Hi all,

I have started experimenting with dynamic hair in Poser (version 7) and the 
possibilities to get acceptable results in POV-Ray. As I am in need of an 
old man with a bald pat and a beard, I included beard building into the 
experiment. I shall not detail here the work needed in Poser, that will be 
treated in due time in the povray.tools.poser newsgroup. What I want now is 
some unbiased opinion about the *looks* of the figure under different 
conditions.

Poseray has the (experimental) possibility to convert lines (and that is how 
Poser converts dynamic hair) into ribbons. The width of the ribbons 
determines how the hair or the beard is going to look like, so my first 
series of experiments concerns their variation. One of the reasons for these 
experiments is to explore what additional settings would be needed in 
Poseray for a realistic render of hair and beard. So, FlyerX, pay attention 
:-)

A following series of experiments will concern texturing. Tipically, Poser 
does not uv map its dynamic hair it seems. However, using ribbons, this 
would be an interesting possibility in Poseray/POV-Ray. In the present set 
of images, I used a simple color_map of greys.

About the images: The top one is a render in Poser of the figure with the 
standard texture generated. No changes were made. The figure is based on the 
Apollo Maximus figure. The next set of four images shows the conversion of 
the hair and beard, and the width settings of the ribbons used each time. 
One amelioration I could suggest offhand already is to use a second set of 
hairs at the transition between beard (or hair) and skin, the outer one 
being more sparsely populated. Just to smooth the transition more 
realistically.

Regards,

Thomas

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Attachments:
Download 'HairAndBeard_test.jpg' (168 KB)

Preview of image 'HairAndBeard_test.jpg'

High!

Thomas de Groot schrieb:

> About the images: The top one is a render in Poser of the figure with the 
> standard texture generated. No changes were made. The figure is based on the 
> Apollo Maximus figure. The next set of four images shows the conversion of 
> the hair and beard, and the width settings of the ribbons used each time. 
> One amelioration I could suggest offhand already is to use a second set of 
> hairs at the transition between beard (or hair) and skin, the outer one 
> being more sparsely populated. Just to smooth the transition more 
> realistically.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> Thomas

Very few men have beard hair of the same structure like scalp hair - in 
most cases it is thicker and coarser, more like pubic hair!

See you in Khyberspace!

Yadgar

Now playing: Light Of The World (The Alan Parsons Project)

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news:471b55fe$1@news.povray.org...
>
> Very few men have beard hair of the same structure like scalp hair - in 
> most cases it is thicker and coarser, more like pubic hair!
>

Yes, sure, I know. I have a beard myself  :-)

 However, that is something that cannot be achieved (at the same time 
presently) in Poseray... nor, really satisfactorily in Poser!!

Be aware that the *ribbons* do not really simulate hair structure. They are, 
IMO, mainly intended to be used as support for an image_map of hair. FlyerX 
could tell us for sure.

[==> on ToDo list for Poseray; possible question for Poser Forum]

Thomas

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"Thomas de Groot" <t.d### [at] internlDOTnet> wrote:
>.... What I want now is
> some unbiased opinion about the *looks* of the figure under different
> conditions.
The first one is better than the rest. You might need to work on the
materials a bit. ;) You can add some wave to the hair in Poser using the
kink settings, I think that would help a lot. Will PoseRay translate the
kink? The reason I ask is becasue maybe it doesn't ... the head hair
doesn't appear to meet the scalp correctly (which would appear to happen in
the conversion).  Another thing that might work is if you had 2 hair props.
A sparser one along the edges where beard meets clean shaven, and a thicker
one for the rest of the beard area. I also think it falls straight down too
fast.

Janet

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That's pretty neat. I haven't monkeyed in the Hair Room much, but that could
be the coming week's experiment.

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Thomas de Groot wrote:

> news:471b55fe$1@news.povray.org...
>> Very few men have beard hair of the same structure like scalp hair - in 
>> most cases it is thicker and coarser, more like pubic hair!
>>
> 
> Yes, sure, I know. I have a beard myself  :-)
> 
>  However, that is something that cannot be achieved (at the same time 
> presently) in Poseray... nor, really satisfactorily in Poser!!
> 
> Be aware that the *ribbons* do not really simulate hair structure. They are, 
> IMO, mainly intended to be used as support for an image_map of hair. FlyerX 
> could tell us for sure.
> 
> [==> on ToDo list for Poseray; possible question for Poser Forum]
> 
> Thomas
> 
> 
> 
Nice test.

