Looking for "Game Ready" Hair for Daz

[gnirt]

Hello everyone,

I am looking for (daz gen8) hairstyles that can be used in unreal. I went trough the asset releases section of this forum but could not find a good looking male hairstyle with a poly count that I find acceptable (~20k tris). The best I have found is the "Armani" hair which is part of one of the starter bundles, but I don't like it.

So I am looking for hairstyle suggestions with a triangle count of ~10-30k or a way to search assets by poly count (as far I know it is not possible in the official daz store).

The situation is not as bad for female hairstyles, but for males, most hairstyles are made of mostly individual hairbreadths, so I can't even use decimate on them...

ps.: I am also looking for suggestions for a slightly stylized male character. For female, my current choice is Aiko 8 but she doesn't have a male "counterpart".

 

[thecardinal]

Any hair by the artist AprilYSH works well for me, I have the same problem sometimes cause I use Octane to render.

As for guys using Genesis 8 there is nothing in the style of Aiko, but Kenji for Genesis 3 or 2 is a good fit.

 

[Fervid]

• Try older hairs. Anything made during the V3 golden age is likely to be lower-polygon count than your average modern hair. "Poser freebie lists" online often have lower-poly hair, usually from the aforementioned olden days. (Good luck finding a Realtime License availible for most of it, though.)
• Don't forget to set SubDivision Level to zero before you export, just in case it was enabled by default.
• Once you export it, delete some of the hair to reduce the complexity.
• Try selecting any "flys" or "scullcap" and deleting those first. As a bonus, you ditch a few textures this way, too.
• Blender has several options for reducing polygon count. I recommend the Decimate Modifier set to "Un-Subdivide," just play with it until nothing is wrong with the UVs. (If just a few quads are messed up, you can fix them with "Follow Active Quads.") Google these terms if you're not familiar with them.
• Likewise, you can select Edge Loops and delete them. Some hairs don't need this, but the ones that do really beenfit from it.
• Got big gaps in between some strands of hair? Follow the instructions here to merge the edges together. You'll remove half the vertices and get more coverage in the bargain.
• Your hair might be looking a little patchy after removing all that geometry. Try increasing the opacity in the alpha channel to make stringy hair look thicker. (Warning: If you're combining your diffuse and alpha textures into one image file for some engine-specific reason, mess with the alpha channel BEFORE you save it. Saving RGBA textures can sometimes be lossy, depending on the program and file format.)
• If all else fails, look for tutorials on youtube to learn how to model your own hair with Blender. Ponytails are super easy to make and pose (though animating them in a format that will work in a realtime engine is another beast altogether), and from there you'll have learned a new skill you can apply to any random Hair Problems that come up while you're reducing the polycount.
• Not a Blender person? That's fine. Your usual 3D modelling tools will probably have something similar. (And if you're not a 3D modeller at all, you should grab Blender (it's free) and learn. One does not simply put Daz content into Unity or Unreal Engine without tweaking a few things!)

Good luck! You probably won't need all these tips, but I hope you find some of them useful.