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Thank you @nicstt. I'll try that and see how it goes
Edit:
It actually worked quite well. First I separated hair and scalp, and then I divided the hair mesh to 4 sections ( front, back, left and right ). Then I duplicated the scalp mesh, so that I had front scalp, back scalp, right scalp and left scalp. Then for each scalp I created particle hairs, and that way I could create all the hair parts. Probably next time, I'll divide the hair mesh a bit differently, so that I can get nice hair layers with a little bit different colors. I had to play a little with the child amounts and shader etc. but I think end result is still quite good. There's little clipping where hair goes inside the ear, but I assume I could fix that with combing or just deleting those mesh hair strands before conversion. Anyways, here's Eevee render, and render time remained about the same as with mesh hair, so about 4 seconds.
Looks great, and other that the way there is no 'scalp' affect (where the hair enters the folicle point), totally convincing.
Those are good initial results. I don't quite understand how you did it though. I've converted hair a few times and had to add particles wherever they were missing but this way seems better, faster, and easier. Are you converting hair mutilple times on the same scalp mesh, or converting mutiple times on multiple scalp meshes?
First I separated hair mesh and scalp mesh. Then I divided hair mesh to 4 separate parts, and renamed different parts to left hair, right hair, front hair and back hair. Then I duplicated scalp mesh 3 times ( in edit mode just copied it ), so I ended up with 4 scalps, and renamed them to left scalp, right scalp, front scalp and back scalp. Then I just used diffeomorphic to create hair for each scalp, for example left hair to left scalp, right hair to right scalp etc... I initially tried to use just 1 scalp, but when I tried to add next hair particles, diffeormorphic deleted the previous particle hairs, so that's why I had to use 4 different scalps. I didn't try if I could combine the scalp meshes at the end, when all particle hairs are converted. Maybe that is possible...
Also worth noting, this way you'll end up with 4 different hair materials, so I changed all particles to use Hair.001 material. I think it would just look weird if left part of the hair is different color than front part. That's where I got the idea that next time I'll divide the hair differently, so that I could use all 4 hair materials and give them some color difference, like brown, dark brown, ligth brown and black. I think when those different color particle hairs then blend together, it will look better than now, when I have every hair in same color.
In children, you may need to add more 'child' particles; I've sometimes found it to be insufficient.
I did the conversion again using random selection when I divided the hair mesh in pieces. I tweaked shaders and child particles a little, but no combing or anything for particle hairs, just straight conversion with Diffeomorphic. Still not perfect, and it might be a bit too transparent now, but with some work in materials and little combing and cutting some clipping particles away, I think it could look quite real
Great, thanks. I'll have to give that a try. Keep us updated on your progress.
Yep when in doubt moar particles!
The nice thing is in blender adding more hair strands is much less taxing on your computer than the same in daz the easiest way to figure out the right amount: take the number of particles and multiply by number of children around you want this number to be around 100,000 (which is about what we have in the real world)
also the Hair Info node under inputs in the shader window is yr new best friend. In particular "random" is exactly what you expect. and intercept colors the hair along its intercept v useful for making the roots of the hair darker + adding a bit of transparency right at the very very roots can make a very natural looking scalp transition
also in the particles tab inexplicably hidden away under render > timing there is a random slider that you can slide up to shorten hairs randomly quite useful for some natural randomness
At my age, I don't think I have 100,00 hairs anymore. I lose more and more every year... :)
Now I've been testing importing HD details to Eevee, and just connecting displacement map to shader seems to be working quite nicely. Just a simple diffuse shader and displacement map connected to material output and sub surf level 3 for images.
I think it does quite good job, but I was wondering can anybody think any downsides with a simple displacement map approach?
@Mendoman In my opinion baking to maps is good and it works fine especially when displacement is used for fine details that's what most figures do. Personally I'd go with normal maps. Then if you feel some more brave you can try the multires approach by @jcade.
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/5786701/#Comment_5786701
@Padone Actually, I've been meaning to ask, why can't we just shrinkwrap low poly mesh with multires modifier to HD mesh? That's how I created my displacement maps, and I just quickly tested that expressions etc. seemed to work, but maybe I missed something...
@Mendoman Well shrinkwrap is the "standard" method and it works fine enough in most cases but it is always an approximation. Plus you have to shrinkwrap every disconnected mesh alone, think about HD teeth for example. The method by @jcade seems to get better and faster results that's all. Though personally I have some doubts about "rebuild subdivision", since of course multiple HD meshes can be derived by the same low poly mesh. But I didn't have time to test it extensively yet.
p.s. Another way to get exact results is to use the transfer ids plugin with the topology option to fit the HD mesh to the multires. But again this takes time and has to be done manually.
