Making a new mane for the Daz Horse 2

Well I’ve shelved my Daz Horse 2 MilHorse uv project as CauriB over on the Daz3d forum has released her project for free download including the remap to the MilHorse. She has done a superb job of it and even kindly included a fitting shape so that you can use all your old Mlhorse tack on the Daz Horse2!. You can find her website and download the files here: https://valeriyavart.wordpress.com/2018/05/20/daz-horse-2-backwards-compatibility-with-millennium-horse/ Please not, you will need to own the Millennium Horse model for this to work as it is encoded against the Millennium Horse mesh as the UV’s are copyrighted property of Daz 3d and this is the only legal way to distribute it.

One thing I’ve found lacking in the new Daz Horse 2 (DHorse2) is the included mane and to a lesser extent the tail so I’ve been using Hexagon (still free over at Daz for the moment!) to make a new set, starting with the mane.

So far I’ve built and conformed the base mane, that was a bit of a learning curve as I’ve never rigged anything in Daz Studio before but it was quite painless and I am now working on morphs for it. The UV mapping has vertical planes taking up the whole length of the map so that all of the textures can if wanted be used on the default DH2 tail, although the transparency maps wont work.

At this point in time I’m not sure whether I’m going to keep it as is or to remove the forelocks and to make them as separate conforming figure. My idea is to have a single layered mane with lots of shaping and movement morphs that can be layered to get the desired effect. I intend on making offset morphs so that the polygons aren’t merging in the renders.

I have also made a left and right hair strands figure but am not sure yet if I will include it. The left side strands can be seen in the image below.

This is what I’ve got so far:

Update: The mane is now finished and is available for download from my store here.