Anybody seen any hair texture without highlights? All hair textures I've seen have the highlights already painted on the texture. It's usually good enough to render in Poser, but I'm working on a photorealistic project in 3dsmax, so highlights will be created "naturally". I'm using some of Kozaburos hair models, and all of them have "baked highlights"... Any ideas? BTW any hair texture would work, doesn't need to be Kozaburo specific. Thanks! Ike.

Well, photos are going to have natural hi-lights, and I can't think of any hand-painted samplers or texture packs. So maybe you could try painting your own? Koz's maps tend to have straight textures, so point-to-point lines or gentle vector curves would work. Study some photos and build up a little palette of constituent colours, then start building your texture map. Trust me .. it's very satisfying. And, if you're making the texture, it's so much easier for you to control the trans maps. Do this by building your texture on layers in your graphics app. When you're done, merge the hair layers and zap up the brightness for the transparency .. the two will match exactly. Add a black background behind the transparency. Then, of course, you'll be able to use hi-lights in 3ds without the 'plastic wrapping' effect of lights reflecting off of non-hair areas.

Mmm... just after posting I started doing some tests in 3dsmax... No diffuse map, just a mix of 2 colors with a wave shader, then used a slightly modified transparency map as a specular map and bump map (inverted), kept the original trans map in the transparency channel, and voila! This was about 5 mins ago, so got to keep adjusting things... it's quite good for now. And it's totally Poser friendly!! Whoever wants it... there it is! :D It provides "natural" highlights and doesn't require too much time... I'll keep working on it. Thanks moochie!

Slick idea. Im gonna have to try that.

Furyofaseraph: You'll need to modify the transparency map adding some hair strands to the "white" part of the map, so the highlights are irregular. I just took some strands from another hair texture and cloned them in a new layer set to darken...and saved it as "specmap.jpg". That's about it :D

It looks quite nice in 3ds, though getting the highlights right requires some time.

Ike.

Message edited on: 12/12/2004 22:22

Wenke's textures are always highlight free. You might want to check out her store-- she used to do freebies of Koz's hair but those are at her discretion-- the bandwidth, you know. Emily

"It looks quite nice in 3ds". Cool. I'd love to see a render of your WIP. A high-end app like 3dsMax is way out of my price range, but it's fun to dream'n'drool occasionally.