I bought it, I tried it, I LOVE IT! Gorgeous results and sooooooo easy to use.

Below are renders with ali's Hr-183 hair. Left model has a perfectly functional ali Hr-183 texture. Middle model has a Touchable Hr-183 texture, which is an improvement on the ali texture. Right model has the Ghostship texture, which wins hands down. The colors are not the same; I was tempted to use hsv nodes to make them similar colors but stopped myself from altering results. Besides, the color doesn't matter—the highlights do.

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Old lady hobbyist.

All visual art or fiction is "playing with dolls."

Sweet.  Bought it it.  It rocks!

I had put together the crudest of crude setups to do something similar.  But mine (based on BB ideas) took waaaaay longer to render required more tweaking, and produced something that at its best, only looked like it.  My shader-fu is weak.

But Ghostship shaders are always a plus in a runtime.  And the hair shader is no exception.  Well worth it!

(Be sure to read the supplied step-by-step PDF.  It's quick and painless :)

Thanks guys! A couple things I did not say in the PDF: You can use other texture maps than the ones I supplied. Also, you certainly can alter the existing colors in a photo editor or by using a HSV node plugged between the map and the main node.

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ghostship2 posted at 8:28 PM Fri, 15 April 2022 - #4437243

Thanks guys! A couple things I did not say in the PDF: You can use other texture maps than the ones I supplied. Also, you certainly can alter the existing colors in a photo editor or by using a HSV node plugged between the map and the main node.

I'm always playing with HSV nodes ever since I discovered I can change colors without altering the tex map in PSP. But I decided to use ali's tex and bump maps and woflie's tex and bump maps with your hair system. Below are the results. Left model is ali texs with ghostship mat. Middle model is Touchable texs with ghostship mat. Right model is ghostship mat.

Compare these results with the pic in my previous post and WOW! Thinking I should have used your bumps with the left model, but whatever. I'm going to try to not play with this all day, so I can work on other things (but it won't be easy).

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Old lady hobbyist.

All visual art or fiction is "playing with dolls."

Thank you so much, Ghostship2, for this gem

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I actually picked this up very recently but I haven't played with it yet.  Easter Service obligations have me running around (cantor and choir).  As soon as I get an opportunity, I will definitely sit down and whip up some renders.  I also picked up the other light and shader packages while I was at it.  For half-price, I think it's a bargain.

Y-Phil posted at 11:17 AM Sat, 16 April 2022 - #4437259

Thank you so much, Ghostship2, for this gem

I'm not usually one for such light, bright blonde hair Phil, but this is just gorgeous.  Now I'm definitely going to have to play with this hair color . . . or did you add one of your own colors?

Like hboore I'm also busy now, though I'm busy with beta testing, so playing with this goodie will have to wait, though hopefully not too long.

_______________

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Butterfly Dezignz

Miss B posted at 8:55 PM Sat, 16 April 2022 - #4437267

Y-Phil posted at 11:17 AM Sat, 16 April 2022 - #4437259

Thank you so much, Ghostship2, for this gem

I'm not usually one for such light, bright blonde hair Phil, but this is just gorgeous.  Now I'm definitely going to have to play with this hair color . . . or did you add one of your own colors?

Like hboore I'm also busy now, though I'm busy with beta testing, so playing with this goodie will have to wait, though hopefully not too long.

As @perpetualrevision said on the post in  my gallery, I haven't paid attention to the fact that she looked somewhat too evenly colored. So that here is a version with one of OutofTouch's blonde textures:

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I had to play with my Valley of the Dolls gals yesterday. They're pretty lifeless looking gals, but I was focusing on the hair. Love how GSHSS makes it shine.

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Old lady hobbyist.

All visual art or fiction is "playing with dolls."

Y-Phil posted at 4:31 AM Sun, 17 April 2022 - #4437278

As @perpetualrevision said on the post in  my gallery, I haven't paid attention to the fact that she looked somewhat too evenly colored. So that here is a version with one of OutofTouch's blonde textures:

I hadn't thought of that, but now that I see this new render, I see the difference, and I do prefer this type of blonde hair.