It does work. Baking with multi-res in Blender can make displacement maps from sub3 or sub4 meshes from DAZ; using the shrinkwrap modifier. If you import a figure at sub4, and apply multi-res to a sub1 figure, then compare the vertices, the number is the same. The 'merge materials' in Diffeomorphic makes it easier since some materials use the same uv's and Blender's baking seems a little clumsy, but it can be done.
I'm a little (actually a lot) lost here. How and where is the baking done? How to bake HD details into Normal or Displacement maps? What is Multires and shrinkwrap? Anyone relate to this classic sketch?
Those look like they're only showing Bump, but do look good.
If you want proper displament, you'll need to change the settings from Bump to Displacement (and Bump) in the Material's Settings.
Material Tab > Settings > Surface > Displacement > select what you want.
You'll also need the appropriate amount of geometry (and/or) sub surf modifier.
And, just to note, that displacement option is only available with Cycles; for EEVEE, you'll only get bump. Maybe one day it'll work for EEVEE too.
@marble LOL nice video. Yes I guess you have to "update" a little, luckily there are plenty of blender tutorials on the web. Here's a couple of them from a quick search.
@nicstt You're referring to cycles while @Mendoman uses eevee that doesn't support displacement and also has issues with bump maps. That's why I suggested to bake to normal maps instead that are more eevee friendly.
https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/latest/render/eevee/materials/nodes_support.html
I'd love to use a combination of displacement and normal maps for closeup details in HD morphs (e.g. wrinkles for old men and women).
Any hint how this can be done?
Hadn't realised. I rarely use Eevee.
I posted a node setup under the topic "Blender: How to?". Just replace the bump texture with a normal map texture, and replace the bump node with a normal map node (vector->normal map). Also, as someone else pointed out, I think it was nicstt, you have to enable displacement in the material settings. Make sure you are rendering in cycles, go the the properties panel on the right, click material properties->settings->surface->displacement and bump. I think you can only see the displacement when rendering, either viewport rendering or final render. If it is set too high, everything will look seriously deformed, so keep the displacement setting low and work your way up.
@nicstt and @Padone. Good points, I didn't even realize it was just a bump and not displacement
.... but, since Eevee kinda struggles with shadows, it's nice to have secondary bump to strenghten shadow effect from multires real displacement
@Padone Oh, and I only just now realized how you handle geometry shells just with a shader. That's really clever, and I'd never had thought that
Yeah, I know there are lots of videos out there. I seem to be spending most of my free time watching them but as I get older it takes longer for things to sink in. Plus there's the problem of not knowing what to look for. I'd never have looked for a tutorial on Multires because it had not arrived on my horizon. Blender is so huge in terms of total workflow that I could probably spend the next two years watching tutorials and still be a novice.
@marble I guess no one here is a complete blender expert including me. As you noted there are just too many things around. The way to go is to first grasp the basics then learn what you need more for your specific project. This way you learn having fun. Do not try to learn everything before hand this is impossible also because blender is evolving fast.
@Mendoman The shell shader is by Thomas. Also the diffeo plugin is entirely by Thomas I just give some help with materials.
I can second that; get the basics and start on your project. You may have to redo parts if/when you learn something new, but if you wait until you feel you are ready, you'll be doing anvils, sofas and donuts forever - they're a good place to start, but if you're comfortable with the basics, dive in!
Thanks for the information, but I wonder how to bake a displacement/height map from a HD morph. I don't want to work with a SubD Level 4 in Blender. I'll try to do that in Substance Designer, but maybe there is another way.
Here is the basic outline, not a step by step -
Import base sub1 model into blender in the a/t pose.
Import sub4 model into blender in the a/t pose.
Apply multires to the sub1 model, 4 times.
Add shrinkwrap modifier to sub1 model - target sub4 model, then 'apply'.
If I remember correctly, you can now delete the sub4 model from your scene.
Now you have a base model that will only show HD details when you increase the multires number, from 1-4, just like daz.
'bake from multires' will enable you to make diplacement maps. That is a whole process in itself. Took me quite a few hours to figure it out, but definately doable.
You can also, and I'd perhaps recommend, select the parts of the mesh of the sub1 model you want to be used for the HD; you might want to exclude the eyes and other parts of the anatomy including teeth.
If you add what you want to be used to a Vertex Group, and add the geometry you can then see by adding more or removing what works best.
In edit mode, hit L with the cursor hovering over the main mesh (torso for exampe) to select everything but the teeth and eyes; then add this to the Vertex Group.