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By tothelabyrinth - 7 Years Ago
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Hi all,
For non-3D artists there's a lot of content we can snag which is great! I love character creator because it opens doors for people like me. However, hair is so lacking that it doesn't really make sense to me. Even using all paid options available you will quickly run out of fresh options. Can we get some hair options and sliders to further customize our characters? As of now it's really hard to diversify.
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By animagic - 7 Years Ago
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Better hair has been requested for years by old-timers, so it's good to see the request come from a fresh voice.
I think the challenge is to make the hair look good without using tens of thousands of polygons.
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By AasmundSchei - 7 Years Ago
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Yes, a built-in hairmorph tool would be awezome (Look at Maya`s Xgen)
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By Kelleytoons - 7 Years Ago
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I know this is a pretty old topic, but let me add my two cents -- we need more hair in CC, even if it's just RL selling some.
I'm going to guess that the onerous task of creating decent hair for CC has kept most third party developers from doing it -- I see a scattering of things on the marketplace, but most are just really REALLY short things that you don't need someone to create for you. What's needed the most are hair styles for men that aren't really long, but aren't crew cuts, either. The few that RL makes available are good for teenagers, but woefully inadequate for most men.
I've used lots of hair programs in other 3D software that was a LOT easier than the approach RL takes, but I assume that's due to Real Time rendering concerns. But I thought the new graphics cards allowed for techniques to quickly render detailed hair nowadays. In any case, this is the one area that CC falls down on, greatly.
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By Pixtim - 7 Years Ago
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Yes, actually it's a bit long to create. But in real life it's the same! It took four years for my daughter to have her hair in the middle of her back! 
That said, I'm starting to have a good manufacturing technique. I just miss time right now. I think I can make new models in the fall.
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By Kelleytoons - 7 Years Ago
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Your short hair is pretty good -- I'll buy it just to see if I can use it on some men (I know you designed it for a woman's hair, but it's men hair styles we really need, and your manga hair just won't work for any of my purposes).
I suspect the temptation is to do hair for women because of the long flowing look, but truly good men's styles are tough without ending up with either way too wild or helmet heads. I'm not sure if perhaps the way to do hair doesn't encourage more women's styles then men's, also (since you are working with "strips" and men's hair doesn't lend itself to strip modeling).
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By Pixtim - 7 Years Ago
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Normally, you can test all my productions before buying them (I think it's a fantastic possibility that the Reallusion system gives!).
To do this, when it comes to a pack, enter in the object list of the pack, select the one you want to see and add it to your trial download list.
Actually ... I just think I'm more sensitive to feminine charm  !
That said, the haircuts I've done work very well on women and on men ... Look at the haircut "Hair Tigress" .. very feminine ... but ... if you put it on a Californian surfer .. it works very well too !!!
Besides, at the moment I'm working on an animation of Greek god and I made a variant that suits him very well
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By Kelleytoons - 7 Years Ago
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Yeah, I went ahead and bought the space pack you had because I liked the idea of the retro suits as well -- but it's nice we can audition things first.
But please do more hair, and perhaps some men's hair (although we do need women's hair -- we need SO many things :> .
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By russellg55 - 7 Years Ago
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I agree with you totally. there is a major void in representation for hair, in particular ethnicity
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By Pixtim - 7 Years Ago
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Thanks for your purchase Kelleytoons, I hope the jetpack is well adjusted ... it is a bit dangerous this machine!
Besides I also in my program the creation of a masculine retro scifi outfit
For the hair, yes, I planned to make a series from autumn. For now I am really overwhelmed (the proof, in France it is 3 and a half in the morning and I am still in the office! Argh !!!).
So I note, male and different ethnic hairstyle ... maybe that other developer will have time to do it before me
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By Rampa - 7 Years Ago
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Will Veeke was quite a hair maker, albeit, mostly for the girls. Here is one of his modular hair packs.
https://city.reallusion.com/ContentPreview.aspx?i=JIC219b44958bb62fdd0&Refer=5
It's worth searching for "Veeke" in the Marketplace.
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By Kelleytoons - 7 Years Ago
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Yeah, I've seen that Rampa, but wasn't impressed (it's mostly just "falls" and, heck, I don't want to design my own hair, I want to buy styles of others). And, of course, I'm looking more for men's styles (which seem to be a LOT harder to do with RL's approach to hair, other than VERY close-cropped stuff which resembles bald caps).
I realize I could use the "caps" that are hair from previous versions, but they don't look anything like real hair. I'm not sure why RL hasn't released more, since they seem to be the experts, but I remain hopeful (hair is actually one of the more defining aspects of a person -- it's amazing how just changing your hair makes you a completely different person, so the lack of a lot of hair is a real hole in RL's attempt to be a complete character creation resource).