_______________

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Butterfly Dezignz

Miss B posted at 10:26 AM Sun, 17 April 2022 - #4437289

Y-Phil posted at 4:31 AM Sun, 17 April 2022 - #4437278

As @perpetualrevision said on the post in  my gallery, I haven't paid attention to the fact that she looked somewhat too evenly colored. So that here is a version with one of OutofTouch's blonde textures:

I hadn't thought of that, but now that I see this new render, I see the difference, and I do prefer this type of blonde hair.

He he... me too, but as a man, and even if I'm trying hard to observe the women, their make-up, hair setting, type and colors of the clothes, there are some... "crucial" detail I don't pay (enough) attention.... :smile:

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VedaDalsette posted at 9:05 AM Sun, 17 April 2022 - #4437285

I had to play with my Valley of the Dolls gals yesterday. They're pretty lifeless looking gals, but I was focusing on the hair. Love how GSHSS makes it shine.

he left one is fantastic, for me: I mean: the way it's rendered!

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@Y-Phil are you sure that the hair you are using has "cast shadows" checked in the neck actor? I'd check the other zones but it's usually the neck actor. That is what I see in your image: the hair is not casting shadows.

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Well, I'm off to buy this after seeing these images.

I remember having a conversation once with someone on the SmithMicro forum about hair shadows. His argument was it took too long to render hair with shadows turned on and my argument was that it made the hair look unnatural and ruined the render. Have a look and make your own choice (fast render or natural look)

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Shadows.  If you want a great render, you should invest the time rendering it.  I know, we all don’t have render farms to quicken the process but hey, the world can’t always be in a rush.

hborre posted at 3:37 PM Sun, 17 April 2022 - #4437301

Shadows.  If you want a great render, you should invest the time rendering it.  I know, we all don’t have render farms to quicken the process but hey, the world can’t always be in a rush.

I couldn't have said it better.  ~nods~

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Needs the shadows, but sometimes it seems like the shadows that result are too dark, as if the hair was a lot more opaque than it should be. Depends on the hair model and transmap though.

Y-Phil's image definitely looks like it has some shadow on the forehead. It may just be that the light is lower than you expect.

another example using one of the presets

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ghostship2 posted at 12:21 PM Sun, 17 April 2022 - #4437295

@Y-Phil are you sure that the hair you are using has "cast shadows" checked in the neck actor? I'd check the other zones but it's usually the neck actor. That is what I see in your image: the hair is not casting shadows.

@ghostship2: I had a doubt about the "casting shadows" option, as it's something I never change, and I always let "on".
So I recomputed the pic, using the "V3 blonde", with a small change in your compound node: the strength related to the bump part. I've remarked that this let us control the power of the gloss effect, something that's interesting/useful with the bump of some hair props/characters.

These last weeks, I've started to play with the blackbody node and the temperature of my 3-points lights setup, and that gives this:

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Nice render.  Boy, we can have a conversation on the Blackbody node and its usage.  I've compiled a list of Kelvin temperature values for different applications of lighting.  But that's for a different thread.

hborre posted at 9:55 AM Mon, 18 April 2022 - #4437333

Nice render.  Boy, we can have a conversation on the Blackbody node and its usage.  I've compiled a list of Kelvin temperature values for different applications of lighting.  But that's for a different thread.

I had seen that in another thread indeed, and I have collected the values I saw at the time. Not sure about the values, but this this what I remember:

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Y-Phil, I had been playing around with bump map strengths in the collapsed node to control gloss, too. Changing bump strength from .l to 1 makes a big difference in glossiness. This is good for coarser, teased, hair-sprayed hair (old timey hair), which has no gloss. Of course, lighting makes a difference, but I'm not savvy enough to know how to control lighting decently. I trust the presets in the lighting configurations I've gotten from RMP and Freestuff.

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Old lady hobbyist.

All visual art or fiction is "playing with dolls."

@Y-Phil what hair is that? Maybe I have it and can check. I'm still convinced that cast shadows is turned off. A lot of hair modelers make cast6 shadows off by default so their hair renders fast for the users. SAV did this regularly. It only takes a few seconds to check the actors (neck, head etc.) The second image you posted where you altered stuff inside the compound node still looks like it is not casting shadows. Look at the back of her neck under the hair. That should be dark but is just as bright as the front of her neck. The parts that people are seeing as "cast shadow" is diffuse and caustics bounce from the hair, not shadows.

