3D-Blender Blender Art - Show Us Your Blender Skill

[CurvyLinesEverywhere]

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Blender's particle system is a trainwreck. Even back in 2016 Sergey Sharybin said it's "hairy and fragile and runs below repairable state".

Not only can't it be repaired or made to work right in the first place, it's a big fat slab of hardwired options like the terrible old Blender Internal materials. There's no flexability to be found there.

Geometry nodes hair is coming in 3.3. Don't bother with the particle system until it's time to cast it down to the bowels of hell where it belongs.

This. I love Blender dearly and will defend it to the death, but the Particle Hair system is bullshit. Don't like your Hair Cards overlapping weirdly? Try accidentally combing your hair through the character's skull every single time you try to style it.

Ahem. I have not had good experiences with Blender particle hair.

Hair Tool, on the other hand, is a plugin for Blender that is well worth the money if you like Daz Studio hair and would like to roll your own.

 

[MidnightArrow]

This. I love Blender dearly and will defend it to the death, but the Particle Hair system is bullshit. Don't like your Hair Cards overlapping weirdly? Try accidentally combing your hair through the character's skull every single time you try to style it.

Ahem. I have not had good experiences with Blender particle hair.

Hair Tool, on the other hand, is a plugin for Blender that is well worth the money if you like Daz Studio hair and would like to roll your own.

You don't need to buy anything. Just wait for 3.3 to release.

 

[Synx]

Blender's particle system is a trainwreck. Even back in 2016 Sergey Sharybin said it's "hairy and fragile and runs below repairable state".

Not only can't it be repaired or made to work right in the first place, it's a big fat slab of hardwired options like the terrible old Blender Internal materials. There's no flexability to be found there.

Geometry nodes hair is coming in 3.3. Don't bother with the particle system until it's time to cast it down to the bowels of hell where it belongs.

Hard disagree on this. The particle system works fine. It just gets a bit getting used to, but it works fine with some time investment. And especially with the hair BDSF in cycles you can get much better results then any DAZ asset will look in Blender.

And the new geometry nodes hair in 3.3 isn't a complete overhaul, far from it. It's built of the current particle system. Yes it makes some improvements on how the hair is handled when styling it with some newer functions, but the core is exactly the same as the current particle system. The mayor difference is switching to curves allow for geometry nodes to work so you have got much more freedom for the children and stuff like that.

If you cannot get good looking hair with the current particle system, 3.3 won't magically change that.

And that comment is completely out of context lol. It was a response on something not being fixed anymore in blender 2.6 or 2.7 since they where working on a mayor particle system overhaul for blender 2.8.

 

[CurvyLinesEverywhere]

You don't need to buy anything. Just wait for 3.3 to release.

Intriguing. Please tell me more. I've looked through the

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and I don't see anything that seems directly related to hair cards...

 

[MidnightArrow]

And that comment is completely out of context lol. It was a response on something not being fixed anymore in blender 2.6 or 2.7 since they where working on a mayor particle system overhaul for blender 2.8.

I know the exact context of the comment. He's talking about the "particle nodes" project that was renamed "geometry nodes" and pushed back to 2.92. Now in 3.3 they're finally implementing hair. This is the major particle system overhaul he refers to. Otherwise particles haven't been touched in over a decade.

 

[MidnightArrow]

Intriguing. Please tell me more. I've looked through the

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and I don't see anything that seems directly related to hair cards...

It's in the 3.3 alpha, that doesn't have release notes written up yet:

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[CurvyLinesEverywhere]

An attempt was made at hair.

 

[Domiek]

View attachment 1910501

Blender's particle system is a trainwreck. Even back in 2016 Sergey Sharybin said it's "hairy and fragile and runs below repairable state".

Not only can't it be repaired or made to work right in the first place, it's a big fat slab of hardwired options like the terrible old Blender Internal materials. There's no flexability to be found there.

Geometry nodes hair is coming in 3.3. Don't bother with the particle system until it's time to cast it down to the bowels of hell where it belongs.

100% this. I spent 3 weeks making hair for a character and had to go through so many hacks and loops just to get something decent. For every other char I just did the mesh to particle hair conversion as a temporary bandaid fix until the new node based hair is ready for production.

The current hair system is fine to hack together for a still render but falls apart quickly for anything more involved.

 

[Domiek]

The character I created hair and clothes for, would not recommend.

 

[HawkyDawky]

The character I created hair and clothes for, would not recommend.

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Clothes are not essential, don't worry...

 

[Synx]

The character I created hair and clothes for, would not recommend.

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The hair and clothes atleast look much more realistic then the vast majority of DAZ assets.

Hair just takes a long time to make in general, doesn't matter what approach. While back I tried different ways to create hair for a week or so, and it doesn't matter what way you pick, it takes a lot of time and practice. I still found hair particles the fastest/simplest way to create decent looking hair (especially if it's a relative easy hair style), but guess I'm the only one in that regards.

Just to tone down your expectations for the new system. I have tried it a bit with the 3.3 alpha and it will still require a lot of work and practice to get decent looking hair. It's a lot better, but not a magical hair making tool.

 

[Domiek]

Clothes are not essential, don't worry...

Neither is hair

The hair and clothes atleast look much more realistic then the vast majority of DAZ assets.

Hair just takes a long time to make in general, doesn't matter what approach. While back I tried different ways to create hair for a week or so, and it doesn't matter what way you pick, it takes a lot of time and practice. I still found hair particles the fastest/simplest way to create decent looking hair (especially if it's a relative easy hair style), but guess I'm the only one in that regards.

