Introduction

The HAIR module was announced and released in December 2005 so it´s been out for a little while and since then has received rave reviews from everyone that´s had a go with it, the Cafe reviewers included. (Check out the Cafe´s review of the HAIR Module).  It therefore follows that there should be some quality tutorials for it.

At the end of November 2006, 3DFluff announced their 5th training DVD, "Hair Styling & Rendering". This follows on from their 4 previous training DVD´s for Cinema 4D and follows on from the excellent Vol 4 "Advanced Lighting & Rendering in 9.5" that was extremely well received in the Cinema 4D community.

Before we continue with the review of the DVD it´s useful to give a short background of the author Janine Pauke. Janine narrates this DVD for the entire duration of just over 2 hours and 5 minutes. Add another 37 minutes if you include the 3DFluff TV fur tutorial. The other half of 3DFluff, Matthew O´Neil is absent on this DVD. Anyway Janine is highly qualified to produce this DVD having previously worked for MAXON UK and being a freelance artist.

Getting Started

The DVD is a data DVD i.e. must be played back on a computer. Inside the case there´s simple instructions that tell you to open the "Start here.html" file. Once you´ve done that you get a friendly screen with options on where to find the video tutorials, how to get in touch with 3DFluff, where to find their web site and a FAQ section. The FAQ section is very useful for those new to Cinema 4D and answers questions about running the videos, video codecs and getting your computer to look the same i.e. colours and schemes. It should be noted that the tutorials were recorded with release 9.6 despite release 10 having been out for a month or two. Obviously the DVD had been in production prior to release 10 being announced. This isn´t really an issues as the HAIR module is just the same in release 9.6 as it is in release 10.

The video and audio quality is superb. The audio appears to be recorded separately so you don´t get any keyboard sounds or other background noise. The videos are in avi format using the lossless Techsmith codec. The codec is included on the DVD in case you need to install it. The frame rate is 25 frames per second so when animations are played back in the videos you don´t miss any of the action. Speaking of audio. For those who haven´t heard Janine speak before, her first language isn´t English however she speaks very clear English with a delightful German accent. The DVD played back fine for me in my DVD drive but I did copy it on to my hard disk which you´re allowed to do, so that loading was quicker.

Video 1 - Intro 6min 26sec

After a short hello from Janine, she rips straight into things by showing how easy it is to add hair to a sphere and by pressing the play button and dragging the sphere around the hair is affected by dynamics. She demonstrates how important lights are and by changing lights just how much difference can be made to the look of the hair. She finished up with a brief look at hair material parameters.

Video 2 - Growing Hair 11min 53sec

Janine starts off by applying hair to a sphere and then shows how to make polygons selections to restrict where the hair is applied to / grown. She goes on to demonstrate how the hair guides can be made to grow from vertices, polygons, edges etc. She explains the relationship between hair guides and the actual hairs that will be rendered. This is all good stuff and essential information for those just starting out with the module. Janine shows how to reduce CPU load when displaying the actual hairs in the viewport.

Janine mentions the use of density maps to control the hair density. It would have been really useful to see this demonstrated either here or later on in the DVD but sadly this doesn´t happen. Carrying on with how to grow hair, Janine shows how to grow hair on splines and then the various ways of selecting on guides e.g. point mode, roots mode etc. Throughout the DVD there´s handy little tips like how once you´ve made a selection in one mode, how you can transfer the selection to another mode. Good stuff. To finish up Janine shows how using the brush tool on the hair tips is different than brushing in guide mode.

Video 3 - Styling 1 29min 43sec

Now that Janine has got introductory stuff out of the way she gets down to business with the first hair style. She begins by loading up a girl´s head without any hair. This starting scene like other project files are supplied on the DVD in a start and finished state. She adds hair to the head after first explaining the colour of the skin beneath the soon to be added hair makes a difference. Great tip. During the video we´re shown altering the hair material´s parameters to make the hair look much better. The straightening tool is demonstrated and well explained through a number of examples whilst still doing the styling. The video shows the hair being styled with the brush tool. One option for the brush tool that I thought should have been demonstrated here or elsewhere is the collision option for the brush tool. This option prevents guides going into geometry. In the videos the guides sometimes go into the head mesh and Janine brushes the hair back out of the geometry which quickly resolves things.

This video and the styling ones that follow do a good job of demonstrating the various selection options and making a tool like the brush tool only brush the selected guides or hair tips. The parting option is used and briefly explained to better define the parting in the girl´s hair. The video finishes with tweaking the hair material and adjust the number of hair and guide segments.

Here´s the finished hair style from this video. Believe it or not but this is the default hair colour that usually looks anything like hair and come out much darker.

Video 4 - Styling 2 14min 24sec

This video carries on from where the previous video finishes and is all about adding fur to the t-shirt that the girl is wearing. An excellent tip /explanation is given about making the fur react with hair dynamics or as the case maybe, why it doesn´t and what you need to do to make it react. Janine goes through the various settings in both the materials and rendering settings to achieve the best results. Even changing the background colour makes a difference with the red fur. There´s a number of other very good tips that are demonstrated like changing the display to hair lines rather than guides. These tips are really useful. The video finishes up with the hair style being enabled again so both it and the fur t-shirt can be rendered. Janine gives some good tips about rendering and what Anti-aliasing settings to use for best results.

Here´s the final rendered image from this video showing the addition of the fur. Yours truly did the fur following the tutorial as no final scene file is supplied for this video.

