Realistic (as in photorealism) hair?
I know I'm opening a can of worms, but anyway...
What are the most realistic hair pieces for G8F? Yes, I know that there are lots of variables to consider, so I'll try to explain exactly what I mean...
Judging by the renders I see around and the promo pictures for the hairs I don't own, and by my own tests for the ones I do, I've only found one (yes, one) hair that looks almost real (depending on the light it can be less real), and even so only in one of the colors (the default one). I've been using it a lot, but as it's a ponytail hair it's not the best for a lot of situations. The hair I'm referring to is the Bonnie Hair, by Kool, in its default brown color.
Please note that I'm NOT saying the other hairs are bad. Firstly, I don't even know how to BEGIN to create one; secondly, there are very pretty and interesting hairs in the store - I own a few and have lots of others in my wishlist, so I like them. The question here is photorealism, and most of them are too shiny, too tidy, look like they aren't "growing" from the head, etc, what make them look less like a photo and more like a render. Sometimes they are right for the job, but as I like to create realistic renders sometimes they don't.
Thanks in advance!
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Comments
Creating dForce hairs myself, I can tell you it's not easy. Photorealism is a matter of taste, some hair will look nice from a certain distance and look terrible in a portrait, some others are more suitable for close ups.
Some hair figures just need better textures and shaders, some other have a poor geometry. And unfortunately sometimes the price doesn't make the quality. Check the other people's renders in galleries (Daz, Deviantart, Renderosity etc) and ask the artists wich hair they did use for the renders you prefer.
Thanks for the reply!
I know it's hard to create hairs. My impression is that it's on par with creating figures, otherwise all the figures would come with hairs. :-) Thank you for understanding my point, that was not complaining about the superb work PAs from here and other sites do.
I'll take a look around again. The problem is that, sometimes, the promotional renders look good, but (as you said) they were taken under specific conditions (this is true for figures also) and does not look as good in others. Yes, we can return products, but it's something I try to avoid.
Maybe the most realistic hairs are by OOT. dForce hair just doesn't lool like real hair, rather instead fine strands of filament..
I have a few from OOT (apart from some others in my wishlist) and they are high-quality assets, for sure. Still, they have that "too shiny, too tidy" look under most lights that make them look less realistic.
Maybe I'm looking for the Holy Grail :-) and there's just no way (with iRay and all) to provide it, but the fact is that that one Kool hair I mentioned did it (yes, ONE hair and with ONE color), so it's possible at least in some hair styles and colors. Maybe this is the problem: achieving that with a more stylish hair is impossible with the current resources (renderer, etc).
In other news, I still didn't find a blonde-colored hair I like (including Kool's hair in blonde). :-) The darker colors always look better.
I like these two the most
https://www.daz3d.com/kinley-hair-with-dforce-for-genesis-3-and-8-females
https://www.daz3d.com/long-wet-hair-with-dforce-for-genesis-8
Personally I think dForce hairs (can) look just as good as mesh hairs, and even if they're less realistic, I'm willing to make that tradeoff for the flexibility dForce hair offers.
@IceCrMn, I'll take a look, especially on the second one (a wet hair is always useful). :-)
@Gordig, I confess I still haven't tried dForce properly. I have 16Gb of VRAM, but after hearing so many people say dForce hair takes forever to render, I normally avoid it. But yes, the poses are a problem, especially with hairs with none or only a few independently moving parts.
Try different collision modes.
Some work best with "Good".Some do better with "Better", very few work well with "Best".
I only have 8GB of VRAM, and I use dForce hair almost exclusively.
I use a laptop with 16 GB of RAM, and a GeForce 840M graphic card with 4 GB VRAM to test the dForce hair I'm creating. (Check my galleries!)
It's a bit slow but it works
Otherwise I work on a powerful PC with 96 GB RAM and a RTX 3090 with 24 GB VRAM, I see the difference!
And yes, dForce hair are the best except for short hair or updo hair.