Hair Strand Designer Dev Thread

RobertRamsay

Hair Strand Designer Version 1.5 is now Available: https://robertramsay.artstation.com/store/j7PY/hair-strand-designer-v15
This is a simple hair generator for non-complex hairs, quick and easy to use. Generates 4096 x 4096 texture maps fast. Pixel based for better accuracy.


See this latest video for what is new:
https://youtu.be/BCm9NqQQazk

bkost

Hey Robert, this tool looks like it has lots of potential. You have a solid foundation and some awesome features. I used to despise making the textures for hair cards (still do, but not nearly as much) and your tool looks like it could be a great alternative to my Xgen workflow. It's wonderful that your tool bakes out all the necessary maps with a click of a button! 

What I find most important while building hair is large disparities between the hair strips and that's what makes a nice groom. From your latest update it sounds like you're on the right track now that there is length adjustment. I think what would really sell me (and other grooming artists) is the ability to toggle the modifiers (Strands, Reduction, Distancing, etc.) for each individual hair strip and have width adjustment (see ref). Right now the modifiers adjust all hair strips. 

Another feature I'd love to see (but less significant) is the adjustment of number of hair strips on the texture sheet itself. Right now I believe it's locked to 8?

This is some awesome work man! Cheers

RobertRamsay

Thanks, yes for now it is locked to 8 for performance and as it developes I will add the ability to 'place' and 'add' your own hair spawners wherever you like on the sheet with its own settings etc. Will be a while in development but that is where it is heading. I am currently developing the ability to bend strand sets as well as adjust the settings at each control point (currently 10 control points per set in the works). I am currently coming up with performant ways of displaying the changes in realtime so that generate is more like a final render.

Hopefully I can compete better with the likes of XGen/Ornatrix/Hair and Fur/Fibermesh as time goes by! 

Thanks for the feedback and support!

Aydhe

now that's awesome tool, really see how you'll develop it.

musashidan

I just posted this here last week and can't believe it hadn't already been posted. Great work on this, amazing to think it hasn't been done before. Creating all my hair atlases in Xgen these days, but will definitely pick this up even if it's just to support a great project.

RobertRamsay

musashidan said:

I just posted this here last week and can't believe it hadn't already been posted. Great work on this, amazing to think it hasn't been done before. Creating all my hair atlases in Xgen these days, but will definitely pick this up even if it's just to support a great project.

Aw, that's nice of you to say. Thanks for posting this before, it's great to have support for a new product. Two weeks in and it's doing better than I thought so I will be making all the extra developments I can with it, it's quite fun to do and the challenges presented by those who will make use of it too are good for me. (and others).

I'm grateful.

Blouko

This is really nice, I just got myself a copy and I'm playing around with it. I was wondering if it was possible to have a HSV (Hue, saturation, value) color picker in addition to the RGB one? This is a great tool, thank you for making this!

Justo

Rename this thread to "Hair Strand Designer Tool" or "Hair Strand Designer Dev Thread" or anything like that instead of the generic question you have right now. This could become huge Robert, excellent tool idea and execution thus far  

Also the polycount link in your artstation actually links to bkost's first reply. Perhaps you might want want to link instead to your first post...

https://polycount.com/discussion/210862/looking-for-hair-textures-check-this-out

...or the latest post, whichever you prefer.

https://polycount.com/discussion/210862/looking-for-hair-textures-check-this-out#latest

RobertRamsay

Blouko said:

This is really nice, I just got myself a copy and I'm playing around with it. I was wondering if it was possible to have a HSV (Hue, saturation, value) color picker in addition to the RGB one? This is a great tool, thank you for making this!

Yes, been meaning to implement it, the code is there just need to enable it!

RobertRamsay

Justo said:

Rename this thread to "Hair Strand Designer Tool" or "Hair Strand Designer Dev Thread" or anything like that instead of the generic question you have right now. This could become huge Robert, excellent tool idea and execution thus far  

Also the polycount link in your artstation actually links to bkost's first reply. Perhaps you might want want to link instead to your first post...

https://polycount.com/discussion/210862/looking-for-hair-textures-check-this-out

...or the latest post, whichever you prefer.

https://polycount.com/discussion/210862/looking-for-hair-textures-check-this-out#latest

Thanks for this! Updated

RobertRamsay

Updated to Version 1.256 Just a few bug fixes with the crash happening after saving textures out and also the Depth map Range is now corrected.

Currently working on the positioning of sets, control points, adding and removing sets, setting adjustments at control points, hsv mode for the color sliders, Project saving, Directional/Flow map, Shapes and Spacing options.

A lot of features planned and will be released in stages over the next few months.

Amazing support you guys are giving by buying this! If you buy it from the ArtStation store page I pay less fees, same price for you.

