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Comments
Bunyip02,
Thanks for your thoughts on the DAZ and Poser's arcane filing system. As I said earlier, I am going to let it all bubble and stew for now and concentrate on solving other Carrara problems. Besides I think I burnt Diomede64 out - I don't know why he stuck with me for so long.
Dynamic Hair appears to answer all my needs at present, and I am beginning to get some half-way decent results. I have been pouring a lot of hours into learning that and making my own morphs. Hopefully this will result in some actual work product in the near future. Well that makes three of us trying to learn " Hair" at the same time. "A Dynamic Trio".. something good has to come from that.
Thanks Bunyip02...Happy modeling.
Starboardtack
I only just noticed this thread - someone should have PM'ed me! Nice work on the animation Jon, doing it on a low-poly proxy helps enormously with avoiding the jitters, as I understand it, it is the complexity of trying to calculate collisions against tens of thousands of polys in a full figure that is too much for the hair engine and that is what causes the jitters. Using a low poly proxy - and maybe deleting details which are never going to collide with the hair - keeps the calculations at a reasonable level.
Anyway, back to the original issue! Crista Hair was indeed my very first DAZ product. I would advise using manual installation for Carrara specific products as I am not sure how DIM handles them. It does not use a Runtime structure for the simple reason that the Runtime structure was a Poser invention and is used for Poser compatible content - which this isn't!
If I remember correctly, all of the files for the hair itself and for the shaders sit within a folder called Presets. This should be merged with the Presets folder which sits under your Carrara folder, so something like C:\Program Files\DAZ 3D\Carrara 8.5\Presets. Now that the files are where they should be, you need to tell Carrara to use them. This is a long term frustration for me, every other program that I have used, if you put things in the right place, the program just reads it. Not so with Carrara, you need to tell it to Add Folder (as has been covered earlier in this thread). This needs doing twice, once for the Hairs with the Carrara Objects tab, and once for the shaders in the Carrara Shaders tab.
OK, you should now be able to see the icons for the hairs and the shaders. As has been covered earlier, you need to drop the hair onto the "Model" level of your character, Crista Hair will work with V4 and M4. You can then drop the shaders onto the hair. I think that of the various hairs that I have done, Crista is a great "starter" hair if you want to create your own styles but feel more comfortable editing something than creating it from scratch.
I hope this helps but please let me know if there is anything else you don't understand.
And here are a couple of animation examples from some years ago.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nLn1DQmsR6U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1AfC6s5ocH8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOvH6VNpib8
(see from around 4:00 for the animated part, but it's a great tune so watch the whole thing!)
lol, sorry I hate when someone posts something interesting, but gives no details of how they did it or what parameters were used. I need to do more testing and refining, and I need to open a new thread just on the topic (which I will eventually do after a bit more testing :)
I really like the straight, flowing, light hair look, so I haven't delved too deeply into heavy curls, so I'll have to do more testing, but for now at least initially I'll note that it seems best to keep the hair stiffness at near zero (or 0% too, seems that way the hair doesn't 'catch' on each other nearly as much), the air dampening really high (like 80%), and also we don't need nearly as many guide hairs as I first thought, nor do they need to have all that many segments either (and notice that you can have more segments on the actual hairs that will be visible than on the guide hairs, less guide hairs and less segments makes for much faster sims, and also not a lot of random banging against each other during the sims too). The brush tool works better if the stiffness is set high, and might as well up the strength too, and brush is our best friend. The push tool is also our best friend. The smooth tool is a pretty useful fellow too, and don't be afraid do lots of drapes, or be afraid in styling to use the length tool and the cut tool. The brush tool is for more than just pushing guide hairs where you want them to drape more easily, it can be used after the drape and before the sim to create a hairstyle, and if you add a shape strength percentage (20 - 30%) you can retain that shape during the sim, but the hair still moves realistically with the scene forces. All of this is just my early impressions, but I've been having a heck of a good time with this so far. I'll do more testing and refining, then open a separate hair thread.
PhilW's low poly model is absolutely great. You can drape and do hair sims on the V4 or Genesis character directly, but the more complex geometry means much slower sims, and more opportunity for random jitters. You can still do realistic animations directly on your character, but why would you want to, when low poly object is going to make life easier and faster and a more predictable result? Also I've found that it's very easy to modify the low poly figure with just a few pushes/pulls with 'soft select' in the vertex modeler to make it match up to my specific character's head shape more exactly. The face shield is also important, even if you have the hair shaped to retain and bounce back to it's original shape you don't want random hairs to accidentally pass through the characters face during the simulations.
Anyone know what software people use to make tutorials? It occurs to me I want to make a video hair tutorial, and I do have a headphone/microphone already, but I have no idea what software is used to do the screencapture and make the video.
PhilW, it occurs to me that your low poly figure you created is the perfect solution for putting hairstyles on any figure. The hair is drawn onto the geometry of the low poly figure, but it can then be 'stretched' or shaped in the vertex modeler to be the same shape as any figure, whether M3/V3/Aiko3/V4/M4/Aiko4/Genesis/Genesis2 etc. Hairsets that are made for the low poly figure geometry could be universally applied to any figure it's matched to. I wonder if we could get enough Carrara users understanding how quick and easy Carrara hair is to use,, especially for animation, while still being unbelievably realistic, to justify merchants creating hairsets strictly for use of some universal low poly proxy figure (like yours). Probably not enough of a market to justify that approach I suppose, but thought it was an interesting idea :)
We should get a theme song :)
Hi Jon, Thanks for this, it is an interesting idea, maybe one that I will have a look at once I am through with my current animation project (but probably a couple more months work on that yet!). You asked about recording tutorials, I use Camtasia software.
Phil,
Thanks for the concise directions. I had concluded that I should wait until I was more familiar with the filing system before trying to install it once more. However, since you went to the trouble of writing, I gave it one more visit and it works. I have the files and I was able to mount the hair and shaders on an M4. Marvelous ! However, all the effort was not lost, I was forced to jump into Dynamic Hair sooner than I intended and that is working out fine..Your Tuts. are helping immensely. I am working on using the shaders at present to influence the frizz, curl, etc. I am astounded that something like a grey scale can influence a linear item like hair - The program designers and code writers have created magic as far as I am concerned. I am using their efforts in total ignorance as to how it is done, but then I have no desire ,nor the abilities, to look behind the curtain and see the wizard. I am just dumb and happy using the tools. Anyway, back to work..
Thanks again for your help. Diomedes64 and other Forum members almost had me there, you provided the final push.
Starboardtack
Phil,
Forgot to mention the video clips. The one of Casual Chic is so very close to reality. We are all experts on the human figure..we spend so much time looking at each other. It is lot easier making objects to fool the eye than making believable people..That clip is good. I have played it back and forward a number of times..Wish it was longer, but then it is a demo. Thanks for letting me see it - It is really good to know what can be done with the tools we have.
Appreciative,
Starboardtack
Thanks for the feedback and so glad you got there in the end with Crista Hair. I am sure that your experience of trying Carrara's hair for yourself will not have been wasted, it's all good practice and learning. I am still learning with Carrara after many years of using it, it is one of the things which makes it exciting!