A note to Daz hair developers...
crashworship
Posts: 218
I'm done with strand based hair and will no longer buy strand based hair products. These are now an automatic pass for me in the content store. These hair items rarely work, simulations can take hours, very often crash Studio, the results are less than appealing and, quite frankly, strand based hair doesn't look as good as mesh hair. I have multiple strand based hair props in my library that I almost never use because of these issues. The strand based hair props I do use I use only because they'll work without a simulation and even then, they're a substantial drag on my CPU and GPUs. They're not worth it. I'm just one user and of course, others may find these appealing, but for me, I feel like I've wasted my money.
I understand that many developers put a lot of effort in their products. I appreciate that. This is not a failure of the developers who create these products but rather the intrinsic fault of strand based hair. It's usually far too demanding of CPU and GPU resources and the results aren't worth all that extra time, all the difficulties in posing and rendering and yada, add nausea. And, mesh hair looks better, is easier to use and renders better.
I'm probably gonna get shouted down because of this post and it will probably get frozen and closed but I feel it needed to be said.
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Comments
hard to agree or disagree with vague statements. Examples usually support arguments.
it definitely depends on the hair
some strandbased hairs are fine but there are a lot that are way too resource intensive for my use
I do animations though, I tend to use it more for short hair myself without simulating it and thus saving myself from grief, it's actually good for Filament renders with line tesselation and PR visibility enabled because geometry hair has cutout opacity that Filament doesn't render well
to be honest that is probably the only time I use it
My experience is much the same. One of my favourite hair developers shifted from mesh to strand based recently, and IMO their mesh hairs look much more natural.
The technology is probably ideal as such, for creating natural looking hair, but it's far from mature enough yet, IMO. And the resource problem will probably not get much better in the future, more likely worse.
Dear Hair Studio,
Please go back to creating the great low poly hair you were making before you used eleventy billion verts in Wolf Tail, Mandeep Frizz and Mischief Maker.
I have to agree that non Dforce hair tend to look better in final renders.
Well I have to say that Wolf Tail and Mischief Maker look pretty good on the promos, but I really think they should state it when it is strand based (Wolf Tail does, but some of the others don't).
Still, there is this sort of "streamlined" and perfect look on many of the strand based hairs which IMO makes them look a bit unnatural.
Totally agree about the strand hairs. There have been quite a few hair designs that I would have bought, but lost interest when I found out they were strand based. I think it's sad that a vendor mght think their designs are not popular when it's the strand technology that is putting some people off.
Personally I adore strand hair, though I am picky about who I buy from.
I find transmap hair just doesn't look great to me, has obvious artificial elements and jagged look.
Fibermesh can be nice, but often the best fibermesh ends up as hard on your system as strand.
Finally, I wish more vendors made hair the way I do.
There's essentially two 'modes': root radius, target surface
Root radius is best for complete control over the look, and is the obvious choice when people make hair in other programs and bring it into Daz Studio. That said, it's very much WYSIWYG. If you want an option, you need to go groom that option.
Target Surface has some fussiness with how hairs are made. For one thing, there's only so good an articulation you can get, and the articulation of hairs is always automatically even. But it opens up a VAST number of extra controls, making it much easier to vary density, randomize hair lengths and other characteristics, and create a load of presets to tweak all sorts of things. I love this mode, because you have loads of options to finesse the look in subtle ways.
One of my most common preset variations is 'quality.' I can very easily make thicker, fewer hairs, or thinner, more numerous hairs, as suited for someone's use.
There are also some really skilled hair designers who have set up rigging with strand hair, so you DO get those advantages.
As for getting threads shut down or being blocked/silenced, everyone's free to express an opinion, as long as it isn't flamewar fodder. And explaining what you think and your reasons for it is, well, reasonable.
I might disagree with the OP but nobody is being called stupid for thinking differently.
Speaking for myself, I generally have been pretty pleased with the new SBH/Omni hairs and have bought them extensively. What are some specific examples of problematic or less desirable outcomes that you're having?
I understand that many developers put a lot of effort in their products. I appreciate that. This is not a failure of the developers who create these products but rather the intrinsic fault of strand based hair. It's usually far too demanding of CPU and GPU resources and the results aren't worth all that extra time, all the difficulties in posing and rendering and yada, add nausea.I understand that many developers put a lot of effort in their products. I appreciate that. This is not a failure of the developers who create these products but rather the intrinsic fault of strand based hair. It's usually far too demanding of CPU and GPU resources and the results aren't worth all that extra time, all the difficulties in posing and rendering and yada, add nausea.
Strand Based hair can be rather light and competitive with geometry based hair, if done correctly. They have come a very long way...
