Quote - Playing with Tequila hair...

That looks much better than what I'm getting so far.

Have you tested highlights by moving the camera at different angles?  Some of my side angle highlights don't look as good as straight-on or quarter turn angles.

No, I haven't, and that's a good point. I've been having dramas with V-texture_coordinates or FractalSum or something giving me artefact (interruption of the texture), so I'm reinventing the wheel, but I will definitely be doing that, and thank you, dredline, for pointing that out.

when using the anistotropic node you need to test different angles. plus the light above . very strange results.

Thanks for the heads up, ice-boy. I'm just in process of GIMP-kludging some high-res hair textures because FractalSum and V is being the drizzle-pits. Once I've had a sleep and then tried the textures I'll test that anisotropic head of hair from different angles and post results.

I realise this is an old thread, but it is still as relevant today as it was when the very first post here was made. Many hairs are still textured with painted on highlights and removing them can be a pain. Bagginsbill's method was a great revelation to me and extremely useful. Thanks very much for this simple trick, I doubt I would have found it on my own.

The shaders presented however, don't give such good results as the shading method I have found. I get better results and the shader is simpler so it renders faster.

My method does not need any elaborate shader nodes. It produces correct highlights that look like those on real hair, yet it uses only image map nodes. I don't even use the anisotropic shader for the highlights, but the normal specular slot. Because there are no elaborate node setups it renders quickly.

Here are two examples — please ignore the effects of the Renderosity system rescaling the images. The best way to view these it by using your browser's view image facility to view them at their native size. This is Radiant Jaguar Hair on Victoria 4 with my shader and textures — yes, you need more than one texture map to get this effect but they aren't hard to prepare once you have the greyscale map obtained using the Bagginsbill method in Photoshop:

I will post again once I have prepared the images for a clear explanation of how this works.

I want to stress that without this thread to read I would never have discovered the methods I use to produce my hair shader. So a big thanks to Bagginsbill and PapaBlueMarlin for starting this process off.

OK, so how does this work?

First, build a BUMP MAP. Take the greyscale image you get from using Bagginsbill's method in PhotoShop and use it to make a bump map for your hair. This is half of the secret to getting the proper specular highlights. After all if you want a reflected highlight to look as if it is being reflected from lots of strands rather than a smooth surface, adding strands to the surface works a lot better than the pretend method using the anisotropic shader. I also requires less calculation. Make sure your bump map has eveyr shade from pure black to pure white, and regulate its effect by changing the bump height in Poser. This gives better results than making a greyscale map with a limited range to regulate bump height.

Here is a clip from the bump map I used to produce the redhead in my image above:

Next, make a diffuse colour map, but make it slightly darker than you want the hair to look and experiment carefully with the saturation; you will often get best results if you use a colour that is less saturated than the final desired colour of the hair. Once again here is a clip from the map I used to maker the redhead above:

Now this provides your diffuse map, so load it as normal. Then make another colour map, using a colour slightly brighter and more saturated than you want the hair to look. Use this as your specular colour map. Here is a clip from the one I used above:

Nearly there! Now plug the original transparency map in as usual and use the following material setup as the basis for your own:

Yes, that's all there is! I hid the dialogue box details and revealed the maps so you can more clearly see what to load where. Values that you may need to experiment with to get the best results are the bump height and the specular highlight size. I used a fairly wide highlight size for the above renders. Take note of the diffuse value which is set to 0.8 not to 1.0, and the specular value which is the same. These values avoid blown-out specular highlights, not just on hair but on many other shaders. For light colours the specular value should often be set lower, below 0.5 in some cases.

Another thing to note is that it is important that the maps used have adequate contrast in them, so that the hair highlights are, on the close-up scale, stranded rather than continuous.

I hope this is useful to someone.

Thanks for the tip. I wondered if it would work in Reality plug-in. Must open up my computer today!

I'm glad you like it Thunderstone, I hope as many people as possible find it useful. I may need to start a new thread and try and persuade admin to sticky it. This topic is of interest to a lot of people. I think it could be adapted for most rendering systems.

