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Longdrape Hair is a revolutionary hair using Daz’s latest dForce Hair technology to give a highly realistic and versatile drapable long hair style. This means that every hair strand is generated and rendered as a separate 3D object, giving this hair an unprecedented realism.

Using the hair is very simple; select your figure (it works with both Genesis 3 Female and Genesis 8 Female) and load it as usual. The hair comprises three elements; a skull cap, the hair itself and a face shield which helps shape the hair and prevent it falling across the face. Select the hair and choose a pre-drape preset shape, which will determine the starting position of how the hair will drape. Then pose your figure and hit the simulate button – if you are familiar with dForce clothing then you will feel right at home.

Once the hair has been simulated there are lots of options, including 25 realistic hair colors all of which feature a blend of shades to give a highly realistic effect. All colors have the shine set appropriately, but there are 4 shine presets which you can use depending on your scene lighting and preference. dForce Hair comes with a huge list of parameters and I have included convenient presets for all major aspects, including changing the length, fluffiness, frizz, waves and more. Note this is done after the drape so you can easily test various length and style options without the need to re-run the simulation. I have also included the option to auto-generate stray hairs by clever application of the available parameters, which gives a most realistic effect.

With its timeless styling and the versatility and realism of dForce Hair, Longdrape Hair is sure to bring a touch of realism and magic to your renders.

Below is a list of the installation package types provided by this product. The name of each package contains a Package Qualifier, which is used as a key to indicate something about the contents of that package.

• 1 Core ¹⁾

Not all installation packages provide files that are displayed to the user within the interface of an application. The packages listed below, do. The application(s), and the location(s) within each application, are shown below.

• You can find new icons for loading this product in the following DAZ Studio Folders:
  • “People:Genesis 3 Female:Hair:PhilW:Longdrape Hair”
  • “People:Genesis 3 Female:Hair:PhilW:Longdrape Hair:01 Pre-Drape Shapes”
  • “People:Genesis 3 Female:Hair:PhilW:Longdrape Hair:02 Faceshield Shapes”
  • “People:Genesis 3 Female:Hair:PhilW:Longdrape Hair:03 Hair Adjustments”
  • “People:Genesis 3 Female:Hair:PhilW:Longdrape Hair:04 Iray Materials”
  • “People:Genesis 3 Female:Hair:PhilW:Longdrape Hair:04 Iray Materials:Shine Options”
  • “People:Genesis 3 Female:Hair:PhilW:Longdrape Hair:05 Utilities”
  • “People:Genesis 8 Female:Hair:PhilW:Longdrape Hair”
  • “People:Genesis 8 Female:Hair:PhilW:Longdrape Hair:01 Pre-Drape Shapes”
  • “People:Genesis 8 Female:Hair:PhilW:Longdrape Hair:02 Faceshield Shapes”
  • “People:Genesis 8 Female:Hair:PhilW:Longdrape Hair:03 Hair Adjustments”
  • “People:Genesis 8 Female:Hair:PhilW:Longdrape Hair:04 Iray Materials”
  • “People:Genesis 8 Female:Hair:PhilW:Longdrape Hair:04 Iray Materials:Shine Options”
  • “People:Genesis 8 Female:Hair:PhilW:Longdrape Hair:05 Utilities”

• You can find new icons for this product in the following DAZ Studio Categories:
  • “Hair:Long”
  • “Materials:Iray:Hair:Hair Colors”
  • “Materials:Iray:Hair:Settings”
  • “Shaping:Apply”
  • “Shaping:Remove”
  • “Simulation-Settings”