The ribbons are the closest thing I could use to lines in POV-Ray unless 
there is a line primitive that I am unaware of. I hardly use the ribbons 
myself because Poser dynamic hair is rather useless. In fact I am 
working on modifying this feature to create tubes (with 3 sides and up) 
for each line. I think less hair lines with larger texture areas may 
look better than a very dense set of thin ribbons. The ribbons just do 
not look good when they are too wide. They tend to twist too much.

FlyerX

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"FlyerX" <fly### [at] yahoocom> schreef in bericht 
news:471bd1fb$1@news.povray.org...
> Nice test.
Thank you :-)

>
> The ribbons are the closest thing I could use to lines in POV-Ray unless 
> there is a line primitive that I am unaware of. I hardly use the ribbons 
> myself because Poser dynamic hair is rather useless. In fact I am working 
> on modifying this feature to create tubes (with 3 sides and up) for each 
> line. I think less hair lines with larger texture areas may look better 
> than a very dense set of thin ribbons. The ribbons just do not look good 
> when they are too wide. They tend to twist too much.
>
I agree. The idea to use tubes might indeed be a much better solution than 
the ribbons. Looking forward to that!
Yes, less hair and larger texture areas are what I am favoring too. The 
problem then is how to texture that correctly. I think uv mapping would be 
necessary in Poseray, but I have not yet found out what type of mapping 
would work best. Using the ribbons, I shall experiment further along that 
line.

Thomas

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"Janet" <par### [at] attnet> schreef in bericht 
news:web.471b831fbb33e2ddf2a6e2870@news.povray.org...
> The first one is better than the rest. You might need to work on the
> materials a bit. ;) You can add some wave to the hair in Poser using the
> kink settings, I think that would help a lot. Will PoseRay translate the
> kink? The reason I ask is becasue maybe it doesn't ... the head hair
> doesn't appear to meet the scalp correctly (which would appear to happen 
> in
> the conversion).  Another thing that might work is if you had 2 hair 
> props.
> A sparser one along the edges where beard meets clean shaven, and a 
> thicker
> one for the rest of the beard area. I also think it falls straight down 
> too
> fast.
>

Thank you Janet for your comments! Yes, the kinks are translated to Poseray 
as far as I am aware of that. If you compare carefully the Poser "original" 
and the different conversions, you will see that the kinks correspond to the 
shadowed areas.

The hair/beard consist - in the Poseray conversion - of a root mesh (against 
the scalp) and a hair mesh. My impression is that they do not meet correctly 
thus giving the impression of the hair floating some distance from the 
scalp. By the way, only using the root mesh gives the impression of a badly 
shaven figure :-)  That could be a line to explore!

Yes, two hair props. I mentioned that also in my original message, towards 
the end, in a more cryptic way I admit as I did not want to go to deep into 
prop building and so forth. However, that would be the best solution. I 
shall certainly explore that avenue too.

I have to experiment further with the dynamic settings of the hair, 
especially the falling down. I used a pretty extreme setting  here.

Janet, would you think that the resolution of the skullcap/beardcap (i.e. 
finer or coarser mesh) influences the number of guide hairs and hence the 
total number of hairs in Poser? I am not sure and I have not tried this out 
yet, but that seems to be the case.


Oh, one thing in general: using radiosity with these hair/beard meshes is 
terrible. Render time rockets upwards tremendously. Something to keep in 
mind.

Thomas

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"fls13" <fls### [at] netzeronet> schreef in bericht 
news:web.471ba20ebb33e2dd49bb394f0@news.povray.org...
> That's pretty neat. I haven't monkeyed in the Hair Room much, but that 
> could
> be the coming week's experiment.
>

Thanks!! Excellent idea!

Thomas

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Here is an update.

Following the suggestions of Yadgar and Janet, I changed the dynamic 
settings in Poser. I made hair longer and it falls more naturally now, 
especially as I checked on the collision detection. I used a coarser mesh 
for the beardcap and, indeed as I suspected, the beard is sparser (with the 
same hair settings). I made it stiffer than the hair too. For both, I used a 
simple gradient y texture, uv mapped cylindrically along y in Poseray.

Comment 1: there is an issue with the root to hair transition. I probably 
have to play with the pull down and the root stiffness settings...

Comment 2: I deliberately used a fairly wide ribbon setting. I would like to 
see if I can get an image_map uv mapped on them...


Thomas

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