Attached Link: http://www.shedofjoy.com

If you want a better unpainted look to your transmapped hair try the shader its downloadable from my website, link supplied.

Please read the instructions, and feel free to ask questions. also feel free to show your renders and tests in this thread too as im interested to see what you all do with this.

Lastly remember.... ONLY use hair that has the hair strands on the transparency map going from top to bottom (except the skullcap, that can be all over the show)Egypt hair for that reason does NOT work so dont bother trying.

This has been tested from poser 7 right up through all versions to poser 2012. seriously ive had this since poser7 so i know it works...lol... sorry for the delay..lol

anyway enjoy, play and show off....

Shedofjoy

oh wanna try something....

place one light in the room an do a series of renders with the light in different positions, and notice that the hair doesnt change much with the normal hair.

Now try the same with the new shader... No dark highlights in lit areas..... nice

Now this looks very interesting ... :-)

Hopefully I'll be able to try this out tomorrow!

Thanx snarlygribbly... more interesting is the Version 6 of this shader which is making the one available look poo.... currently im testing V6 with scatter, could be a while to render,lol. oh and scatter isnt the thing that makes v6 look fantastic its another couple of nodes.... cant wait to see what Bagginsbill makes of this, as im no math man, what i see i make with a small wee bit of math and logic thrown in

I can't wait to see examples of the scatter version! :-)

Thanks.  Can't wait to try it out.

only problem im getting with scatter is it turns the hair colour a shade of pink which is hard to get rid of... im still plugging away, but soon im resting

Downloaded it and checking it out now.

Thanks.

Thank you for this, will follow closely.

These shaders could use Parmatic to change the HSV settings to the desired hair color values.  Now, if we can get it into BB's VSS....

Thanks for posting this.

Thank you, shedofjoy. And for the Mud shader as well.

that is ok primorge, i will have to do an update/reworking of the mud shader as it doesnt render as well in p2012.

had some success with the new v6 hair shader but still needs tweaking,will post images when im back at the conputer.

Looking forward to giving this a go.  Thanks a lot!

Okay SoJ, managed to create a VSSHair Prop equipped with Parmatic nodes for HSV.  Now all I have to do after applying the nodes is dial up the Hue, Saturation, and Value parameters for the HSV node in Parameters/Properties panel and reload the textures.  Instant colors, sweet!!!  I will need to check other hair styles and tweak VSS settings as needed.

im interested to see what you have done hborre.

So far there doesnt seam to be that much intere in the shader, i wonder if thats a good or bad sign?

Quote - So far there doesnt seam to be that much intere in the shader, i wonder if thats a good or bad sign?

I wouldn't worry about it. Most of my projects have started out the same way: I release something and then wonder why no-one else seems as excited about it as me :-) Some projects such as the Snow Machine and Pose2Lux took weeks before anyone even mentioned them in a forum, and the now popular SceneFixer took months before I saw it referred to by someone else!

I guess most people happily download it, use it, like it (hopefully!) and keep on using it but never post their thoughts on it. That's quite normal and something you just have to get used to.

As a creator, it gets interesting when avid forumites get interested in your idea - then there'll be a flurry of posts and discussions, which is fun. The problem is that such people are often exploring a gadzillion new things that they've found in forums and it takes some time to for them to get around to yours. But they will, and suddenly interest will bloom and grow rapidly. Trust me :-)

The other thing is that you need a 1-click solution. That makes a big difference. If they had a pose file they could click on to apply the hair shaders to all the right zones while keeping the tranparency maps intact, well ... you'd find its use spreading much more rapidly. The little bit of extra work invlolved in doing it manually won't necessarily put people off, but it might put it further down their list of 'things to try'. They'll get there in the end though.

thankyou snarly. i will wait and watch. i would have done the shader for all the zones but this shader is for any transmapped hair and the creators of hair name their materials what they want, the only way i can see to make the shader more user friendly is via a python script, and thats way out of my league,perhaps someone might do that?, and add the correct tranmaps in the shader at the same time

Quote - thankyou snarly. i will wait and watch. i would have done the shader for all the zones but this shader is for any transmapped hair and the creators of hair name their materials what they want, the only way i can see to make the shader more user friendly is via a python script, and thats way out of my league,perhaps someone might do that?, and add the correct tranmaps in the shader at the same time

I'll do it for you if you want, once you have a definitive version of the hair shader. You say (earlier in the thread) that the new v6 makes the v5 one look like 'poo' so I'd prefer to put my efforts into the better one :-)

The Python script could also have:

• An option to let the use specify whether the UV mapping is vertical or horizontal (and modify the shader accordingly)
• A list of preset HSV values to select from
• A list of material zones so that the user can select the skull cap material

Let me know if you're interested?

This shader could also be made into a cool plugin for EZSkin+, planned for release this Autumn :-D

thats a definate yes snarly,and a massive thankyou,im just ironing out a couple of kinks in version 6,sofar looks amazing but has a minor issue with the light shining from behind,think i have it sorted though.

Cool - thanks for this!

For the mud shader too... I'll try that out on the jeep I've been trying to re-texture methinks

Will definitely give this a go next time I'm rendering something with hair!

The python script idea sounds good too!

Until Snarly and SoJ hash out a script to make it easy to apply the hair shader to all material zone groups correctly, this is my current solution.  This is entirely for those individuals familiar with VSS; tryiing to explain the entire procedure would be the subject of another thread. 

