Once again some Spherize and Taper to get the hair going in the direction I want but I also use tilt root.ġ1. The head is longer and shaggy so before adding hair I increase the length. The Bison's body needed little styling but areas such as the head will need more work. You will probably want to increase the density at this point and also add some random length.ġ0. You can now preview the hair by clicking the eye icon beside Density and yellow hairs will appear with the green guide hairs. In the case of the Bison's body spherize and taper were sufficient.ĩ. Depending upon the areas you are working on you may want to add some other effects such as tilt roots and curl. Note: Some actions like Spherize can take a moment or two.
It is a bit trial and error until you get used to the software. Then Taper on the Y axis a couple of times. For the Bison's body I use Spherize on the Y axis (down) a couple of times and then on the X axis (back) to get the hair going in the direction I want. You may need to do this multiple times to get the hair going in the direction you want and you can also change the axis. The further you drag the sliders the more the influence. Dragging in different directions will get the hair to go one way or the other eg when spherizing on the y axis to the right will make the guide hairs face downwards. To start shaping the hair use the Spherize and Taper features by dragging the sliders. The area has sprouted green hair which are the guide hairs.Ĩ. I'm starting with the body first by changing the length to about 6 cm or a couple of inches and then click the add hair icon. We are now going to work in the styling section. It will turn a darker red to indicate the area.ħ. In the shave group drop down menu choose the area you want to work on. For example in the case of the Bison his body is going to be fairly short and straight but over his shoulders it is going to be longer with more curl and roughness.
Depending up the animal each shave group may be styled differently. With the shave groups set up it is time to add the hair and style.
Make sure to rotate the animal around on all angles as it is easy to miss polygons in less visible areas.Ħ. If you didn't get close enough at the beginning you can add them in later. Work carefully around the areas where you do not want to add follicles. You can "paint" the follicles by running the cursor over the polygons you want included or use the lasso tool. However in the case of the head I add follicles more selectively as I want to keep the eyes and mouth clear. I now go through and set up my other shave groups.
Using the plus and minus icons you can add and delete shave groups. I re-name the shave group to something more obvious, in this case body. This defaults to human hair so I change the surface shader to standard and also up the root and tip thickness as animals don't tend to have as fine a hair as people. Using the cog icon beside the shavegroup drop down menu I am going to name and set up the surface. Everyone has a different workflow but this is mine.Ĥ. While there are many videos related to LAMH I am going to go through the steps of making hair in Look at my Hair using the 3D Bison (available at DAZ). You can save the hair as obj to be used with other render engines like Iray, Lux Render or Octane but the resulting files tend to be huge and unless you have a very powerful computer it will probably choked trying to render! Both Garibaldi and Look at my Hair are made for the 3 Delight render engine.
The full version lets you add presets but you can also use the editor to make changes or make your own hair from scratch. There are also not that many presets available for animal hair. The player lets you add presets to your model though you can't edit the hair.
There are two options for Look at my Hair the free LAMH player or the full version. I use Look at my Hair (aka LAMH) if I want to add hair to my animal models.
I have both but have never been able to get the hang of Garibaldi. However, there are 2 hair tool add-ons available for DAZ Studio Look at my Hair and Garibaldi Hair Express System for DAZ Studio.
Some software comes with hair tools already installed but DAZ Studio does not. As a dog show person I can tell you hair can cover a lot of imperfections and this is the same in 3D. The models themselves are hard to find but good texture maps and hair even harder. If you are an animal artist one of the drawbacks in 3D art is finding realistic animal models.