Oh, a bit more information that I forgot to include:

My suggestion, using a total of four texture maps to create the effect of hair, will use a lot more memory than using just one transparency map, a bump map and a node setup to generate the colours from the bump map. However the more complex node setup will render more slowly. I haven't yet done any testing to see what the speed difference is, once I do I will post that here too. It might be a few weeks as I have a lot of work stuff to get done over the next few weeks.

fireangel posted at 8:41PM Mon, 12 March 2018 - #4325996

Oh, a bit more information that I forgot to include:

My suggestion, using a total of four texture maps to create the effect of hair, will use a lot more memory than using just one transparency map, a bump map and a node setup to generate the colours from the bump map. However the more complex node setup will render more slowly. I haven't yet done any testing to see what the speed difference is, once I do I will post that here too. It might be a few weeks as I have a lot of work stuff to get done over the next few weeks.

Maybe over the next few days, I will get chance to try it out on another hair product.

OK, I have to add something in here that I missed earlier, as missing it can mess up your results. The specular map needs some careful preparation in PhotoShop or whatever image editor you use, or it can spill over into areas that should be transparent. As was pointed out earlier in this thread, specularity in Poser does not normally respect transparency at all. To force it to do so you need to add the transparency map you are using to your image as a layer, above everything else. Chnage the layer blending mode to "multiply" and then save the specular colour map. To make the change clear I will add images of the last version and the updated one below. Here is a trio of Victoria 4s wearing Radiant Jaguar Hair with the latest versions of my copper coloured maps. You can see the highlights change as the lighting changes.

Here is the old and current version of the hair material, with the difference clearly visible in the specular colour map.

An easier alternative: connect your transparency map to the Specular_Value input.

As an aside, you don't need the connection to Transparency_Edge if Transparency_Falloff is zero. It won't hurt to leave it there though.

EnglishBob posted at 3:19PM Thu, 22 March 2018 - #4326583

An easier alternative: connect your transparency map to the Specular_Value input.

As an aside, you don't need the connection to Transparency_Edge if Transparency_Falloff is zero. It won't hurt to leave it there though.

If you connect your transparency map to the specular value input then you can't change specularity on the hair from 1 in the non-transparent areas. That's not the best setting for most colours of hair and may look very unnatural. If you alter the specular colour map you could tone it down that way, but I prefer to have it adjustable in the material shader so the specular value can be tuned for individual lighting setups if need be. It isn't common to have that need, but it is helpful when it arises.

I didn't even think about the actual transparency settings they are unaltered from the original material on the hair. Thanks for coming into the thread, the more people who put in something the better. Improving hair Poser rendering is a big need and I would like to spread knowledge about it as widely as possible. The days of painted on highlights are numbered if this knowledge can be spread around enough.

fireangel posted at 4:05PM Thu, 22 March 2018 - #4326592

If you connect your transparency map to the specular value input then you can't change specularity on the hair from 1 in the non-transparent areas.

Try it and see! You can keep the Specular_Value of 0.8 that you have, but it will be multiplied by the transmap plugged into that input. When the map is white, you'll get specularity of 0.8 controlled by your specularity map; when it's black specularity is over-ridden to zero. It's functionally equivalent to what you've done by multiplying your specularity and transparency maps in Photoshop.

I didn't even think about the actual transparency settings they are unaltered from the original material on the hair.

That arrangement is common enough, and I wasn't trying to crtiticise it since it will work. Expert opinion (i.e. bagginsbill!) says that Transparency_Edge is best avoided anyway; it's a hold-over from Poser 4 and no longer works properly. You can achieve a better effect with Edge_Blend, but that's straying off topic.

EnglishBob posted at 4:31PM Thu, 22 March 2018 - #4326602

fireangel posted at 4:05PM Thu, 22 March 2018 - #4326592

If you connect your transparency map to the specular value input then you can't change specularity on the hair from 1 in the non-transparent areas.

Try it and see! You can keep the Specular_Value of 0.8 that you have, but it will be multiplied by the transmap plugged into that input. When the map is white, you'll get specularity of 0.8 controlled by your specularity map; when it's black specularity is over-ridden to zero. It's functionally equivalent to what you've done by multiplying your specularity and transparency maps in Photoshop.

Ah, thank you I learned something! I thought the map would completely overrule the numeric setting, but if it doesn't it is another way of getting the same result. If I can still modify the specular value on those odd occasions when I need to then I will try that method in future as it is slightly less work. Reducing wasted effort is always a good thing.