Possible to change one lock of Daz hair to a different color in Hexagon?
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Is it possible to use Hexagon to change one lock of hair on a Daz hair asset into a different color from the rest of the hair? If so, what steps would you need to take in order to achieve this?
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Good day, yes it is possible, but I cannot remember all the steps involved in my head. It would actually be a lot easier to use the built-in geometry editor inside of Daz Studio as you would be able to highlight the faces you want to change, give them a new name, and add them as something in the shader list. If the texture map is not too complex, you might be able to re-shade / color that section on it and load your own map in the shader as well.
I tried to use the geometry editor first. I went in and selected (and grew) a section of hair, created a new surface section or whatever its called, and then applied a shader to it. But it looked super weird for some reason. The tiny hair strands turned into big cylinders. So clearly I did something wrong. Just not sure what. If you have any ideas, I'd love to know. So baffled why it didn't work.
Hmm ... at first guess, it sounds like there might be an opacity map that was also being used and disappeared when you changed shaders.
What hair product are you using? If I have it (slight to moderate chance), I can take a look later.
Thanks for your thoughts on this. It's one of Linday's hairs. I'll grab a link: https://www.daz3d.com/soft-classic-hair-with-dforce-for-genesis-8-and-81-females. And if I can learn how to do this, I'll want to do it to this hair asset too: https://www.daz3d.com/dforce-classic-blowout-hair-for-genesis-8-and-81-females.
And do you mean the hair asset came with an opacity map that got deleted when I created the new surface? Or maybe it needs to be added back into that specific new section of hair I created? And thanks for your help with this. I've been wanting to figure this out for years!
Hmmm ... I do not have either of those as I have not delved so deeply into 8.1 yet. However, I have some Linday hair - one is definitely for 8, so I will look at it in a few hours when I am at that computer.
Yes, my first guess (without looking at anything) is an opacity map might need added back to the section of hair you made ... possibly just by adding the same map used on the other sections you did not change.
If I have to, I might peek at Hexagon ... I do not recall if a simple texture zone change messes everything up in it or not. But knowing the process to do it should not be a bad thing.
Thank you! And that does make sense what you're saying about opacity maps. It'll be awhile before I'm back at my rendering machine too. Will explore at my first opportunity. But I'd definitely love to see what you think about it based on what you're seeing with the Linday hair you have. Thank you!
Alrighty, so I kinda figured it out:
1. Use Geometry Editor to highlight a bit of hair.
2. Then grow and continue to grow the selection until it gets to the end of the strand.
3. Then click Create Surface from Selection.
4. Go back into Surfaces tab and add in an opacity map into Cutout Opacity and Base Color map if there is one. Use the maps from other parts of the hair.
What I'm a little concerned about is that in the same scene, if I delete the hair and re-add it to the scene, that lock of hair is still changed. I would think my version with the different strand of hair would be lost to the ether once I deleted the hair from the scene. I did start a fresh scene and added the hair. Thankfully my version was gone.
So I'm left pondering two things:
Good day, it looks like you beat me to the testing ... but I had the same results.
Regarding saving, I would usually just do a 'save as' and choose a 'scene subset'. If memory is correct, you might want to unparent the hair before saving. You can reload it later in your presets.
This would not effect the original files.
Glad it worked.
I should have remembered Save As! Thank you for the reminder. I'll give unparenting a try.
Thanks again for your help with this. So glad I know how to do this now.
I ran into a snag. I decided to not save out a preset until my project was over. So I just saved the file I was working in like normal, closed it, and reopened it. The new hair surface turned completely white and turned into cylinders again. I suppose that's the equivalent of blocks that occur when a file for an asset is missing. This is despite the fact that the opacity map was still in there properly. Worried I've lost all that work and will have to create a new surface again. Any ideas?
I have not read all the comments (I'm just having my first cup of coffee). Have you tried exporting the hair as an OBJ file with the texture info included and loading that into Hexagon, identify the part of the hair (or object) you want to change.
You can then highlight those part in the UV View, dissociate them, move everything else of screen and export the OBJ under a different name, then use something like UVmapper to generate a UVmap the same size as the original. Use that as a layer to go over the original hair texture, make your changes and save your new texture somewhere safe, load it up in DAZ Studio apply it to the hair and save it as a material preset.
This way you are just adding a new texture, not messing around with original product. Have you thought of making your own hair texture, it should be fairly straight forward ?
I do have a pic of my export settings in my gallery here (the one with the book).
Sorry for the delayed reply. Got sucked into a client project. But this is for a commercial work, so it sounds like the OBJ method wouldn't work for this? Did you read that in the Daz3D T&C or elsewhere?
In the end, I had to go back to the original hair. While using the Geo Editor to adjust one lock of hair seemed to work in the Iray viewport, when I clicked render, it went back to the white cylinders again.
I'm so baffled why it isn't working. I did end up creating a preset but it didn't work for some reason. I plan to try again with another hair asset when I have time. Maybe it's just Linday hairs that don't work?
? wouldn't it be easier to just make a new texture image for the hair, colouring that one section whatever you like?
Agreed Catherine, it would be much easier to just make a texture.
I thought you wanted to adapt it for a render not sell an add-on. I had a look at the Lindy hair I played with and it does not come with a UV map, fill in a form (contact us) and see if you are allowed to make an add-on texture.
But just for the fun of it I gave it a go myself, making hair props or texturing other vendors products is not my thing but here's what I managed.
Edited to add pic.
Hi Catherine and John,
To clarify, this isn't for an add-on product to sell in the Daz store. But it is technically for a commercial project. I'm selling the final versions of the renders as stock art to my client who will use them on her book covers. So that's what I mean by commercial.
But, in any case, I do agree with y'all now that I've tried and failed the other way. I have more experience with the geometry editor, so that's why I was leaning toward that method. I'd like to learn more about painting on textures. Do either of you know of a good tutorial on that? I like to learn everything I can about a method before I try it, and for this particular project, time was of the essence. Thank you for your thoughts on this. I really appreciate it.
By the way, John, great work on your test above. What hair asset is that?
That's Linday's Dforce Bob Hair.
Here's an image I did way back in the ArtZone days, this is what I mean by a Polgara hair style.
Edit to add - Tutorial, not really but I will have a look for you. Not sure if it will work but you might want to have a play with Blacksmith3D paint, you can get a trial version from another store.
I read over one of the product pages, I don't think any form of 3D paint program is going to help. Geoshells are in play.
Seriously give those a try. Use G.I.M.P., PSP, PS, whatever -- need any image editor that can work with layers. Make each island its own colour. Save that out as a .png file. In D/S load the hair, apply the new texture, notice which colour is "the one" you want to change. Make a COPY of the original texture, in the image editor, making use of the coloured template, change just the target island to "white" {or silver or whatever} ... "save as" a NEW texture image to an appropriate folder in the Runtime > Textures > your subfolders perhaps ... Then open D/S, load the hair, apply the new texture image and save out a new mat preset.
Cloudflare has reared again! ...
Or maybe something like this set would work:
https://www.daz3d.com/historique-updo-texture-expansion
https://www.daz3d.com/historique-updo-for-genesis-8-female
Thank you both for the info and your thoughts on this. I appreciate your time. And I'll definitely take a look at that Blacksmith one because a colleague of mine was looking for something like that the other day. I'm intrigued on how it works.
And I'll do some practicing based on your advice, Catherine for painting textures. That Historique hair is gorgeous!
I have not tried this version so I would give the trial version a go, it will probably limited so you may not be able to save your creations.
Here's a link to a Youtube video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bPMWyYEumbU&ab_channel=Blacksmith3D-Software