I almost exclusively use strand-based hair, partly because I do think it looks more realistic in renders, especially with the OmniHair shader. That said, like Oso, I'm selective about which vendors I'll buy from. I recently picked up my first Art Ken hairs, and while I think they look great, the reason they're so heavy is that the hairs aren't really separated into different LoDs like other dForce hair. If you disable PR and even PS hairs, you're left with largely the same hair, whereas hairs by, say, AprilYSH start from a couple dozen guide hairs that then interpolate up to the render total.
I will never buy another Hair Studio product for just that reason. Eleventy billion is a bit of an exaggeration, but eleven million is still totally ridiculous. I bought and almost immediately returned Mischief Maker, but now I got stuck with Wolf Tail in a bundle.
Count me among those who prefer the ribbon type hair. I have quite a few strand based products (even a few dForce items) but I find they slow my workflow down. Posing is so damn slow with stand-based hair but sometimes I just need that style so I bite the bullet. As for dForce, that just adds another dimension to the sloooow workflow. For years now I have been expressing hope that DS5 will address these issues but I've now given up hope of even seeing DS5 in my lifetime.
...I've had dForce hair and clothing crash not only the programme but the system's display drvier as well which requries a full reboot to restore It seems to be "hit or miss" so I've just stopped using it as much as possible..
I want and need hair that will drape realistically, so non dforce hair is completly off my shopping list
Much my stance as well. Especially after Omni Shader released. To me, those are the most realistic looking hairs we have and they drape far better than any transmapped hair could hope to. Of course, I get the resource complaints, even with a machine of my type, but still. After jumping fully on board with Gen9 and the Omni-based strand hairs, I just can't go back without feeling it.
I want some hair that looks good on men and doesn't look like a woman's refit, and that is not a million pixels. I have enough fades, mohawks, and shaved-on-the-side hair to fill my runtime. Just normal hair would be nice.
I have been going through my recent men's hair purchases for Genesis 9 male, and I agree with the original poster.
I'm going to start returning these unusable hairs. I've thought, 'Maybe I might use it one day,' but I'm not. Back its going.
Thanks for making this thread
, I have been meaning to say the same but not got around to it. I have bought a few strandbased hairs and as you say, the simulation take so long, so I don't consider them as dforce. If it takes hours = for me not a working dforce hair. And I agree, they don't look as good as mesh hair, the strands is too thick and coarse. Have bought a few, some that I use sometimes, due to that, despite of the thick hairstrands - it's the righ style. A very few. Most of those I have bought I never use. I see a strandbased hair and I go NOPE. Not the creators fault, the tech is not there I guess, to make it look as smooth and thin hair strands as mesh hair. Sad to see one of my fav hair creators go all in for starandbased hairs. So for me - want a sale - go w mesh transmapped smooth looking thin single hairstrands hair. W a morph of raising the hairline, and w a morph to make the thin hair thinner, and rigged w custom bones that we can select and pose. The hair line morph I can make myself w dformer if forced, and I can live without the thin hair morph if the thin hair looks thin enough, what I am NOT fond of at all - no custom bones hairs, even if it's a mesh hair.
"Many strand based dForce hairs barely drape at all with simulation. OOT has even started adding statements about their hair remaining pretty static even with simulation."
Simulation can be pretty hard to get right from a developers stand point. The way I have been doing things, is; is it a style that would require lots of hairspray to get right? Then I keep things relatively stiff. If its something that should be drapey, then it should obviously sim looser. I can't speak for other vendors, but can only guess OOT goes by the same self-imposed rules I have.
"And I agree, they don't look as good as mesh hair, the strands is too thick and coarse"
I think this statement has to be based on the strand hairs of old. Since curves were introduced, hairs can be much thinner, much lighter, and absolutely smooth. Older hairs, will definitely need the new omni shader to bring them up to date. It will reduce weight and smooth the curves. Look for some of the omnishader threads for more info if you need it. Toyen also has a great promo that really explains the improvements, images attached. Image credit: Toyen Cila Hair for Genesis 9.
The biggest problem I see right now is that there are no true "standards" of what these hair should do, include, or are categorized as.
I was also not a fan of dForce hairs until the introduction of Iray curves. To get the right number of hairs to make it look good needed an absurd amount of RAM during rendering, sometimes as much as 20GB.
With the introduction of Iray curves this problem has largely gone away, and now most dForce hairs take no more resources than a reasonably modern polygon hair. I personally found that they normally simulate in a reasonable time, but like others have found a lot of hairs barely move during simulation. I tend to tweak the stiffness to get more movement.
Naturally some dForce hairs look better than others, but that is true with polygon hairs too.