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VedaDalsette posted at 11:24 AM Mon, 18 April 2022 - #4437346

Y-Phil, I had been playing around with bump map strengths in the collapsed node to control gloss, too. Changing bump strength from .l to 1 makes a big difference in glossiness. This is good for coarser, teased, hair-sprayed hair (old timey hair), which has no gloss. Of course, lighting makes a difference, but I'm not savvy enough to know how to control lighting decently. I trust the presets in the lighting configurations I've gotten from RMP and Freestuff.

Just take a look at my snapshot above: a blackbody plus a compound that you can make by yourself, without being a tekkie:

Look at "Value_7" It's only an Input value, from the Cycles part. Once you've a few values, select them, right-click: collapse to compound node, drag the outputs to the "External Ooutputs" node. If needed, double-click on each text to change it.

The values here have been published in one of Rendo's threads.

Once your nodes are ready: select both and click the "Plus" to add this to your library, but only the selected nodes:

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Looks like my compound set.  Each number next to the description is the Kelvin Degree value for each connection.  So Cool white is 7000 degrees Kelvin.  It will cast a slightly bluish light.  A good neutral light will be between 5000 to 5600 K, equivalent to a clear, midday.  Approximately 5500 K is equivalent to a camera flash.

hborre posted at 12:22 PM Mon, 18 April 2022 - #4437353

Looks like my compound set.  Each number next to the description is the Kelvin Degree value for each connection.  So Cool white is 7000 degrees Kelvin.  It will cast a slightly bluish light.  A good neutral light will be between 5000 to 5600 K, equivalent to a clear, midday.  Approximately 5500 K is equivalent to a camera flash.

Oh, ok. Thank you for those details, as I'm by no way tekkie in the photography's world, that's good to know.

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Here is another example. SAV Goldy hair. Default lighting. I loaded up the hair and then set up my hair shader on the mat zones. First render looks bright and thin. Second render is after I corrected the gamma on the transparency maps to 1.00. You can see that the hair looks fuller but is still glowing. Third image is after checking "cast shadows" in the neck actor. Many, many, many hair models you will buy have shadows unchecked and/or the gamma is wrong on the transmaps and you won't get decent results with any hair shader at that point.

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Thanks, Y-Phil. I'll add that lighting mat.

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Old lady hobbyist.

All visual art or fiction is "playing with dolls."

It worked! I don't think I've ever added a light material before. Thanks.

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Old lady hobbyist.

All visual art or fiction is "playing with dolls."

If you have seen my B & B Bedroom render, the 2 lamps have embedded point lights scaled down to fit within the bulbs.  I used the blackbody nodes at around 3600 K, IIRC, to give a warm emission.  By using the Properties/Parameters of the point lights, I could modulate the intensity and the attenuation (inverse square) without any further modifications in the Material Room.

VedaDalsette posted at 6:33 PM Mon, 18 April 2022 - #4437362

It worked! I don't think I've ever added a light material before. Thanks.

Great! :-)

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Oh, yes, hborre, I saw that render. It's quite lovely, especially with randomized dots (it must be yours I have saved in my library), as well as the lighting.

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Old lady hobbyist.

All visual art or fiction is "playing with dolls."

Here I use the shader on OOT Daily bun. They turned out amazing.

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,

Fantastic! Irresistible...

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What a nice render.  It has a rather unique softness appropriate for a portrait.

TheAnimaGemini posted at 3:07 PM Wed, 20 April 2022 - #4437450

Here I use the shader on OOT Daily bun. They turned out amazing.

I happen to use that hair fairly often, so glad to see the Ghostship's shader works so nicely on it.

I also agree with @hborre about the unique softness of the render.  Well done!

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Butterfly Dezignz

Miss B posted at 9:01 PM Wed, 20 April 2022 - #4437467

TheAnimaGemini posted at 3:07 PM Wed, 20 April 2022 - #4437450

Here I use the shader on OOT Daily bun. They turned out amazing.

I happen to use that hair fairly often, so glad to see Ghostship's shader works so nicely on it.

I also agree with @hborre about the unique softness of the render.  Well done!

