Another Portrait attempt with the hairshader. have to say really love it. Results are always magnifique. 

I am refining my portrait skills, because it was horrible. Also dig deeper in High Key lightning. 

4 Lights were used here. (Area lights) 2 which light the background 2 which light LF.Left and right.  I scale all the lights up . (Pretty much.)

DOF 3.6

Postwork, a bit contrast, a bit desaturate

and a bit eye enhancements. They come out to blurry. Character is from Tempesta. Femi. Flower crown is an old V3 product from Lisa .

Have you considered experimenting with the Blackbody node on your light setups for the Superfly renders?  To my eyes, the illumination appears different, more realistic.

Have you considered experimenting with the Blackbody node on your light setups for the Superfly renders?  To my eyes, the illumination appears different, more realistic.

Let me know if you need some tips or guidance.  I have been converting standard lights to Blackbody for some time now and I have a repertoire of settings that I use on a regular basis.

Let me know if you need some tips or guidance.  I have been converting standard lights to Blackbody for some time now and I have a repertoire of settings that I use on a regular basis.

@ TheAnimaGemini Another beautiful render!

Love big, soft lights. The issue is that you don't get those wonderful speculars in the eyes and hair with that lighting. My workaround is to use double lights. One large soft light. Duplicate that light and pull it slightly in front of the original. Scale down the light in front. That will make it more intense and create the speculars you want.

That's actually an excellent idea.  In "Lighting and Rendering" by Jeremy Birn, that technique is suggested for controlling diffuse and specular lighting on a scene or portrait.  I'll keep this in mind in my next setup.

@ghostship2

Awesome idea. I try with point light, but just looked fake. 

Thanks. 

Fantastic idea... Thank you!

I've been playing with the hair and finally got something worthy of sharing. Just for clarification, it wasn't the hair shader that caused the delays. That was great from the first render.

@RedPhantom Looks great. I would also suggest to turn on cast shadows for that hair. The back of her neck and the hair behind there should all be in shadow.

The shadows are on. It's likely the lights.

OK, I've been up to my eyebrows in beta testing the past few weeks, but I've FINALLY had a couple of days off, sooooo . . . I decided I should play with Ghostship's Hair Shaders.  Needless to say these are not what I would call "final renders", as I really need to get into lighting them better.  I've made a note of the 2 lights suggested above and will definitely be trying it.

Anyway, Since I've had Ali's Hr-159 for quite a while, and hadn't use it recently, I figured that should be a good one to start with.  The first 2 renders below are with Hr-159, the first using the Vertical Blonde 2 Shader, and the second using the Vertical Red 2 Shader.

Then I decided to try one of my other favorite hair products, SAV's Marina Hair, and I used the Vertical Red 3 Shader for this one.

I definitely need to get a handle on the lighting, and I can't wait to try out more of the shaders.  Thank you Ghostship . . . You Are Da Man!!! 

@RedPhantom OK. My second guess is that you have shadows turned off at one or more of the lights. That will look the same as turning them off on an object.

@Miss B Looks good! SAV hair always ships with shadows turned off.

I know I sound like a broken record.lol

@Ghostship I'd checked that too. Two of the lights had depth-mapped shadows, but switching them to raytraced didn't help. Wiping out all the lights and putting one point light in gave my shadows so the lights must have been just right to cancel out each other's shadows.

@RedPhantom OK. My second guess is that you have shadows turned off at one or more of the lights. That will look the same as turning them off on an object.

@Miss B Looks good! SAV hair always ships with shadows turned off.

I know I sound like a broken record.lol

OK, I've been up to my eyebrows in beta testing the past few weeks, but I've FINALLY had a couple of days off, sooooo . . . I decided I should play with Ghostship's Hair Shaders.  Needless to say these are not what I would call "final renders", as I really need to get into lighting them better.  I've made a note of the 2 lights suggested above and will definitely be trying it.

Anyway, Since I've had Ali's Hr-159 for quite a while, and hadn't use it recently, I figured that should be a good one to start with.  The first 2 renders below are with Hr-159, the first using the Vertical Blonde 2 Shader, and the second using the Vertical Red 2 Shader.

ChromeStar posted at 12:51 PM Sat, 7 May 2022 - #4438265

Miss B posted at 9:47 PM Fri, 6 May 2022 - #4438235

Anyway, Since I've had Ali's Hr-159 for quite a while, and hadn't use it recently, I figured that should be a good one to start with.  The first 2 renders below are with Hr-159, the first using the Vertical Blonde 2 Shader, and the second using the Vertical Red 2 Shader.

Nice color and shine. I do think this one would benefit from a little more bump and some more work on the transparency map though.