LINK: https://robertramsay.artstation.com/.../hair-strand...

Also I am trending at 5th place on the ArtStation Marketplace! and Best selling at 77th place which is a huge surprise as I only released this 3 weeks ago and in its' infancy.

Maybe it can go to the top? Just happy to have made something people can make use of. Keep the requests coming. I have made a trello board too.

https://trello.com/b/hCtsKfNj/hair-strand-designer

RobertRamsay

A little known issue has cropped up that for some reason the files wont save to the specified folder (only seems to be in rare cases). If this happens to you, navigate to %appdata% , go up one folder then looks for a folder the same as the Program name.. something like 'HairStrand_Designer..' if there is a folder there, there is a good chance your textures have saved there. I am working on a fix but seems really depending on PC setup. Had 1 report out of a potential 100 so far.

- RESOLVED, this issue relates to saving your textures to the same folder as the software, be sure to save outside of the software folder (it's a windows thing...must be..)

RobertRamsay

New Documentation added: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1dFEK8j7H-TyTZg1U3JrSXXHyBg3Um9Nh

RobertRamsay

Currently working on the Flow/Directional Maps with various options to cover the many possible shader setups you might have.
Trending at 3rd place on Artstation after 3 weeks
Best selling at 58th out of 13500 products! Amazing eh!

Couple new screenshots, I recently added color swatch history and RGB/HSV/GREY sliders.


Thanks to all who are helping me develop this tool, so much more to do!

musashidan

Congrats on the success. I really feel you should have charged more though.

goekbenjamin

Hey Robert, looks great so far! I just had to buy it
What i am missing at first try is (and i think this will be crucial) we should be able to save/load settings.

RobertRamsay

@musashidan
Prices increase on each update, only fair that you get the value of each progressive state, early buy supports me while developing but also gives you free updates, good all round. Prices will increase about $2.50 - $5.00 per update (major version releases)

@goekbenjamin
Thanks, Just need to finish off the parameters for new maps then the project file saving will appear, too much still to develop before I commit to saving and loading, hence it still being in a beta state, but will definitely happen!  

Just wrapping up AO and Flow map passes.

Thanks for the support and feedback!

goekbenjamin

Haha nice one
Looks great so far, super exited where this is going.
I had this idea to generate hair without xgen myselfe, i will develop it further in future (dont want to compete here )
https://polycount.com/discussion/206534/bens-hair-texture-generator-for-haircards#latest

I just wanted to let you know that you did a great job with that product!

RobertRamsay

I checked out your progress there @goekbenjamin and it looks cool! I like the algorithm yours seems to be using there, looks like better straggling than mine (for now). I use only some sine wave mixing at this stage which is fine for stylised / straight-ish hair. I like you are going for the standalone tool like myself, I also saw another plug-in made for Substance Designer which looks powerful, great if you have substance designer. I'll just link that here too shall I, oh come all ye hairful! :P 
https://www.artstation.com/olif/store/1KG8/hairtg-hair-clump-tool-v1-2

I'm pretty sure my sales are safe either way! (Selling like fricken hotcakes!)

RobertRamsay

Here are the 4k hair passes that Hair Strand Designer V1.261 produces.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQZjkPHkgeU

RobertRamsay

I've created a blog with more recent updates on Art Station, check it out here:
https://www.artstation.com/robertramsay/blog/1r47/hair-strand-designer-generates-simple-hair-strands

Latest Version:
https://robertramsay.artstation.com/store/j7PY/hair-strand-designer-v1-2631

RobertRamsay

I have amde some updates to the Hair Strand Designer and created a sample pack: https://robertramsay.artstation.com/store/N8kd/hair-strand-designer-sample-set-1

Here is a free sample from that product.: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1ZA83YwqX1AU-Ow9fb5DQpll0C0I5zBeu

Many thanks!

RobertRamsay

I'm currently working on version 1.28 which will mean a price increase but also a great number of new features including extra strand types, wave frequency control, fade in/out control for the alpha, hex code for colors and hopefully the Load/Save Projects feature.

Later versions will include the ability to add/remove and position sets and will replace the automatic mode currently the standard method in current versions for generating sets. Both modes will be available, with Manual mode allowing for overrides for each new set added meaning they can also be edited and allow for curving/ color overrides per set and so on. Basically opening full control.

If you want to know more about the development be sure to check out the Trello board here: https://trello.com/b/hCtsKfNj/hair-strand-designer

RobertRamsay

I've recently added a low cost LITE version with most of the functionality except for the extra Map passes.
Still produces 4k RGBMask for Root/Tip/Variation control via the RGB channels. Color Map, Normal Map and Mask Map for opacity masking.