Just to tone down your expectations for the new system. I have tried it a bit with the 3.3 alpha and it will still require a lot of work and practice to get decent looking hair. It's a lot better, but not a magical hair making tool.

Yeah, I've been following the hair nodes rework for over a year so I know that 3.3 isn't even remotely close to what's been promised on the roadmap. The biggest pain point with the current system, as you've probably already experienced, is the piss poor child interpolation and the lack of clump controls.

I'm not even expecting the hair system rework to be fully realized for another 6-12 months.

 

[Synx]

Neither is hair



Yeah, I've been following the hair nodes rework for over a year so I know that 3.3 isn't even remotely close to what's been promised on the roadmap. The biggest pain point with the current system, as you've probably already experienced, is the piss poor child interpolation and the lack of clump controls.

I'm not even expecting the hair system rework to be fully realized for another 6-12 months.

Yeah interpolated is pretty shit. I always just used the simple setting for children. It works fine just requires you to make the hair more in layers instead if painting it everywhere. Will say the interpolated stuff seems to be much improved in the new system.

 

[CurvyLinesEverywhere]

The character I created hair and clothes for, would not recommend.

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Dang.

I need to be more humble. That looks amazing!

 

[CurvyLinesEverywhere]

Yeah interpolated is pretty shit. I always just used the simple setting for children. It works fine just requires you to make the hair more in layers instead if painting it everywhere. Will say the interpolated stuff seems to be much improved in the new system.

Sorry to bump twice, but can we see your nodes setup for the skin, hair and cloth? Or at least some links to whatever tutorials you learned from? This seriously is on another level, especially the cloth.

 

[Ghoseh]

testing the quality between making scenes to see if i really want to make the switch from daz still have no idea how stuff works. but i do like the options alot better. FYI did not make this room. downsize from 4k

Spoiler: ugly

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[CurvyLinesEverywhere]

testing the quality between making scenes to see if i really want to make the switch from daz still have no idea how stuff works. but i do like the options alot better. FYI did not make this room. downsize from 4k

Spoiler: ugly

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"I'm sorry, honey. I swear, my dick never disappeared like this before."

"It happens."

All kidding aside, very nice. I like the color grading and the bloom. I feel like Ambient Occlusion could be doing more. If you're using the Eevee renderer, be aware that there is a complex process you need to go through in order to

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. Also, I'm not sure if your main light from the window is a Sun or an Area Light, but be aware that windows in general can usually get a subtle boost from strategically placed

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.

Finally, it's literally the oldest lighting trick in the book, but if you're comfortable deviating from photo-realism, you can reduce your scene lights and add point lights in the centers of open spaces, scaled to just light the middle of the wall and not the corners.



This gives you shadows in the corners and specular highlights with no apparent source on shiny surfaces, while also making furniture cast bigger, chunkier, less uniform shadows than is usually feasible using Ambient Occlusion alone. The downside is if a character gets too close to the center of the room, they'll get really bright in one spot suddenly, so use this technique with care and "direct" your scene around it. (Or add light sources there.) High ceilings lit by globes like the ones over your dining room table are perfect for grounding this technique in reality, but even without them, they've been used to great effect in realtime game engines and renders for years, all the way back to when point lights and spot lights were the only game in town.

TL;DR: If your interior scene render doesn't feel "artistic" enough, or you want to emphasize a particular area, consider abusing point lights with artistic license. (Just don't get so granular with it that you're basically emulating Light Probes by hand.)

 

[MidnightArrow]

There's a better way.

For photorealism your light should have quadratic falloff. That means ii weakens exponentially with distance. That's why it makes bright highlights when it's near a wall. But you can add a Light Falloff node to change the falloff to constant so it never stops. You can light up a square kilometer of terrain with a single point light or use a few dim ones to add even ambient lighting around a room. There's also a smooth factor to blur the falloff in quadratic and linear modes.

 

[CurvyLinesEverywhere]

There's a better way.

For photorealism your light should have quadratic falloff. That means ii weakens exponentially with distance. That's why it makes bright highlights when it's near a wall. But you can add a Light Falloff node to change the falloff to constant so it never stops. You can light up a square kilometer of terrain with a single point light or use a few dim ones to add even ambient lighting around a room. There's also a smooth factor to blur the falloff in quadratic and linear modes.

Ah. You're talking about Light Nodes, which are only available in Cycles, right? I wasn't sure if the render was Cycles or Eevee, so I tried to cover the bases with the most universally applicable tools for the job.

Since then, I've learned that it's much easier to use area lights aligned with the ceiling. That way, you can manually scale the rectangle to fit the room, tweak the brightness values by hand so you're not out-competing the actual light sources, and all the light is evenly spread and comes from above, so it never looks especially unnatural. You can basically make the dark corners in the room as smooth or as chunky as you want with very little effort.



Here's what it looks like with a little TLC added to the Ambient Occlusion:



And finally, here's a crude paintover of what I think these techniques could add to the (admittedly already gorgeous) lighting in the scene. I separated the paintover so you can more clearly see what I was trying to do, and mentally account for whatever inaccuracies there were in my painting approach. (In general, corners are darker, while walls have big, soft hotspots.)



I've noticed that there is a Light Falloff node in the Eevee Shader Nodes system, but I can't get it to output anything other than a solid color. I've no idea what its purpose is in this context. Do you? When I google it, all I see in the results is Cycles. (This is the Show us your Blender Ignorance thread, right? )

 

[Ghoseh]

anyone get weird quad muscles when posing characters?

Spoiler: Quads

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