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By swashbucklingfox - 7 Years Ago
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I seriously second this, i was expecting alot more hair options at least in the store for purchase, and making it defeats the purpose of having a pipeline i think...making good looking hair is really hard.
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By raxel_67 - 7 Years Ago
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I agree, it was cool that they added the option for importing cloth and hair but that is only useful for 3d artists and modellers but to the rest of us this useless, i hate all 3d Tools, there isnt one with a tolerable or understandable UI, i refuse to use them. I would like to see a comprehensive hair pack, one that would have short medium and Long hair for both male and female characters with at least 4 choices
some of us are hobbists and we should not be forced to model anything
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By tothelabyrinth - 7 Years Ago
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I'm glad to see that other people feel the same way. We definitely need a much more complete pack of hairstyles or some CC hair sliders (preferably both). If a developer can provide a full pack for this it would get many sales. As someone else said, hairstyles really change the appearance of a person and we can all work on more animations rather than constantly trying to figure out designs for people to make them unique. There are plenty of hairstyles for men and woman that we need!
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By Kelleytoons - 7 Years Ago
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Just for fun I spent the morning trying to determine just how hard it WOULD be to model some of my own hair.
Bear in mind I used to do this for a living -- back when our tools were MUCH more primitive than they are now. (Except we did have hair systems that were much easier to use). So I'm not exactly a newbee and feel like I have the chops to do most anything.
After reviewing what it would take -- holy cow, you might as well make a career out of it. I estimated it would take at least 10 hours to get just one decent hairstyle, which is a good explanation as to why we don't have third party folks making any. There are some real issues with how RL wants the hair to be -- low poly models require lots of layers of "slices" laid over each other (but not touching, or that will cause flickering). This is no doubt a full time job and that doesn't even begin to address the skill needed to model hair (the "artistic" part of it).
I'm not sure what the answer is other than trying to get whoever modeled the RL hair offered to make more -- we need more, LOTS more, and I seriously doubt whether anyone other than RL will make it (just too time consuming for the payback -- to get, say, a pack worth $50 or more bucks you'd have to spend a few weeks doing nothing but this. Is that cost effective? You can make a very detailed prop in FAR less time).
Oh well, let's just keep our fingers crossed.
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By justaviking - 7 Years Ago
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Kelleytoons (7/10/2017)
Just for fun I spent the morning trying to determine just how hard it WOULD be to model some of my own hair.
Thank you for doing that research (and for sharing your personal credentials, too).
This is further proof we need to tap into Nvidia Hairworks.
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By videodv - 7 Years Ago
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This is just a prooth of concept.
I have a hair pluging in cinema c4d so I thought I would give it a try, so I used just default settings and this is what I came up with in a little over a minute, so I think I will take some time and see what I can come up with.
Cheers
Chris.
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By videodv - 7 Years Ago
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Just another quit test
Cheers
Chris.
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By SeanMac - 7 Years Ago
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Male as opposed to female hair. While agreeing with Pixtim on the relative attractiveness of female versus male hair RLcould bear in mind those of us who want to make movies. For the casting of movie stories you need the full range of hair from babies to extreme old age. Male hair is more difficult to reproduce than female IMO because of the deviation from straight across hairlines that happens quite early – say twenties in men.  The adultmale hairline coves in the twenties and onward years forming a dip to the leftand right of the peninsula jutting out [Thisis normal, not male pattern baldness] . This is leaving aside furthercomplexities such as sidewhiskers and facial hair from I-forgot-to-shave bristlesto full sets of beards and moustaches. All this is without going in to thecomplexities of baldness or even branching into 18th Century wigs (whichI also need).Whydoes any of this matter? I suggest that when we see people on screen we need to be able to tell the difference between them so as to be able to follow the drama. The more alike they look the more difficult this is. If they are all fit and handsome twenty-something Martini-advertising people then you cannot easily tell the difference betweenthem. If you cannot easily tell the difference you do not watch the story. You do not relate to the actors. So I would agree with justaviking about using the Nvidia Hairworks plug-in if thatcould be arranged. If not, something near as dammit to it. Home Built in Coolermaster ATX case with GigabyteGA-Z170X-GAMING 7 MoBo, i7-6700 @ 3.4 Ghz, Asus GeForce GTX 970 Graphics Card, 32GbDDR4 RAM, twin HD monitors, Huion H610 Pro Graphics Tablet, Kinect v2, LogitechWebcam, Win 10 64 Bit OS
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By Pixtim - 7 Years Ago
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Yes, there are many constraints and it is quite complicated to get haircuts clean and neat ... the hairdressers are not what they were: D!
