Is Strand-based hair taking a step backward in realism, lately? August 2024
Olo_Ordinaire
Posts: 742
I don't want to pick on the creators, as I know it's really hard to make great looking stuff.
But in many of the newer strand-based hair items I'm seeing in the store lately (August 2024) seem to be trending toward a frothy, cotton candy look. I'm not talking about color choices or style. I'm talking about the rendered examples on the store pages for the products. The hair ends don't look like hair -- they look almost like vapor.
Has anyone else noticed this? Strand-based hair came a lonnng way in the past year, but it seems a number of the latest products have this wispy, vaporous appearance. I'm finding that the best-looking hair I have in my inventory is still the card-based or fibermesh hair, with one of Matty Manx's Resource Saver shaders applied.
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Broadly speaking I think the reverse is true. Considering how bad some of the early Strand-based hair were, I am going to remark on my own obersvations, which is that the content on the daz3d store has only improved. Of course there may be an occasional downturn in quality from individual creators, but taken as a whole it's only improved.
Vapor like quality could be due to low density perhaps - something users should be able to tweak.
Two things to alter wispiness: increase density, increase hair width (line end width, for example).
The issue is, well... some hair just looks like that. But thankfully it's fairly easy to alter.
Looking at OOT's (outoftouch) recent products which have started to use strand based hair, I feel the materials and overrall look have taken step backwards. The colors do not look natural and has an odd metallic look to it (even after lowering glossiness). While the strand based technology might be more advanced and has greater potential, the out of the box final look in renders can look off in my opinion. When I try to apply a blonde material for example, they all end up looking like a metallic gold.
Speaking of OutOfTouch, how feasible is it to use the G9 hairs on G8? Are they on a cap, or is that strand-based thing where they can only be used on the figure they were made for? Sorry for the slight out-of-topic, but I didn't want to make a new thread for this, and one of their hairs is today's big sale item.
I think strand-based hairs need a base (cap) to 'grow' out of? Could be wrong on that.
you can probably fit g9 to g8 so g8 is wearing g9 as a skin
Some out-of-the-box settings might not be well set. For SBH with Omni, Render Line Tessellation Sides should be set to 0 to avoid high glossiness. If there're still too much metallic effect, try cranking up the value in Roughness as well as reducing the value a bit in IOR.
Not feasible... direct Auto-Fit doesn't work. There's a Cap indeed but the Cap + SBH are both under another root Hair node. After Auto-Fitting, the root Hair node will not be redirected to the correct position, so a manual fix is always needed. So... easy and straigh-forward way is still parenting the hair to figure's hair node.
That's right ~ So better always check the file list on the page of Product ream_me... If there's no hair cap geometry file (dsf), better not buy it because the result will be not good... in most of the cases you can clearly see the skin texture on figure's Head (Scalp) no matter on G8 or G9, then a few things have to be tweaked. However, Auto-Fit just works fine ~~
But that's how it is in real life, so that should technically be the right solution if you want realism? At least if the hair has just as many hair strands as in real life.
Hm, never noticed that. I tried to google "bald men", but don't see any significant difference on any of those I found.
If the difference is caused by sun tan, I'd assume it would be "natural/realistic" if the scalp is brighter than the face because it doesn't (?) get as much sunlight on men with full hair.
In any case, I think there are several variables here to consider, like hair and skin type, race, sun tan, thickness of hair (which I presume determines how much sunlight the scalp is exposed to). As well as hair color - if it matches the scalp color, you probably won't really see the scalp, no matter the color.
But in the end, in art I think the important thing is "does it look good" rather than "does it look realistic", at least that's my approach. Realistic doesn't necessarily mean "look good", and vice versa.
The hair doesnt necessarily "need" a cap. It really depends on how the hair is made. With that said, a cap does have its advantages ;)
All of my hairs come with a cap. All Omni-era hairs have a special script thanks to MikeD, that will take on the same skin color of whayever character you choose. If you want it to be a smidge off in color ( like crosswind mentioned), it is easily chamged/tweaked.
Every vendor does things differently. So, the only thing I can say, is read the listing..carefully.
