In search of: really long dreadlocks

Syndaryl · March 2017

I've got a request for a character with waist-length matted hair and that's put me in a snag. I've talked it over with my client and they're cool with "dreadlocks" but they woud still really like waist length; I've got a bunch of different dreads hairs, but they're all about the shoulders. Anyone know of some really long dreadlocks?

Extra bonus points if they're convincing enough out-of-the-box for a ratty white guy's hair - but I can tweak dreads to make them look more like mats... if I can get long enough dreads.

false1 · March 2017

Closest I can think of is Dryads at Rendo. They're almost waist length and may dial in longer than the promos indicate.

Charlie Judge · March 2017

Not dreadlocks but if you just want somewhat matted really long hair have you considered Elven Prince Hair: http://www.daz3d.com/elven-prince-hair

Syndaryl · March 2017

Hm, I have Dryades. I'd skipped over it because it's short in front, but I didn't notice how long it was in back. I might be able to do some surgery on it in Blender but I'd rather not get tangled up in that.

Elven Prince hair is pretty good, but my client already vetoed it as too tidy (something like that but more dreadlocked would be "perfect", sigh). It would be easier to retexture than to remesh Dryades, but with it being flat ribbons I think it's going to look odd in Iray no matter what I do to it.

TheKD · March 2017

If you have one of the hair shader setups like UHT2, you could try a mix of the two with the same shader applied maybe?

vwrangler · March 2017

Nikisatez has a couple of different dreads sets over at Renderosity.

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/dreads-hair-v4-a4-g4/81367/

https://www.renderosity.com/mod/bcs/dreads-2-hair-v4-a4-g4/89039/

They're made for V4, but you can parent them to the head -- conforming them with Autofit will do some really awful things, I suspect. The issue is that they both predate Iray, by quite a few years, and they're made for Poser, so they lack both displacement maps and normal maps. And if Elven Prince is too "tidy", the front of Dreads may be as well. Dreads 1 can morph to the length you're looking for, I think.

Redz · March 2017

Not really dreads but Wolf hair comes to mind as a messy waist length option, and with a little retexturing it might work. http://www.daz3d.com/wolfhair-for-v4-a4-g4-m4-h4-and-f4

Here's a very rough and ready Wolf Hair with diffuse textures from Medea hair plugged into the diffuse, Iray uber base and glossiness adjusted. I also turned off the front curls as they don't retexture so well.

Syndaryl · March 2017

Thanks everyone. I'm going for a hodgepodge of hairs at the moment, with retexturing for harmony, including flipping some around and selectively hiding geometry in Studio :P I think I'm going to have to learn how to make my own hair eventually.