• When loaded the hair is parented to the Head Cap which is parented to the figure. For most operations you need to select Longdrape Hair. Loading the hair also loads a Face Shield parented to the face of the figure. * This will usually require no adjustment but it can be shaped with morphs or disabled to give lots of control over where hair can and cannot fall around the face.
• There are 3 preview presets each of which has a useful role:
  • - Guides only (on ly shows guide lines and not the actual hairs, fastest display, should be used when simulating)
  • - Hair Preview No Iray (shows an indication of individual hairs in normal preview but not in Iray render Preview. A useful middle setting)
  • - Hair Preview With Iray (full preview including Iray but slowest to respond when making changes)
• Set the Pre-Drape shape before you run the simulation. There are seven presets, these set just three actual morphs in the hair. Feel free to manually adjust the morph dials if you need to fine tune the hair drape. The drape is pretty fast, particularly if you set the preview mode to Guides Only. Note that setting small values of the Behind Shoulder morphs (Left and Right) will also reduce the length of the hair which falls in front of the shoulders, just be careful not to set it high enough that the hair pokes through the shoulder or intersects any clothing.
• When rendering with Longdrape Hair, there is a noticeable pause while the hair data is transferred to Iray * – this comprises millions of polygons and so is understandable. Once transferred the render times are reasonable given the complexity
• Current Frame simulation allows a very simple and easy to use way to simulate the hair (and also dForce clothing). In the main it works well but there will be times when you need the greater control which setting up a small animation gives. I recommend setting the animation length to 91. Setup your character, clothing and * Longdrape Hair at frame zero, then move to frame 30 to set the desired pose. The remainder of the time allows the hair to settle, feel free to press Escape if the simulation has reached a settled state or if you have the hair shape that you want. Having this animation allows you to select which frame is best for your render – often a middle frame will give a more dynamic result. You can of course set up more complex animations, either to achieve the dynamic look that you want for an individual render, or to render out an actual animation including the dynamic hair.
• If you deviate from the default pose as the starting point, ensure that the hair is clear of body and clothes before simulating – the hair has a wide margin to accommodate most clothing items. If you temporarily turn off the visibility of items in your scene which will not interact with the hair, they will not be considered by the simulation and it will therefore be faster to complete.
• Longdrape Hair can be used together with dForce-enabled clothing. In general you will want the clothing simulation to happen first on each frame and the hair simulation after that. This can be controlled by setting the Collision Layer in the Surfaces tab for the dynamic items in your scene. Set the Collision Layer for * Longdrape Hair to a higher value than the dynamic clothing to ensure this – it is set to 6 by default and most clothing will load with a value of 1 so for most cases this will be automatic.
• Those Style Options explained:
  • - “Fluffy” means that the hairs generated from each guide line deviate from the usual parallel generation, meaning that the hair has a more fluffy appearance.
  • - ”Frizz” introduces a small (or not so small) random deviation in the position of every segment in every hair. I have set the default to a low value just to give the hair a subtle more natural appearance. The highest value makes the hair quite frizzy looking.
  • - “Length” reduces the length of the hair along with the draped guides – note this does not require re-simulation of the hair and so can be easily used to try out various lengths once the drape has completed.
  • - The “Strands” options control how the individual hairs are generated from the guides. The default is Separate which means that each guide generates its own hairs, there is no interpolation between the hair guides. This is the “safest” option in that there is a minimum risk of hairs being generated where you don’t want them! The Partial Blend mode allows some interpolation between strands but is still pretty “safe”, while the Full Blend mode gives a very smooth result, but there is a much higher chance of generating hairs where you don’t want them. For example if there is hair falling in front of and also behind the shoulder, this option will likely generate some hairs between these which means that some hairs will poke through the shoulder. This may or may not be an issue depending on your camera angle. So use this one with care but I thought that it was worth including. It is most useful when all the hair falls behind the shoulders and so forms a single mass.
  • - The various Strays and Wave options are all part of the same Style group – only one can be applied at once as they use the same parameters (mostly the “Scraggle” options) but set to different values. The Short Wave presets result in much shorter styles as the length of the hair is used for generating the curls and so do not hang as low. The Strays options use maps so that only a proportion of the hairs are affected by the Scraggle parameters and they then appear as stray hairs from the main mass of hair. I think these are particularly effective in generating realistic looking hair.

• File List

• 2019-12-27 - Fixed Faceshield visible preset
• 2022-05-06 - Fixed some pathing errors

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