Artstation Marketplace (now Bestselling top 20 out of 14,000 products!) https://robertramsay.artstation.com/store/j7PY/hair-strand-designer-v1284

RobertRamsay

Hi Artists,
I made a tool for making Hair textures, currently in Beta and getting improved on a regular basis.
I made it available to buy from Artstation: https://robertramsay.artstation.com/store/j7PY/hair-strand-designer-v1285



Check out the latest videos on my YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw-7spDjEl8

Around mid April this year I created Hair Strand Designer to solve a little problem I had producing nice looking hair textures for my character hair cards/strips. Using my programming knowledge of GML (GameMaker Language), normally used to prototype or make little games for fun, I used it to address this problem.

By using Gamemaker Studio, it meant I could have a standalone application with 4K textures. After realising that it did a good job I had a few questions of 'how did you produce the hair strands' from a few fellow artists and I let them try out a very old version of the tool which literally had the most basic options, it has evolved quite a bit since then based on user feedback, and I have used my holiday time to develope it. It's now top 20 best selling on Artstation marketplace giving you an idea of it's popularity right now.

It produces Hair passes of RGBMask (To control tonal Variation(R), Root (G) and Tip(B) )
Normal Map, Mask Map (for opacity), ID Map, Depthmap, Flow Map, AO Map and a Frizz Map.
Initially you are presented with a low-fidelity previewer which gives you a rough idea of how some of the rendered strands might look based on the algorithm produced by the slider values.

There are over-ride values and adjusters at the bottom of the UI panel, later, this will become a more streamline setup and open the possibility of adding new sets, controlling clumping, defining paths and organizing the entire texture sheet.

If you want to know more about the progress visit the Trello board here: https://trello.com/b/hCtsKfNj/hair-strand-designer

Many thanks!
Robert

FourtyNights

Now that I've finally found a great workflow to control and place haircards, this will most likely be the next tool I'll need (no more particle hair setups for baking). Looking forward how this evolves.

RobertRamsay

Good to hear it. I can't wait until I finish the next major update, it's going to be a tonne of work but will be worth it and I'm sure you, the users, will love it!

FourtyNights

@RobertRamsay One question though, when I'm about to buy your tool. Is it portable, like from a .zip file when I extract it, it has all the content and .exe to start it up without installation? Because it looks like a "tiny" software in a sense, hehe. I'm asking this, 'cos that's the way I use Blender, for example.

Max3des

@RobertRamsay  Hi Robert! I accidentally stumbled upon your tool, and already bought it. Great tool! Always wondered why nothing of the kind had appeared so far. Now I'm working on hair using Johan Lithvall's guide (in xgen) and can't wait for the next major updates, you were talking about, specifically controlling each strand separately. Any approximate dates when this will be implemented?

RobertRamsay

Hi Max3des, sorry for the silence here, we have been moving house and I started full time work at a studio as a Tech Artist! So, yes, I have been working away at HSD during my commutes and managed to make major improvements but I want so much more and it will take time to intergrate it all. I'm basically a crowd pleaser when it comes to this update so bear with me, estimated date when it will be ready will be late September, even if it's in a beta state still. I want to get everything perfect! So far, I have it producing more strands in preview mode and working on the clumping algorithm which is a tonne of trial and error, also full 360 path editing per set. It is alot and I don't want to break the current system so this will be a whole new advanced version that you can go to from the main editor, depending on your workflow.

I'll try to keep everyone posted.

Check this out though, the hair was made with HSD!

https://www.artstation.com/gbin/store/Vryj/bunny-girl-data

RobertRamsay

FourtyNights said:

@RobertRamsay One question though, when I'm about to buy your tool. Is it portable, like from a .zip file when I extract it, it has all the content and .exe to start it up without installation? Because it looks like a "tiny" software in a sense, hehe. I'm asking this, 'cos that's the way I use Blender, for example.

No install, just a .exe program

RobertRamsay

Hi all, for today only and for the next hour, I will be making Hair Strand Designer and all other tools and assets on my marketplace 70% off! #cybermonday after the hour they will reduce to 30% off so get 'em while they are hot!
https://www.artstation.com/robertramsay/store

RobertRamsay

On sale on https://www.artstation.com/robertramsay/store
All products 70% off for the next short while, then back to 30% off for the remainder of the day!

RobertRamsay

Hey all, new Update to Hair Strand Designer bringing it to Version 1.42:
Also there is a sale on now on Artstation.
https://www.artstation.com/marketplace/p/j7PY/hair-strand-designer-v142-free-demo

Need to know more, check out this full Video:
https://youtu.be/tQE1-M-Phi8

RobertRamsay

New Version: V1.5
https://robertramsay.artstation.com/store/j7PY/hair-strand-designer-v15