Video 5 - Styling 3 35min 56sec

Again we carry on from where the previous video finishes. This time the tutorial is about creating and styling long hair. The previous hair style is straightened out and lengthened before Janine starts styling again.

Here´s a couple of screen grabs from the video. In the image on the left the hair is being straightened out a little to stop the guides going through the head mesh. Throughout this and other videos Janine often uses the spline modifier graph for more precise control of the tool. In this case straightening the hair guides closer to the roots. Janine then carries on and styles the hair with the brush tool. Of course when you´re styling long hair like in this video the hair needs more segments. Janine goes through both guide and hair segments as there is a difference. The image on the right is after a little bit of brushing just on the left hand side. Just observe how superb and how fine the hair is on the right hand side!! CINEMA 4D´s HAIR module really is terrific. Also as you can see the image quality from the videos is very good.

This video would have been a good opportunity to demonstrate the cut tool, the digital equivalent of a pair of scissors but unfortunately this doesn´t happen. In this video Janine takes us through some trouble shooting where some hairs are intersecting the head mesh. This is bound to happen to anyone styling hair and it was interesting to see how Janine resolved this and figuring out what the problem was after a bit of detective work.

 

Here is the final rendered image from this video. A Brunette this time!!. The hair styles in the videos are better than the hair style produced by the tutorial that comes with the HAIR module. Just on this. In Release 10 the HAIR module is included in the Studio bundle. At the time of this review the English version of the Studio bundle does not come with the 3 tutorials as the original module originally did. It then makes even more sense to get 3DFluff´s Hair training DVD to get you up running.

Video 6 - Dynamics 27min 5sec

Have to say I really enjoyed this video. Although I´d had a bit of a play with hair dynamics I had not gone as far as what Janine does in this video where rather than having hair strands flapping about the hair is transformed by the settings into tentacles and treated as actual polygons. The result as per this animation is super cool in my opinion. Incredibly this plays back at full speed in real time. No need to cache this baby!! Like other videos there´s plenty of tips and many that were new to me.

Here´s the animation produced from this tutorial. Doing this with soft IK would have pushed the CPU to its limit plus taken ages to set up. I doubt Cloth could have achieved similar or as quick to calculate results.

Extras & Goodies

Like previous 3DFluff DVD´s there´s some very useful extras. One awesome extra is the free 3DFluff TV tutorial on fur that came out just as MAXON was announcing the HAIR module in 2005. Quite a few people will be familiar with this 37 minute tutorial and many of us were posting screen grabs of our furry Christmas decoration that we made using the demo version of Cinema 4D while we waited for our full version to arrive. I have to say that this video is my favourite video on this DVD. There´s just so many tips and techniques used and demonstrated that I would almost say to people, start with this video first. Janine takes you through modelling and applying fur to a novelty Christmas decoration. Even some of the modelling tips and techniques are really great so even if you don´t plan on getting this DVD and you have the HAIR module, make sure you download and watch this video.

The scene file isn´t supplied on the DVD so here´s my take on the tutorial. Cool eh!!

Other goodies include 4 scene files: An eyelash, feather, fur and a modified version of the final hair style with some purple strands. The feather looks really great and a tutorial on making it would have been a bonus I´m sure.

Like Vol 4, Vol 5 includes some high quality HDR images and appear to be the same ones. Members of the cafe who watch a few of my tutorials would have seen me use some of the Vol 4 HDR images to add realism to my renders and make chrome look like chrome for example.

Here´s a few chrome spheres where I´ve applied different HDR images to a sky object (and prevented the sky object from rendering). A chrome material has been applied to the sphere. One image doesn´t have the HDR image. Not too hard to figure out which one eh!!

Conclusion

I really enjoyed this DVD as I did 3DFluff´s previous DVD. The problem I had was that I wanted more. I got to the end of the tutorials feeling as though this was the first disc in a 2 part set. Sadly this isn´t the case. We get 2 hours and 5 minutes approximately of top notch material and an extra 37 minutes if you include 3D Fluff TV fur tutorial. There´s some excellent goodies like the HDR images which I regularly use in my own scenes. Also included is a couple of cool scene files as mentioned above.

I think the DVD is best suited to those just starting out with the HAIR module. If you were looking for advanced hair styling techniques, explanations and demonstrations of all of the tools then you may be disappointed. There´s some tools like comb and cut that just aren´t mentioned and this would have been a bonus. Symmetry is mentioned but never used or demonstrated. Again this could have been useful as it can be quite a time saver although Janine says she doesn´t want a symmetrical look to the styles. We also only get 3 hair styles and the t-shirt is given fur. Perhaps some other style like mens hair and beards, eyebrows plus a feather tutorial etc could have been the real icing on the cake.

I mentioned just how much I liked the Fur Christmas decoration tutorial. The next best video on the DVD for me was the dynamics video. This demonstrated some advanced techniques. Perhaps as a middle aged man with male pattern baldness, hair styles have less appeal!! I still enjoyed the hair styling videos however.

So what does all this mean? The DVD is beautifully presented and narrated like 3DFluff´s previous DVD and a great introduction to the HAIR Module but best suited to those with little or no experience with the module and wanting to get started. However more experienced people will still learn things and pick up some great tips. At £49 or approximately US $95 plus postage the DVD isn´t cheap considering the fairly short duration.

Reviewed by 3DKiwi (Nigel Doyle)

C4D Cafe