VideoDV, I also work with Cinema4D and I use partly the Hair module. With the technique you use for your haircut, can you convert the hair into polygons and say how many there are? You'll see that scary!
The Hair module is good but but it was necessary that to put up a whole workflow to arrive at something correct. With a limited number of polygons, between 3000 and 5000, it is a real battle not to leave holes and to have something that is visually light!
I'm just working on a new character for one of my productions. I made this haircut (clothes and shoes too ... it's true that we rarely find what we want exactly on the store).
It's still a girl's haircut ... sorry! : D
For this kind of haircut, without going into detail, for those who want to try, the technique is to do things in at least two parts. First generate one or more wick texture in a first file. Second, generate lines of polygons from the skull and on which the wick textures will stick.
In order to fill the holes, we also use a piece of the skull that is incorporated into the haircut and on which we will come to paint wicks that resemble the polygonal locks ....
....
Overall, this is explained in a few lines ... in practice ... these are hours of happiness for it to work well!
EDIT : Hey ! you have noticed ? Looks like Kaori, the "girlfriend" of Ryô Saeba in City Hunter !!! : D !!
  
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By videodv - 7 Years Ago
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Hi Pixtim
I did not use the hair module in cinema I used the Hair Department Plugin it creates polys but quit a few with the settings of the last picure the poly count was 227620 Polys, will have a try with the hair module as well, but early days and lots a testing to go.
I need the an obj of Heidi and Mason to fit the hair correctly I do not have the pipeline version of Iclone so useing a generic head instead.
Like the look you have come up with.
Cheers
Chris.
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By tothelabyrinth - 7 Years Ago
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Thanks all for keeping the discussion going, and also trying to figure out how we can move forward from here. It's pretty insane that developing hair has become so complicated. I'm curious to hear what RL has to say on the subject, but I don't know if they actively post on the forums. Sadly, it seems like we are at a standstill on this. It's disappointing to have iClone 7 and my ideas ready to roll, but not enough hair to bring it to life. Never thought I would be saying something like that in my life haha! Looks like CrazyTalk Animator is the way to go for me. At least I can rely on the freedom I have there.
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By SeanMac - 7 Years Ago
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"Firstgenerate one or more wick texture in a first file".
@Pixtim. Forgive my ignorance but what do you mean by "wick texture" and "wicks that resemble the polygonal locks ...."?
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By Pixtim - 7 Years Ago
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Hum ... it must be my English that is not very good ...I mean, because it's not possible to do hair one by one ... you have to create textured strands. Either with 2D software or with 3D software.And then plating these hair groups on polygon sequences.Then I said that it is necessary to make a skin of the skull with a color and a material that is confused with the strands of hair to fill the holes.I hope it's more understandable ...
Edit: here is a visual example ... it will be more practical
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By animagic - 7 Years Ago
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Pixtim, I like your hair and look forward to more... I actually like Jade's hair, one of the new IC7 characters. It's using almost 16k polygons, which seems to be acceptable now with the more powerful PCs. I wonder if we can learn from how it is done in game engines? They have to be efficient with poly's.
@tothelabyrinth: You could go the CTA3 way if you have a knack for 2D animation. I haven't, so I have to make do with whatever comes along hair-wise...
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By Pixtim - 7 Years Ago
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In fact I counted in quadrangles because the modeling is generally done in quadrangles. With the hair of Jades we are therefore on 8000 quadrangles. The difference is important but not that much. Some haircuts require more polygons than others.These characters are beautiful work, but happy, they are still the characters presenting the new version of the software! .
I will think about making two categories of products ... one destined to low-poly and one geared towards maximum realism.
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By tothelabyrinth - 7 Years Ago
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I'd really prefer to work with 3D animation, but it's far easier/cheaper at the moment to take a 2D route. After a bit of a learning curve I think you would do just fine with 2D as well! However, I'll admit it's a pretty poor solution for the lack of 3D hair. It's just the only solution I have that will work for now.
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By tothelabyrinth - 7 Years Ago
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Also, big thanks to Pixtim for listening and actively trying to provide a solution. I really appreciate it!
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By SeanMac - 7 Years Ago
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@Pixtim. Thanks for that. Your English is excellent. But English, alas, is always ambiguous whereas French, as they say: "ce qui n'est pas clair, n'est pas français. In Re: “a color and a material that is confused withthe strands of hair to fill the holes” I suggest you say rather ‘a color and material similar tothe hair material to mask the holes betweenthe strands of hair.’