As far as the bump map goes, Ghostship set those up with each of his Shaders so, again, I think better lighting may help with that as well.

ghostship2 posted at 11:19 PM Fri, 6 May 2022 - #4438240

@Miss B Looks good! SAV hair always ships with shadows turned off.

OK, since the Marina Hair is a prop hair, I just loaded up SAV's Goldy Hair, and when I clicked on the Hip actor, it has Casts Shadows checked as well.  Just saying.

I’ve been working on a personal project converting Syyd Raven skin shaders to PBR and haven’t had time to play with the hair shaders.  Very soon I’ll begin to play. 

Cast shadows is usually in the neck joint of conforming hair. 

Cast shadows is usually in the neck joint of conforming hair. 

I consider this a quick setup and render, I wanted to work with one of Syyd Raven's skin textures I was revamping to P12 PBR.  I used Littlefox's Amanda Hair with GS's Grey 2 hair color.  The lighting is also ghostships, toned down in intensity because of light-colored hair and converted to Blackbody emission @ 5600 degrees Kelvin.  I have been converting all my Superfly lighting to a more realistic emission, in this case, more neutral colorless lighting found around a cloudless, midday noon.  For the hair shader, I added a Bright/Contrast node to the Color node to increase the contrast; my rationale is that bright lights and light-colored hair are a bad combination, you can lose quite a bit of hair details.  Aeon Soul Stily outfit also got a texture revamp.  You will notice the SSS in V4's skin is a little high but I left it that way to demonstrate the lack of self-glow into the hair shadows.  I might revisit this scene for a better render.

I think I'm good now.

Ades hair from SAV (yes, checked the shadows...). Used the excellent setup for lights (though I only used three scaled up lights and a HDRI on the background) and camera settings from TheAnimaGemini above.

@Rhia474 That looks great! A couple of things not hair related: Switch the figure's skinning method to Poser Unimesh and that will remove the zig-zag lines on her skin where the joints meet. (you can see one around her armpit. Also: most hair pieces need some morphing on the skull cap to clear the figure's forehead. That curved line on her forehead is the skull cap intersecting her forehead. Some hair pieces have a morph built in for fixing this. Otherwise use the morph brush to "loosen fit" on that.

Had to keep some of the original texture map on this one. The tails are new. The transmap probably needs some tweaking.

Had to keep some of the original texture map on this one. The tails are new. The transmap probably needs some tweaking.

Wow ❤

ghostship2 posted at 6:08 PM Sun, 8 May 2022 - #4438305

Had to keep some of the original texture map on this one. The tails are new. The transmap probably needs some tweaking.

Wow ❤

OutofTouch's Zoey hair is gorgeous for a transmapped hair. I wish we had in Poser those beautiful hairs daz provides (I mean: dynamic, as I've never been able to create hairs "the-Poser-way") 
That said, joking aside: if a woman looks at me like that...  woah... lol

Very nice!

hborre posted at 9:53 AM Thu, 12 May 2022 - #4438518

Very nice!

@Y-Phil

Beautiful!

@Y-Phil

Beautiful!

I think the search has failed me, as I'm sure there is a newer thread somewhere, so apologies for resurrecting this. Ghostship's Hair Shader works really well with most things I've throw at it, but has anyone had any luck using it with Vida Hair? I'm just not getting a good result. I'm basically trying to recreate what I did in Poser 11 here, now in Poser 13.

Using the exact same light set (VexLights 2) and everything, this is what I've gotten... but the reflections seem to be going crazy on Vida Hair.

(There also seems to now be a bug with Poser 13 exports that tears into images with random transparencies)

I've noticed that with some "old" hairs, their bump was somewhat weak (not sure if it's the right word or not).
If you check Ghostship's material setup, you should see a compound node: jump in and try to increase the Bump: strength parameter. In my case, I had to use 0.5.

Here, I've used one of OutofTouch Blending maps to juxtapose two colors, with the Bump distance raised to 0.5

There are several ways to change the bump map intensity by adding an HSV or Brightness/Contrast node between the bump and the Compound nodes.  Modifying the shader in this way will give you direct control without entering the Compound Node, especially if you are timid poking around the Material Room.

Thank you for the tips about bump strength.
After playing around with it, I guess it isn't the level of shine I'm having the issue with, but more with how it is being applied.

The blue highlighted areas have such intense shine from the rest of the hair. I don't suppose I can somehow increase the bump for just these parts.

Then the highlighted green section changes so abruptly between dull & shiny like this. Anything I can do short of changing the lighting? I don't really want to change the lights as I'm happy with how everything else is looking besides the hair, and moving/changing the lights would change all of that too.

Okay, so adjustments will need to be made within the Compound node itself.  There are nodes and settings there can be tweaked.