Rich
" dForce was designed to simulate cloth "
... a "cloth", a human, a rock, a car, hair... those are nothing else than meshes.
A soft body engine don't give a fuck about what we see and understand as "a human", "hair", "a potatoe".
Where you see hair and clothes, an algorithm of soft-body simulation see quads, edges, vertices, and how each influences the others. Nothing more.
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Aromabish
"What is the best setting".
If the Surface tab dForce properties are numerous it's because they all mean something specific.
The real world don't bet on the "best" physical parameters do make a leaf look like a leaf and jeans look like jeans.
It's ONLY by using Surface Properties all together that you end up with the desired result.
If you don't want to go through (but I did it for dForce and for Marvelous Designer, and you definitely should) the hassle of reading and summarizing on paper the exhaustively useful :
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Simply load in your scene different already made dForce hair that simulate fast and well. Check their Surface settings. And copy/paste them on your hair.
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" Also they fall through the body most the time. "
They fall through. Or they don't. "Most of the time" doesn't really fit with physics calculations
There's no quantum parameter in dForce.
When hairs are properly made, the root (very first quad in the hair cards) should have a Weight Value of 0%. Rest of the hair should be 100% or a gradient of values from 0% (the root attached to the scalp) to 100% or less at the tip of your hair.
If your hair falls through :
- Select hair in the Scene Tab
- Scene Tab > Option > Create > New dForce Modifier Weight Node
- Scene Tab : Select the dForce Modifier Weight Node (Not the object itself)
- (Alt+Shift+W) Node Weight Brush Tool.
- Now you're gonna have to select by surface, select by group, or (worse case scenario) select by polygon manually : all the hair roots. And patiently define their weight (Viewport right click > Weight Editing > Fill Selected) to 0%.
What I usually do to transform any old non-dForce hair (or pillow, or nose, breast, ball, anything really) into dForce compatible hair is to load the hair in the scene without a Genesis. Then export hair as obj. Load it into 3DS Max (or Maya, Blender, etc). Then I select polygons by Material ID (aka Surface in DAZ). And if hair roots don't have a specific Material ID defined, then I create it myself (new Surface, new Material assigned).
You can do all that in DAZ, but the selection system is such a turd that instead of 5 minutes you're gonna spend 2 hours doing it.
Then I import back those hair into DAZ. Assign them to the Genesis (transfer Utility). Apply Iray Uber and copy/paste original textures onto my modified hair version.
Then it's ultra simple to select only the roots with the Node Weight Map Brush tool (Right Click in the Viewport, Geometry Selection, Select By > Surfaces) and define their weight to 0%.
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In a nutshell :
dForce Surface Properties are for ALL vertices in the surface (Material ID) of a mesh.
Node Weight Map enables to vary the influence of those common Surface Properties, but precisely per vertex.
For example if you have a dress with some very fluid parts, some a bit more rigid, and some very rigid. You could apply 3 Surfaces (material IDs) and define dForce properties for each of them.
But then you end up with 10 different material IDs to manage when way less could have been enough.
Most professional way is to add a dForce Modifier Weight Node in order to define how much each vertex of the object will receive of the common Surface simulation Properties.