Personally I would rarely use a non-dforce long straight hair these days unless the character's head is completely upright (and even then you get the odd look where the hair drifts off the shoulders and/or back).
I still like long polygon hairs that use the dForce cloth engine, likes those of Linday. They often simulate really fast.
I don't use SBH dForce hair if I can avoid it.
As has been said earlier in this thread, the older ones don't seem to have a comfortable mix between density, system load and looking good.
I am using DS4.21 rather than 4.22, where I believe Omni shader capability was introduced. As a result I can only refer to promo images for this. And.. it honestly seems as if the hairs are a bit flyaway, sparse and thin. That's fine for a ginger nut like V9, as that's what happens in reality to my redhead daughter, but is very far from acceptable with most other hair colours. If I was convinced by the results of the Omni shader, I'd go for it like a shot and take the time hit on my USC2 renders that seems to happen with DS4.22 with the current release version, but at the moment I'm not. Wish I was.
I do have an attachment to some conforming hair and really love some of the rapid simulation dForce cloth hair, which seems to have an edge over the SBH I can use with DS4.21.
One further thing: PA's please CLEARLY label dForce Hair as SBH, Omni SBH or cloth type. That will mean I can get what I want to use with less guesswork.
Regards,
Richard
Omnihair is a shader, there is no such thing as Omni SBH. Omnihair shader can be applied to any surface, but is made for SBH.
All the same, it would be good to have some standardisation of terms. It seems common parlance for users and vendors to refer to SBH as dForce hair, which seems confusing. There should be some distinction made between dForce SBH and hair cards that can simulate with dForce cloth simulation.
It's worse than that. ;)
SBH is specifically 'stuff created by the strand editor in Daz Studio.'
dForce Hair is a special dynamic hair system that SBH but also other line-based hairs imported into DS can be converted into (by vendors).
So you can have SBH that isn't dForce Hair, SBH dForce Hair, dForce Hair that isn't SBH... and then you have the ribbons with dForce cloth hair approach.
And then transmapped hair cards. And fibermesh.
Also someone could import hair lines from, say, zbrush or something and apply omnihair shader to it, even though it isn't any of the above.
weee
If those are agreed terminologies, it definitely demands some revision. From the first statement, it seems like SBH would be the object type with the icon attached, but I wonder how consistent Daz are in using that terminology on the store.
After conversion to dForce Hair, something made in SBH Editor will no longer retain the SBH icon, nor functionality of the SBH Editor so would it really matter how it was created? It seems irrelevant whether it was made in SBH Editor or made in another software and then converted to what is being called dForce Hair.
For all intents and purposes, "SBH dForce Hair" and "dForce Hair that isn't SBH" seem like they would be the same thing from the end-user experience? Or is there something functionally different between these? If it is a distinction without a difference, then the category should be collapsed.
The following definitions would probably capture most hairs but maybe I am talking nonsense:
For those folks who have success with this, what computer specs work best for these hairs?
My computer is fairly old - going on 9, almost 10 years now. It has a xeon E5-1650 v3, 64 gb of memory and a 2080ti for a graphics card. I build these hairs over and over, simulate over and over...render over and over. Its starting to get a wee bit tired now. However, I don't do full scenes normally, just portraits.
I agree that it's better now, but even the one in the pick you showed us - for me that looks better - yes - but still thick and coarse. I compare it to the soft look some artists make in their mesh hair products, the softest look that I love. So it's a matter of personal preference. I'm a perfectionist when it comes to my art, I fully admit that. And although the hair you showed us looks better, some brand new released like a weeks ago or so strand hairs looks thicker and more coarse, and the hairline looks very thin - like the person has thin hair, even if the rest of the hair is full. I'm judging by their own promo picks btw. I rarely buys or use strand hairs. So lots that I don't like. I prefer mesh hair or hair using the dforce cloth engine w a bit softer look and simulating quickly. As I said, a matter of personal preference. I rarely buys or use strand hairs.
Could you try rendering a scene with five characters, each with clothes and strand hair,and an environment .Maybe then come back and report on how the computer melted? Not trying to be snarky, but I think my suggested scene is reasonable, and something that people who do comics, visual novels, etc, are likely to want to render. I can render such a scene with 'card' hair, and my computer specs are very similar to your own, including the 64 Gb and the 2080Ti.
If there were some kind of LOD for strand hair, or better yet, visually similar card hair for characters further away then the strand would be great for closeups. If I create a character their hair style can't change dramatically for close ups .
Huh.. last I checked..I was responding to a question "For those folks who have success with this, what computer specs work best for these hairs?". Not," Can you render the universe and cook popcorn with your old computer?" Not trying to be snarky...