Inside the Strand-based editor you will see the window for previewing your character and hair, six tabs along the top (setup, paint, distribute, style, clump, and tweak) and workspace and global settings to the right. You will use each of these tabs consecutively to create your hair. Whatever brush settings you prefer, make sure you set Symmetry to Symmetry U. This will ensure that whatever you do one side will also be done on the other side of the head as well. Even if you are creating an asymmetrical hairstyle, I would still recommend using this feature. As you will soon see, there are other tools that you can use to create the style. This is simply making sure that you have hair available where you need it, and that it looks even and realistic!

Where your hair varies in shape and length, you will want to make sure you take the time to separate each piece into its own individual object. This is also true for individual layers that you may be placing on top of each other. While it took quite a bit of work to get right, I am pleased with the results! If you gave it a try, we would love to hear about it in our Forums. If you ran into any trouble or had questions along the way, please reach out to our large community of users here! Thanks for joining along!

3D Hair is Easy to use with Fantastic Results

Before we get into the studio, let’s take a deeper look at hair and some important theory ideas that will help you recreate hair as a 3D artist. Cosmetologists become familiar with something most refer to as Hair Section Theory. While hairstylists often use this theory to help them cut hair, it can be useful to understand how to style hair that looks good and natural in 3D. Once you’ve got the Hair Tool add-on up and running, before you can properly create your 3D hair, you’ll want to bring a Daz character into Blender. If you are unfamiliar with creating a character in Daz Studio, visit our helpful introductory videos here . While there’s no question that perfecting the art of creating 3D hair takes time and practice, hopefully, this has sparked your interest in just one of the many ways you can create hair for your Daz characters.

One of the coolest features of this Hair Tool for Blender is how easy it is to create custom hairstyles. As the artist, you will create the basic shapes and sections of the hair by creating individual planes. At this stage, you don’t need to worry about the individual strands of hair themselves. The tool and texturing will take care of this. For now, you just need to create the general shapes. Now, that said, the strand-based hair system is not as comprehensive as simply creating it from scratch. So, while it is more accessible to beginners, it is also going to be a little more limited in scope. Basically, with this tool you will be able to manipulate a series of sliders and tools to help get a desired effect. If you want to give this tool a try, start by opening Daz Studio and loading in a figure. direction, movement, and shape of the smaller, more individualized clumps or groupings of hair. Notice how they move and play within the greater shape you traced previously. In this simple exercise, examine your reference hairdo and draw over it two to three times. The first drawing, simply trace the overall shape of the hair. Think of this as the base layer of the hair. In the next drawing, examine the When we start working in Daz studio, you will see how having a basic understanding of hair sectioning theory can be extremely helpful, especially in designing female hair or more complex hairstyles. Studying Reference Photos

Instantly Eliminate the Appearance of Baldness and Thinning Hair with 3D Hair

The easiest way to bring a character from Daz Studio to Blender is to use our official Daz to Blender Bridge . You can access the bridge through your DazCentral account. With the latest version installed, go ahead and open up Daz and create your character. We will create a character without hair since we plan on creating custom hair in Blender! It is really helpful to study references for the kind of hair that you want to create during this stage. Try to separate the hair into clumps and think in terms of layers. Depending on the hairstyle, we recommend creating 2-3 layers of hair. With each layer, the shapes will become more spread out and more detailed. The lowest layer predominately is for shaping, while preceding higher levels are intended to add detail and style. The final tabs, Clump and Tweak are excellent methods for adding a final touch of realism to the hair. Explore each slider and see what it does to the hair. You can affect the clumps. Or groupings of hair, as well details like fizziness in these sections. Use these tabs as little or as much as you need to produce end results you are pleased with! Hair Shading with Surfaces While it may look silly when you are only seeing the hair cards themselves, the important thing is how you have styled the hair into the final look that you want. The separate clumps of hair will add a look of fullness and variety to the hairstyle. This basic short bob style is made up of two different hair cards, one for the main shape and one for the bangs. However, this hair would look very flat and two-dimensional. To add further depth, we will continue to layer together more details.

ay does the waterfall flow? How does the hair react when it reaches the shoulder? And lastly, the most detailed drawing, is looking at the more precise shape of the finer details—braids, curls, etc. Depending on how detailed the hair is, you may or may not want to draw a third level of detail. Keep these basic shapes in mind as you get started. You can refer to these shapes as guidelines to help you stylize your own model’s hair. Strand Based Hair in Daz Studio Once you have closed the strand-based hair editor, navigate to the surfaces tab, with the hair still selected. Select the strand-based hair object, or whatever you named it. Now you have a wide variety of options to choose from to further tweak the look of the hair. You can select base colors, root colors, highlights, and more. I went for a more natural look but you can do whatever you need for your render!Keep in mind you may need to tweak the position of the hair to get it right where you want it. The best part is, now that you’ve saved it, you can keep it in an easy-to-find location, and continue to use the hair anytime you’d like in any other scene you might create! You’re Practically a Pro Hair Stylist Now There are hundreds of beautiful, stunningly realistic options to choose from on our marketplace. There is a high chance that one of them will capture the vision you had in mind when you chose your character. But, if you are like me, and many other Daz Studio users, you may want to learn and get better at creating your own 3D models. Did you know that Daz Studio has a totally free, built-in feature just for creating hair? If not, this guide is for you as we take a deeper look into 3D modeling realistic hair right in Daz Studio! Understanding Hair As you start practicing making hair, don’t be afraid to look for references. Even professional artists and animators use references. It is by far the best way to ensure that your 3D art stays as true to life as possible, There are a number of 3D modeling programs that many artists use to create hair and even the entire model. If you have access to these industry-standard tools—awesome! Using them surpasses the scope of this tutorial, though there are many great tutorials about how to use them. One feature of Daz Studio I wanted to highlight today is Strand Based Hair. The unique thing about this tool is 1) it’s totally free and already built in to Daz Studio, and 2) you don’t have to have a lot of experience making 3D models to get results. and is a key to creating realistic work. You could never spend to much time studying references and recreating what you observe to the best of your ability!

Creating characters in Daz Studio is fun and easy with access to thousands of modular assets that feature compatibility with almost every figure. For this example, we chose to work with Aiko 8 and the full Bandit Sarah Outfit .

We want to share a powerful tool that works with Blender , a free open-source modeling software, which can help you create your very own unique hairstyles. With practice, an artist could definitely create hair worthy of selling in the Daz store with this tool. This is a third-party add-on for Blender called the Hair Tool for Blender. You may have noticed that you can tweak the color of the hair within the Strand-Based Hair editor, however this only changes the color of the hair within the editor. This could help you visualize what the final image will look like, but ultimately, don’t worry about it. You will use the Surfaces tab to select the color of your hair. If you want a free alternative, you can learn how to create your own hair inside of Daz Studio, by following the tutorial we shared in a previous blog post: 3D Modeling and Styling Realistic Hair in Daz Studio . Install the Hair Tool Add-On for Blender Before you can turn this basic shape into a head of hair, you will need to mark what is essentially the hairline as sharp. Select this seam and then Mark it Sharp .