_______________

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Butterfly Dezignz

All right, I know people in general really like the shader and I am...all right with it. This is an honest review from someone who does not create content, does not do any scripting...just likes to work with Poser, and has been for a while. Please help me to understand what I am doing wrong. I am following the exact directions and my results are...all right, really, but am not blown away with it, yet.  I got a few I'm OK with, finally. The shader is tricky and is extremely sensitive to light.

An old AeonSoul hair:

Fabiana's Alanis hair:

3Dream's Pherenike hair:

and the one I'm happiest with, Afrodite Ohki's Juliana hair:

I'm definitely thinking this is a hair shader for more experienced users and I am eager to welcome some lighting tips. Also, the newer the hair the better results I got in general. There were several I discarded after long experiments because I got too frustrated.

@Rhia474 PM me tomorrow (It's almost my bedtime here in Cal) And we'll find out what's going on.

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@Rhia474: Is this what you expected with the Alanis Hair with the Grey strand shader?  

To be perfectly honest, I expected a lot less cartoonishness. It's just...the flying strands don't seem to be very well defined and the actual hair has some lines in it that are totally unrealistic. It may just be that the model is not particularly suitable for this shader. I don't know, I am not a shade guru and never will be. I was just ready to have, with a P12 lighting setup and P12 skin shaders, to see something that looks compatible, and it really wasn't what I expected, so I want to understand what I am doing wrong. Everything else I was happy with on that image.

Light color hair is very difficult to light and render, there is always something that causes unrealistic results.  It could be the model, the shader, or both in addition to the surrounding environment lighting the scene.  For this particular render, I needed to look into each strand compound node and make some changes, to me, the highlights were too overblown with the light setup.  It may look right with an HDRI but I wanted to figure out why it looked wrong.  As for well-defined strands, that takes a higher pixel sampling, higher transmission, and transparent bounces.  In essence, you will be looking at very long render times depending on your system.  

Increasing the bump map strength will cut down on the glossiness. Also, you might get better results by using the hair model's tex map in GSHSS rather than the GSHSS texture.

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Old lady hobbyist.

All visual art or fiction is "playing with dolls."

I wouldn't mess with the bump node settings.  Your brightness is coming from 2 places in the strands compound node, the Color mix node, and the AnisotropicBsdf node.  If those settings are not modified for lighter hair then the highlights will get blown depending on the lighting conditions.  I found that the first color chip on the Color Mix node should be changed to black from the default white.  That increases the contrast on GS's map.  On the AnisotropicBsdf, the Anisotropy channel value should also be toned down.  I won't address the TranslucentBsdf node but it should be connected to an AddClosure node, not a MixClosure node, according to posts in other web forums.

@ Rhia:  The reason you don't see the hair strands clearly is simply that the transparency map is crappy.  Here is a quick render with a modified transmap for Alanis Hair.  This is by no means a perfect map created in Photoshop, I might be able to get the same results within Poser with node math.  

                                                                                       

Thank you @hborre for your suggestions: I love the result

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I'll be working this out with Rhia on Sunday. I took a look at that hair. Alanis hair is one of my favorite hair models. I use it all the time. Could be combo of color/lights/model. We'll figure this out. Some examples with various lighting

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Yeah, see those flyaway strands? There is almost no definition. I am super curious what's happening here. The rest of the hair looks great.

I am running some tests right now with the hair under different lights.

1. Under the HDRI Backround shader ghostship so generously shared in their tutorial available at posersoftware dot com
2. Under another HDRI background shader material that was shared by Bastep as a freebie on this site
3. Under Afrodite-Ohki's  Level Up Superfly system (dome, background, lights)
4. Under Snarly's EZ dome.

All of these are said to provide lighting that is compatible with Poser 12.
I will post them here. 

Render settings for each of these will be:

I look forward to seeing what you two come up with, as I have the Alanis Hair, and even though I haven't used it much lately because I don't use V4 much lately, I certainly would be interested as I can use it with La Femme and the V4 Skull Fit.

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Those render setting are not much different from mine. I took a look at the transmap for Alanis hair and modified it with a darker curve in Photoshop. This does seem to make the strand ends have more definition. I'll post a render in a bit

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Here is what I got. I used my "Construct 1 Big" light set. A couple of things: My light set is probably a bit too bright. That's OK we can fix things later with Poser 12's Post FX. I turned down the exposure to .8 and that seems to give a good balance between bright skin and brighter hair. Another thing that helps is exporting as an uncompressed file format from Poser. Poser's jpg algorithm borks fine detail in the render.

