 15 years ago. But not really at all anymore ;) You don't draw 4K hair textures. You make (at least it's a much more professional way) hairs with Hair Particles. 2D hair textures are 3D renders.
And as for all other textures. Nobody (that I know) works with photoshop in 3D. It's part of the workflow at the very very end to organize things eventually, it's mandatory to have it, sure. But that's all. When you have 15 layers of textures (albedo, metalness, roughness, SSS, etc.) you don't draw them in 2D. But in 3D. Most of those texture layers are generated automatically (baking) by the 3D painting apps.
Substance Painter, Quixel ? yes.
Photoshop ? lol, no ;)
Not so true anymore. A lot of people are changing part of, or their entire workflow, to full on Blender. 2D painting. 3D modeling. 3D sculpting. Video compositing, etc. Blender is a real Swiss Army knife with the best UI ever. Contrary to Autodesk, they listen to their users, and they consistently exceed their expectations with every update.
And that builds community loyalty.
Install Steam then Install Blender from there. It's free. And you can already have tons of fun with it and see later if you really want something else. They even have now a Principled Hair BSDF that gives outstanding results on particle hairs (to make your hair card textures... not in Photoshop ٩(｡•́‿•̀｡)۶ ). 'm pretty sure you'll be so amazed by hair you can make even with just the free Vanilla Blender that you'll forget about other ways.
If I had to choose a method for hairs today, I'd go for Blender that's for sure. I l♥ve Blender more in 1 year using it than I ever liked Max or Maya.
I created several "zero weight" Selection Sets for my dForce hair products (Elitsa Hair and Lucie Hair by Rosseliani) in order to allow the user to easily customize the dForce Weight Maps. I'm not sure many people know they have this feature included in my product.
WOW WOW WOW! (one WOW in capitals was not enough!
) thank you Hansolocambo for the really solid amount of info there.
I understand what you mean about Photoshop now, the amount of layers that a single hair requires in PBR is staggering.
I am just on the verge of gaining a good working knowledge of PBR textures in Daz. I love working with them.
You have convinced me to focus my attention on Blender and Zbrush. Though I must devote the lion share of my 3D time to Daz Studio because I bought almost 9000 models.
I really like being on the front end of the art and making scenes, but I have a goal now to learn Blender and Zbrush as well.
My recollection is people spending days making a donut with sprinkles. That does not really appeal to me but being able to make various hair styles at will? That has captured my interest.
I would like to maybe spend an hour or two or three and come up with a new short hair style that I can add to my user saved files in Daz.
Maybe it might take days to make a short hair model, but I am hoping with proficiency maybe I can get good and develop a process going and then make a lot of hair options.
It seems like what you are saying is I can make the hair model, the morphs and even the textures all in Blender and then import them into Daz.
(I have my eye on Marvelous Designer too)
As for Steam, I use steam for my games Assassin’s Creed mostly... So, I have an account and use it often. I downloaded the Blender setup file from blender.org and installed it directly.
Is there an advantage from getting it from Steam does Steam also install addons?
Again, thanks for the awesome info! I will ask again, please peeps, make YouTube videos of your incredible work and please share links to your videos here. Even if they are slightly off topic like use in Blender, Marvelous or Zbrush.
Ooo, I just noticed the creating hair cards video! Watching and liking, subscribing now!
Here are the tutorial links for reference...
Complex Hair Creation Tutorials Bundle (by Arki and Digital Art Live):
https://www.daz3d.com/complex-hair-creation-tutorials-bundle
Submerged inside Hexagon and Daz Studio - Part 4: Modeling the Hair (by Arki and Cgan):
https://www.daz3d.com/submerged-inside-hexagon-and-daz-studio--part-4-modeling-the-hair
I don't really know why this "tutorial" became so famous as it's just plain terrible. There are WAY better tutorials to learn Blender from scratch than this useless series of a guy who's friendly that's for sure, but I mean... an "artist" who made 3D donuts for 10 years, I'd worry.
Blender 3.3 New Hair system: Full Hairstyle Guide :
The tutorials I followed to learn Blender (not all of them of course, only the things I need as a modeler). It's 43 videos recorded so beautifully by the Blender dev team itself. Top notch although a bit dated now :
Much better youtube channels in my opinion than MrDonut :
Grant Abbitt (Blender 3.3 brand new Hair System explained in a 3 days old video)
The CG Essentials (tons and tons of really useful info in short and very informative videos about specific subjects. Impossible to not come back again and again to this channel because the guy is definitely damn good).
Surfaced Studio (he made a 3 hours free video tutorial a month ago for beginners. Don't know what it's worth, but the guy explains really well).
Imphenzia (talented low-poly artist and definitely a Master at Blender).
CG Boost (Countless beginner level tutorials, often updated for new Blender versions)
THE LUWIZ ART (got a 2 weeks old hair card tutorial)
Kevandram (The most insanely talented Grease Pencil artist around)
Maker Tales
Blenderphysics (Flip Fluids)
Lightning Boy Studio (Amazing tips from true artists. Cartoon orientated)
Josh Gambrell (Hard Surface)
Well, that's the point of a 3D app. 100% of what you bought in Daz has been made in a 3D modeler. Daz is nice, but it's not a creation tool.
Well that's so powerful, with the best clothes real time physics you can imagine, precise, clever, real-time, interactive, etc. It's a million light years away from what dForce can do. Marvelous Designer is simply put : Marvelous. And, same as ZBrush : nobody ever coded anything that comes close to that. MD and ZBrush are kings in their respective field. Just an advice, if you don't plan to sculpt things, no need to think about ZBrush yet. You're gonna have already tons of things to learn with just Blender.
You download the Blender setup. You're gonna have to make updates manually by downloading new verions when they're available. Steam ? It updates everything without asking you. Blender through Steam = you always have the latest version the minute it's available. Yes, there's a huge advantage.
Addons are installed from inside Blender. Steam or not it's the same.
Thanks that's a good tip...
Yep, it is. It also has another use - for the brute ignorance & force method of making it look as if someone has dyed their hair and it's growing out. Have the roots a different basic diffuse colour from the main strands but otherwise the same material. A lot less aggro than having to create such shaders - makes background characters quicker to create.
Regards,
Richard
Tons of great tips here, so much awesome info in this thread!
My second 3090 is arriving today, the NVLINK arrived a couple days ago.
I love working with volumes but rendering them has always been slow.
Too bad Bryce has not been modified to work with CUDA cores.
Blender may be a place where I can play around with volumes.
VDBs in Daz as well.
No more black screen, looking forward to the memory pool and creating truly mammoth scenes.
Limiting Ultrascenery to camera will probably still be necessary.
On a side note, the donut Blender video did create some interest for me in Blender a while back, and, I can assure you my volume renders are much less interesting than doughnuts. :)
Blender 3.0 Beginner Tutorial - Part 1