@Taoz @chevybabe25
Your points also make sense to me ~ though I still like hairs with Caps, lol. Thank you !
Perhaps I am missing something but couldnt you just hide the haircap geometry, either by toggling visible on/off or with facet hider?
Why do you need to transfer the skin character color to the haircap when the character's skin underneath the haircap is already the color of the character's skin?
At least in most of the hairs I have and use, the haircap is hidden on load.
Perhaps I am missing something but couldnt you just hide the haircap geometry, either by toggling visible on/off or with facet hider?
Why do you need to transfer the skin character color to the haircap when the character's skin underneath the haircap is already the color of the character's skin?
Well I opted to make my cap a shape slightly different than the exact shape of G9's head. I like the slightly raised height towards the back for a lot of hairstyles ( especially updos). Most of the time, the script isnt necessary, but for styles like nordic knots where the top of the skull was exposed, it looks absolutely weird without it.
IDK. I'm quite happy with the changes to SBH. The impression I get is that OOT didn't want to change from card-based hair to SBH until the recent update. I'm satisfied with the ones I picked up yesterday. I like that, by default, it's now visible in Iray preview, as well.
In response to the OP, no. I'm at a point where I don't even buy hair that isn't strand-based, and the quality of SBH that's been coming out lately is as good as it's ever been.
What Mike D script are you talking about, please?
He made it special for me. But you can see remnants of it in my data file if you are curious.
The geometry of a Hair Cap usually can be cut from the figure's Head (let's say G9's skull...), then the code in this sample script can be used for copying materials (some modification may be needed.)
http://docs.daz3d.com/doku.php/public/software/dazstudio/4/referenceguide/scripting/api_reference/samples/material/deep_copy/start
In the data folder of Nordic Knots, there're two scripts that update materials. I think the codes might come from the abvoe sample. And Nordic Knots Wearable Preset calls the scripts in DUF file by a Post-Load.
Thank you both.
You can also just apply morph with wearable preset to move the skull shape accordingly., although guess people may not like the look if they are toggling the hair on/off
I don't know how OOT did it but the new SBH OOT makes are very light on resources, sometimes my viewport lags with other SBH's loaded and with theirs it's like they aren't even in the scene. I definitely appreciate that but there is a render quality difference between vendors using the Omnihair shader and I still prefer Chevy's results the most.
I'm on the DAZ Originals train. Some of their hairs (such as Kara) actually floored me when I first got into Omni. The depth/lighting/shine combo was simply unmatched in my Runtime. That said, OoT is still my favorite hair artist overall and the Nordic Hair from Chevy looks very good!
It is Possible to fit OOT G9 strand based hair to G8 using auto-fit, it just requires a couple extra steps to do it. I'll use dForce Strand-Based Summer Style Wavy Long Bob Hair for Genesis 9 | Daz 3D as my example for how to do it.
First of course have your G8F/M Loaded. Now bring in the strand based hair with the character UNSELECTED. You will still get a pop up on this one as the dforce dummy will still try to auto fit, just hit cancel. Now click and expand the Summer style Wavy Long Bob Hair, and unparent the STRANDS. Now select that, in parameters change it's "fit to" to NONE. Now right click on the scene tab and choose edit scene info. One the prefered base for the strands set it to Genesis 9 Base and hit accept. Now right click on the Strands and choose fit to Genesis 8F/M (i used both Genesis 9 CS and MMX Gensis 9 clone and result were pretty much the same) I used shoulder length as the tempate. Now right click and auto fit the other pieces that already have the G9 Base Prefered. And the results are on the Left...
Now IF you load the hair with the character selected and do choose to Auto fit at the point you can Also simply Unparent and UNFIT the strands, changed the prefered base to Gensis 9 Base and RE-auto fit the strands... So why didn't i just say that in the first place? well, something about skinning a Ca---- a Buck, yeah a Buck (don't want to offend the cat lovers ;)).
**************KEEP IN MIND, AS POINTED OUT BELOW BY CHEVYBABE25 AND CROSSWIND, THIS WILL BREAK DFORCE SIMULATIONS!!!!!*************************************
Crosswind has a much better method further down....
And dforce will still work after this procedure?
That will 100% break the dforce modifier.