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@Rhia474 Another thing I noticed is you are using progressive refinement. I guess this is ok for quick test renders but it's much slower than rendering one small tile per CPU core at a time.

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Ha. Okay, learning things big time here that I wish were available for people who do this the first time. That thing about jpgs for instance--is that a bug? Will it be fixed? (eager minds want to know)...
Doing some renders now without the progressive refinement--yes, I took one of your render settings you kindly posted a while ago as my base.

And ...that transmap made that render you just posted above much better. I'll post my images once finished but I think you got the culprit nailed down with that hair specifically. My renders are always unedited and no-postwork, because I like to make sure a Poser render is showing what Poser is capable of.

here is that curve

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an extreme HDRI lighting example. Poser Post FX used to tame the exposure down to .23 of the original. Her skin, eyes, hair were all blown out to white but fixed with Poser's Post FX.

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about Poser's jpg export: Even on the highest setting it messes with fine detail. That's OK with me because making jpg files is not what Poser is made for. A photo editor program is going to be miles better than Poser for making a clean jpg file. I just consider it a courtesy that Poser makes a jpg for those quick renders that aren't critical.

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Okay, first results are with unadjusted transmaps, four setups previously mentioned. No pose or material was changed on model or hair between the 4, only light setups. You will notice my renders are not nearly as strongly lit. Also note in all cases the extremely poorly defined flyaway ends.

1. HDRI on background as defined by ghostship in their tutorial on poserfsoftware, used as a light source.

(ignore that crack on figure, forgot to convert to unimesh and subdivide model, fixed in later renders)

2. HDRI on background as provided by bastep's free shader, used as light source. Used exact same HDRI:

3. Sphere and infinite background from Afrodite-Ohki's LevelUp Superfly package available here; no light except the sphere material.

4. EZ Dome, using sun light properly placed based on IBL on dome:

Next post will include some variations based on the transmap of the hair adjusted by the curve shown below and replaced on all hair materials.

All right. I think we got it; transmaps can make or break a hair regardless of lighting, render settings or shaders.

1. Look at those flyaway ends!

2.

3. 

4. 

So: in conclusion--whatever you do, take a look at the provided transmap and if after a testrender, it looks mushy like mine did, do ahead and adjust it. Older hairs tend to have, apparently, not only burned in highlights but unnecessarily bright transmaps that may muddle the render of fine ends.

@ghostship2: I sincerely thank you for going through this with me and showing me several things that will help me being better at this! 

@Rhia474 Glad to help! Your hair does look better now! Remember to save your mat files as MC6 format so you have your own presets to use later.

W10, Ryzen 5 1600x, 16Gb,RTX2060Super+GTX980, PP11, 11.3.740

Thank you BOTH for these informations. I've an old hair prop that I'd like to use but the transmap is... "sorry-no-valid-polite-English-translation-available"...

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And when it comes to save a pic file with Poser: I've never used any other option than PNG. The only moment I'm creating a JPG is with Photoshop, as a final thingie to publish online.

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Y-Phil posted at 2:18 AM Mon, 25 April 2022 - #4437709

And when it comes to save a pic file with Poser: I've never used any other option than PNG. The only moment I'm creating a JPG is with Photoshop, as a final thingie to publish online.

I agree, as I always want a transparent background which, of course, I have to select in P12, but I've always found PNG to give the sharpest images.

_______________

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Butterfly Dezignz

Late to the party but that is nothing unusual.  My Poser time and expenditure is much reduced so far in 2022 but I just had to buy this and have a play.

Ali's HR-153 Hair

Ali's HR-230 Hair

Taiana Hair Afrodite-Ohki

This is fun, for someone like me, with limited skills, to get results like this with just a few clicks is not just amazing but magical.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

hornet3d posted at 4:49 AM Wed, 27 April 2022 - #4437790

Late to the party but that is nothing unusual.  My Poser time and expenditure is much reduced so far in 2022 but I just had to buy this and have a play.

Gorgeous pictures!

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Y-Phil posted at 5:08 AM Wed, 27 April 2022 - #4437792

hornet3d posted at 4:49 AM Wed, 27 April 2022 - #4437790

Late to the party but that is nothing unusual.  My Poser time and expenditure is much reduced so far in 2022 but I just had to buy this and have a play.

