Hints on Creating Hair in Poser 5 #3

In this Hints # 3, I'll be dealing with various aspects of creating free-flowing hair with a side part. Along the way, I found out a lot more about a number of the tools and techniques of the Hair Room. The more I use it, the more I see its amazing power and the more fun it is.

Hint #7 In this hint, I'll describe how I set up the hair. This is a short hint. I used this template for the three styles I'll show in this Hints Tutorial. Again, I broke up the hair into 7 parts. However, this template differed from the first 7 part template.

There are two hair groups in the front separated by a side part.
The side also has two hair groups. One is above the ears and starts where the front hair group left off. You can see a little of the front area in this illustration.
The two side groups come together in the back. I have included a hair group on the top. This group is optional, but I have found it smooths out the back and can hide problems.

Hint # 8 Initially I decided to style this hair without changing any of the Growth Controls except for Hair Length. I immediately started to use the Styling Tools, but when I went to supplement them by changing a setting in the Growth Controls, instead of complementing what I had done, Ierradicated what I had done using the Styling Tools. One can use them together, but one must be aware that the styling one has accomplished with the Styling Tools will change and not in the expected manner. For example, I had bent down some hair with the Translate Tool. I went to bend it more with the Pull Down Growth Control. Instead of bending down further, it resumed the position it had had before I had used the Translate Tool. I will list those numbers I eventually changed from their default settings in the Growth Controls.

Growth Controls
Sides Above the Ears
Sides Meeting at the Back
Back Top
Hair Length
0.6500 0.6500 0.6500
Pull Back
0.00070 0.00500 0.00500
Pull Down
0.00175 0.00500 0.00500

Now I was ready to just use the Styling Tools. I mainly used the Translate Tool in conjunction with the Falloff Slider and the Constrain Length. (These pictures below do not show any changes made in the Growth Control Tools.)

Row one shows the hair being bent with the Translate Tool. It is important in this stage to keep the hair at a constant length and move it from near to the roots. If you do not keep the hair at a constant length, it will not have the nice wave at the top. You want to section it off in small sections from bottom to top as shown in the pictures.

The bottom row shows Hair Group with the Yellow nodes. Now is the time to remove the Constrain Length and with the Lengthen Dial bring the hair to the same length as the rest of the hair. I used the Lengthen Dial instead of increasing the hair length with the Translate Tool so I could keep the waves on top. Otherwise I could have affected them by flattening them out since I would have been basically pulling on the hair.

I, then, took the Curl Hairs Tool and bent the ends under as I had done in an earlier tutorial. See Hint #6 in the proceeding tutorial. This section involves two hair styles because before I curled it, I added some kink to it. I didn't change the Kink Strength from the default, only the Kink Scale. I think it gave it a little more body and ability to curl under better without appearing too kinky.

This last free flowing long haired style will involve a few Hint sections. To lengthen the hair, I used the Lengthen Slider in the Style Tools Menu. I highlighted each Hair Group, and then with the Lengthen Slider pulled downward until I had a length I was satisfied with.

Hint # 9 This hint will explain how I was able to smoothly draw back the hair so it would fall over her shoulders. The tool I used was the Translate Tool. Using a side view, I selected the hairs I needed, in this case the two Hair Groups nearest her face on either side. These were the front group and the group above the ears on each side respectively. I pulled the hair back following the red arrows. (See below).The Falloff Slider was set so that the action started near the root of the hair. However, notice the hair circled in blue. All the hair will go straight back. To correct this, I changed the Falloff Slider so that it was near the tip and then the hair strands bent into place. See step 2.

Step 1
Step 2

Hint #10 When I got ready to try a render, I set the number of hairs in each Hair Group to be 1,000. However, I noticed many "stray hairs." I found a number of the Guide Hairs and fixed them, but I was still left with too many stray hairs. So, with some of the Hair Groups, I cut the number of hairs to 800.

1,000 Hairs
800 Hairs

I then did a quick render. Once again, this would not be a final product and I did not take it into the material room.

To Hints on Creating Hair in Poser #4

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