I've been looking at the Anisotropic node along with anisotropy in the Pricipled BSDF node and the new hair node. The hair node is borked as of right now. Until it gets fixed I can't start using it and figuring it out. What I did find out is that anisotropy works if you plug in a tangent node into the tangent port on ABSDF and PBSDF. I think the tangent node is borked right now as well because it doesn't have any adustability that seems to have any effect on the anisotropic nodes output. So here is my latest workaround for renders till we can make something better. have a look.

IIRC, that tangent node may need to be plugged into the height connector of a Bump Node, at least, according to a tutorial on Blender PrincipleBDSF. I did a quick jot down at the time but the notation doesn't make complete sense. I will need to review again to completely understand the rationale behind it.

I looked up a tute on it and the tangent node can be plugged into the tangent port. The tangent node should give you a choice of radial direction or direction based on the UV map. This is broken in P12 right now. Also ABSDF is suppose to work with a default radial projection but it does not at this time.

I understand. Until they fix it we might as well stay away from it. Have you tried BB's Hair Shader from EZSkin3 in Superfly rendering? BTW, I love the results so far.

Yes, I've used BB's hair shader. It looks great but renders slow compared to my little shader.

@ghostship2 Impressiv!

trying my shader out with a different hair and a dark color and different lights not giving good results. More investigation needed.

I made a computed bumpmap some time ago. Nice to merge with an existing transmap and as a bumpmap:

(Size: 4000x4000, scale it in the material-room to your needs)

And a variation:

I use a bump map that is derived from the texture that is used. That keeps the hair looking crisper than a bump that does not match the hair texture. Some maps go left to right, some maps go up and down, some maps have both mixed on the same UV and you HAVE to have the bump oriented with the hair. You will see the problem once you have mismatched bump maps.

You are right. But I have some hair (specially older ones) where I mixed the original transmap/bumpmap successfully with one of the above.

This was an exercise in futility. For right now just use my original workaround.

After more experimentation I found that the issue with Anisotropic BSDF and anisotropy in PBSDF is that the default radial tangent is not working. The work around is to plug a tangent node into the ABSDF and change a few other connections and settings. This is what I got.

@ghostship2: Your renders are great!

Today I watched the last livestream from blender HQ. It 's about hair. Nearly an hour. Maybe you like to watch it too: https://youtu.be/oqjKMd9CYI4?list=PLa1F2ddGya_87HJ72v_IgKUTNLIXSMfvB

@adp001 that was interesting! Some nice features that would be cool in Poser.