Thanks for the explanation.
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By Kelleytoons - 7 Years Ago
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Sean,
Your example is one of the reasons I keep harping on the "men's hair" dilemma.
Here's the dealio -- in order to get good hair using the low polygon modeling method, you really have to "stack" row after row of them. This is all well and good when you are modeling either female hair or very long men's hair, not at all good for close cropped looks. Indeed, not to pick on any developer, but if you look at the only close cropped CC hair available in the marketplace, you'll see how unrealistic it looks compared to any of the women's or long hair offerings. I don't think this is the devs fault, but the fault of the method used.
For men we usually don't need hair physics, but we do need a feathering of the edges to look good. I'd love to see how to achieve this without building the hair up so much (again, as it's done for female styles). The VAST majority of men have hair that is close cropped, and yet these styles are almost non-existent for our use.
To overcome this, assuming the low poly approach is feasible to use, someone could create just ONE male hair pattern and then allow others to use it and "cut" it as needed. The cuts could be made in almost any 3D program (so even blender) as long as the resultant polys remained viable for the rest of the hair. I'm not sure this is a workable approach, but at least it's an idea.
Otherwise, if RL isn't going to allow for a GPU hair rendering solution, perhaps they can at least come up with something that "fuzzes" the edges of something, so that men's hair could be like a solid model with only this end fuzzing to make it realistic. This appears to be possible if you look at the close crop of Jade's skull where the hair looks realistic but shaved close. Could not this look be extended to a larger surface on top?
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By SeanMac - 7 Years Ago
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@Kelleytoons.
Thanks for that. I agree with your objectives but I am not expert enough to evaluate your solutions.
Others on the forum have pointed out that graphics cards are soaring in their abilities and this may help. But at the same time it is unreasonable to leave people stranded with almost instantly-obsolete graphics cards.
Hollywood has never hesitated to cheat in its portrayals of people, and although I am a devotee of the photo-realistic I would happily go along with that philosophy. For instance there have been discussions on this forum about topics like foot-sliding when avatars walk, even though on most movies you rarely get a shot which includes the feet of the principal actors when they walk across a scene. So you could solve, in my view, any foot-sliding simply by not showing it. This is a cheat, yes. But so what? It works.
So it seems to me quite OK to cheat to solve the hair problem.
Say for instance that you go with Pixtim's strands of hair model - which I take to mean a long thin rectangular strip duplicated many times, painted to show hair strands against a transparent background, and the strips then attached to a head-fitting cap colored and textured so as to serve as a backdrop to these hair strands. This construction has IMO to be complemented by the animator not using camera shots that might bring up the deficiencies of this method to the attention of the viewer.
Clearly this would only work with animated movies. But I think that is the interest of both myself and of kelleytoons, hey?
Home Built in Coolermaster ATX case with GigabyteGA-Z170X-GAMING 7 MoBo, i7-6700 @ 3.4 Ghz, Asus GeForce GTX 970 Graphics Card, 32GbDDR4 RAM, twin HD monitors, Huion H610 Pro Graphics Tablet, Kinect v2, LogitechWebcam, Win 10 64 Bit OS
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By Pixtim - 7 Years Ago
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tothelabyrinth
SeanMac
With pleasure
French is just as twisted too with its words that do not express what they mean! : D .... or rather ... it is humans that are twisted! : D
In relation to the continuation of the discussion, I completely agree with you Seanmac.
I have been producing in a professional setting for over 20 years, and one thing is for sure, 50% of my work in writing is to find the balance between the message I have to get through and the technical and organizational problems that I will meet.
Today, we know that we can do everything technically. The only remaining constraints are time and budget.
">In the reality of a production, a visual problem is often masked by appropriate lighting, motion blur, an element in the foreground that passes at the right time ...
Of course Kelleytoons, if the work base is solid, the result is better!
With regard to the current technical solution for hair, I am convinced that there is quite a way to do very convincing things. This is a technical trick. Besides I thought of a way to organize the production of hair to get good result, as soon as I have rendering in progress, I will test this
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By SeanMac - 7 Years Ago
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Hi Pixtim
I agree with all of that.
I look forward to seeing your results.
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By Mythcons - 7 Years Ago
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Hair is notoriously difficult to create. Game hair requires the creation and placement of UV'd "hair cards", which have to be arranged and textured in a specific way to approximate hair. My hair training is about 50% complete, and I frankly get frustrated with the results more often than not.
Blender has a Hair Tool addon that seems to do a good job, but I can't find tutorials for it that encompass the kind of hair I'm looking to create.
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