I used Bagginsbills VSSHairProp found here:

https://sites.google.com/site/bagginsbill/file-cabinet

It is simpler to work with than VSSPR3 or PR4.  After loading the Prop into the scene, I created 2 new material zones, 1 hair and 1 scalp.  In each, I loaded Shedsofjoy's corresponding shaders. 

Working within VSSProp, I inserted these 3 Parmatic nodes to control Hue, Saturation, and Value on the HSV node through the Parameters/Properties panel.

Note all HSV values are set to 1, as mentioned PM nodes now control color.

looks good hborre, what is vss as im still one of those who are not in the know? is it a pre scatter thing?

Versatile Shader System (VSS) by Bagginsbill.  It has been around for several years, and it was developed to easily apply shaders across several similar material zones with the push of a button.  The PR series already contains the classic BB skin shader template so many individuals contain.  Easily customizable, you can change the shaders of any figure or prop in an instance as opposed to individually changing each material zone manually.  This is also the basis of Snarly's EZSkin for figures and hair only conveniently compacted into a script for easy deployment.

most intresting will have a go with it one of the things discussed at another site

was with snarlys ezskin etc we can get realistic skin but alot of the hair still looks

fake hope this will help with that :) keep up the great work

The anisotropic node won't quite get what we need, although it's better than using specular or even blinn.

As with the latest skin, what you really need is an anisotropic reflect node, and not one for children, but one that let's me say what angles I want to send out rays.

SoJ - your shader is nice work - the hair pattern is pretty good, although I think you did more work than needed. A single node blended with some white is all I see really needed.

The tricky part is the reflection/specularity.

There was a new hair node briefly introduced into P9/PP2012 but didn't work right and got pulled. I had hoped to see it restored in SR3, but alas it has not.

SoJ - there is a mistake in your shader. You have the two specular nodes, which produce a color, going into math nodes, making them pure gray-scale. You should be adding them with Color_Math.

Also, as can be seen in my VSS hair shader published a while ago (way ago) you need to do something about the anisotropic node that goes berzerk at certain shallow angles. I was using an edge blend to tone it down. I never had the patience to really work out what exactly is needed.

Also - this is again a shader where linear workflow will trump non-linear. If you try the same shader in PP2012 with render GC, it will come out COMPLETELY different. I suggest two different shaders or one with auto-GC built in.

Without linear workflow, this shader will never be able to look real in all lighting regimes. Certain situations will work, and in others you'll think it needs adjusting.

A shader that is built for realism produces the right response in all lighting regimes.

I switched to procedural color instead of texture color, and I added reflections, and tweaked a double anisotropic specular.

I'm pretty pleased with this, but for two things:

1. It's grainy

2. I still have berzerk specular at the top - observe the orange hot spots.

This looks really promising! I'll give it a try.

i will check the math grey set up tomorow and thankyou BB, excuse the question but what is a linear workflow in the shader setup? as i would rather try and follow a route that allows more consistant results.

its funny you mention edge blend as this has already been implemented into my next version of the shader,looks like i might atleast be going in the right direction(roughly,lol).

im interested in your workings on hair BB, cant say ive seen any orange spots appear in any tests, but thats not to say im doing anything right, lol.

has given me more to think on so night all, i need sleep and a dash of work before i work on this again.

Quote - Despite having too much work today, you got me to revisit my hair shader.

I switched to procedural color instead of texture color, and I added reflections, and tweaked a double anisotropic specular.

I'm pretty pleased with this, but for two things:

1. It's grainy

2. I still have berzerk specular at the top - observe the orange hot spots.

That's really excellent... I'd buy that in a minute...

I don't know if people will have the patience to deal with a shader like this.

Probably not, rendering hair can be bad enough even without reflections.  Your set up seems to get pretty fast results IMO too.

Looks nice though.  Maybe some people who are used to renders taking overnight or longer might be interested in it.  Of course if you get something wrong in the scene...

have you also tried different hair? as i found transmapped hair does different things in the shader which are unexpected in the shader?

Most hair in the marketplace AFAIK is of the transmapped variety. 

sorry worded that wrong, have you tried different transmapped hair?

I did a quick test this morning with the two math nodes replaced with colour math, (as per BB's comment)this throws up colour problems, with just one white light and nothing else im getting blue and green highlights, to this end im thinking of using the specular nodes to steer a colour or maybe a reflect, i will be doing tests of this later, have to find out the reflective index of hair first

Show what you did there. If the color math parameters are all white or grays, you can't be getting blue.

What do you mean by the reflective index of hair? It's not that simple, you know. Hair has surface structure that, like a Fresnel lens (microgrooves), means you can't deal with it as a simple glossy surface.

Read this.

http://developer.amd.com/media/gpu_assets/Scheuermann_HairSketchSlides.pdf

In that, page 13, is an interesting visual comparison.

Look at the (shitty) Kajiya-Kay shader results. That is naive.

The Marschner et al shader is the best - it is what was being added to Poser but got aborted.

http://www.cs.cornell.edu/~srm/publications/SG03-hair-abstract.html

leading to:

http://graphics.stanford.edu/papers/hair/hair-sg03final.pdf

but why are there blues? i know its not a glossy surface, just trying to think of ways around it, lol

You can't ask me and not show. I can tell you why when I see what you did.

There are an infinite number of ways to make any color by accident. I can't list them all.

sorry posted during your posts,lol, will read all the links later on have to go out. do you know why the shader was aborted?