Xgen to Marmoset?

KotBigimot

Hey guys, I need help!

I made hair in Xgen for a model that i want to render in Marmoset Toolbag 3.  How do i export the hair?

Before Xgen I made some fiber-mesh hair in ZBrush but it looked like shit in Marmoset. I will include that too (picture 2 and 3). It was 4.5 million polygons as well, so it wasn't ideal. 

For Xgen i looked at a tutorial by Michael Robson: https://3dtotal.com/tutorials/t/hair-creation-with-xgen#article-introduction It looks fucking amazing.

I think he rendered in Arnold and he didn't use hair-cards (as far as i can tell). But could he have transported his hair to Toolbag as well? Or is this not possible/viable and am i just wasting time?

This is what i want to export

The fibermesh from ZBrush was my first attempt. But it looked like absolute shit in Toolbag 3. But maybe there would have been a fix for that too?

low key burn victim over here in Toolbag. Where did all the hair go!

Anyway. If somebody could tell me how to either export Xgen to Marmoset or make the fibermesh look decent in Marmoset. I'd be very grateful!!!

(any other tips are welcome too. I'm a noob)

Caramel_Slices96

I've recently had a few projects that have required hair to be exported into Marmoset. From my research and experience, I believe that Marmoset Toolbag can't read hair spline data that XGen and other hair creation software produce. The only method I'm aware of is to bake the hair onto poly planes and then export it all as Geometry.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?edufilter=NULL&v=tiuNm7ZD9qw - This YouTube link explains the process of baking out hair planes in Maya

https://marmoset.co/posts/how-to-create-realistic-hair-peach-fuzz-and-eyes/ - This link gives a basic rundown of photorealistic hair in Marmoset

https://marmoset.co/posts/presentation-lighting-and-hair-creation-for-a-sorceress-character/ - This link has a more comprehensive breakdown of the material setup actually in Marmoset.

I hope this helps and gets you pointed in the right direction! 

thomasp

Looks like you already managed to export successfully into Marmoset. Is it possible the hair was converted into poly strips inside Maya and it looks broken in Marmoset because the backfaces are being culled (under object settings)?

Btw. hair doesn't grow out of the back of the earlobes, I'd check reference again.  

KotBigimot

Caramel_Slices96 said:

I've recently had a few projects that have required hair to be exported into Marmoset. From my research and experience, I believe that Marmoset Toolbag can't read hair spline data that XGen and other hair creation software produce. The only method I'm aware of is to bake the hair onto poly planes and then export it all as Geometry.  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?edufilter=NULL&v=tiuNm7ZD9qw - This YouTube link explains the process of baking out hair planes in Maya

https://marmoset.co/posts/how-to-create-realistic-hair-peach-fuzz-and-eyes/ - This link gives a basic rundown of photorealistic hair in Marmoset

https://marmoset.co/posts/presentation-lighting-and-hair-creation-for-a-sorceress-character/ - This link has a more comprehensive breakdown of the material setup actually in Marmoset.

I hope this helps and gets you pointed in the right direction! 

Thank you very much for taking the time to answer and post these links. I'm sure this will get me a lot further than I am right now!

KotBigimot

thomasp said:

Looks like you already managed to export successfully into Marmoset. Is it possible the hair was converted into poly strips inside Maya and it looks broken in Marmoset because the backfaces are being culled (under object settings)?

Btw. hair doesn't grow out of the back of the earlobes, I'd check reference again.  

Thanks for replying. (I love the portrait of the black woman you did!) The hair I imported is Zbrush fibermesh, so the broken hair doesn't relate to any Maya issues. But I am now pursuing the hair card method in Maya, so I will certainly check for backface culling there. Thanks for the tip!

And yes, I know hair does indeed not grow on earlobes. It's all a quite rough sketch, I wanted to check if I could export it first before spending countless hours detailing and only then finding out the method doesn't work.

WillDettrey

Hi KotBigimot, Is that a BPR render in ZBrush that you are using for comparison? ZBrush does it's own thing in the rendering and lighting departments and with Fibermesh it helps flesh out what is actually there. You will want to make sure your geometry view alone is looking good and not relying on the internal render. Make sure you have "Back Face Culling" unchecked on your mesh item in Toolbag ( as previously mentioned), this will allow back faced geometry to be visible rather than hidden (probably the biggest issue you're running into). 

KotBigimot

Hey, thanks a lot for answering! In the end i decided to work with xgen hair cards, they seemed to give a more reliable result. But thanks for the advice, I will certainly check those things in the future.