Gorgeous pictures!

Thank you, with this hair shader it is hard not to get a good result.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

@hornet3d these look great!

W10, Ryzen 5 1600x, 16Gb,RTX2060Super+GTX980, PP11, 11.3.740

Playing with old-timer Pauline and her Gwenith hair. Used Merchant Resource Hair with GSHSS (roughness reduced to .6 was only other change) and used Ghostship2 lights. Amy morph with Jackie texture (used Texture Transformer, of course). I love using the streaked hair tex with this. I had to reduce the UV width to .33 to make it look more natural (as natural as bleached hair can look).

---

W11,Intel i9-14900KF @ 3.20GHz, 64.0 GB RAM, 64-bit, GeForce GTX 4070 Ti SUPER, 16GB. 

Old lady hobbyist.

All visual art or fiction is "playing with dolls."

VedaDalsette posted at 11:29 AM Sat, 30 April 2022 - #4437923

Playing with old-timer Pauline and her Gwenith hair. Used Merchant Resource Hair with GSHSS (roughness reduced to .6 was only other change) and used Ghostship2 lights. Amy morph with Jackie texture (used Texture Transformer, of course). I love using the streaked hair tex with this. I had to reduce the UV width to .33 to make it look more natural (as natural as bleached hair can look).

Beautiful, wow

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Y-Phil posted at 11:37 AM Sat, 30 April 2022 - #4437925

VedaDalsette posted at 11:29 AM Sat, 30 April 2022 - #4437923

Playing with old-timer Pauline and her Gwenith hair. Used Merchant Resource Hair with GSHSS (roughness reduced to .6 was only other change) and used Ghostship2 lights. Amy morph with Jackie texture (used Texture Transformer, of course). I love using the streaked hair tex with this. I had to reduce the UV width to .33 to make it look more natural (as natural as bleached hair can look).

Beautiful, wow

I agree.  :slight_smile:

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Butterfly Dezignz

@VedaDalsette Somehow you turned off cast shadows on that hair piece. It looks off to me.

W10, Ryzen 5 1600x, 16Gb,RTX2060Super+GTX980, PP11, 11.3.740

The cast shadow is always on by default with very little chance of automatically turning off.  There appears to be some self-glowing going on, possibly the skin shader.  The ear on the left doesn't look right to me, too bright in my opinion.  A screencap of the skin shader might reveal what's going on.

ghostship2 posted at 3:30 PM Sat, 30 April 2022 - #4437934

@VedaDalsette Somehow you turned off cast shadows on that hair piece. It looks off to me.

ghostship2, you're right! And I see the difference. Her hair isn't glowing now. I must stop turning off cast shadows!

hborre, it's not her skin glowing. It was her hair! Below is her Pauline head (Amy morph). Pretty lame tame. It was my fault for turning off cast shadows. (I'm so used to doing it for Master Skull Cap.)

Oh, and thanks, Y-Phil and Miss B!

---

W11,Intel i9-14900KF @ 3.20GHz, 64.0 GB RAM, 64-bit, GeForce GTX 4070 Ti SUPER, 16GB. 

Old lady hobbyist.

All visual art or fiction is "playing with dolls."

Ok, I thought you had cast shadow on.  My bad.  It looks much better now.  Disaster avoided.

I have Universal Skull Cap which is similar. Cast shadows should be on with these as well.

W10, Ryzen 5 1600x, 16Gb,RTX2060Super+GTX980, PP11, 11.3.740

ghostship2 posted at 3:15 PM Fri, 29 April 2022 - #4437893

@hornet3d these look great!

Thank you, I really do appreciate your comment.

 

 

I use Poser 13 on Windows 11 - For Scene set up I use a Geekcom A5 -  Ryzen 9 5900HX, with 64 gig ram and 3 TB  storage, mini PC with final rendering done on normal sized desktop using an AMD Ryzen Threadipper 1950X CPU, Corsair Hydro H100i CPU cooler, 3XS EVGA GTX 1080i SC with 11g Ram, 4 X 16gig Corsair DDR4 Ram and a Corsair RM 100 PSU .   The desktop is in a remote location with rendering done via Queue Manager which gives me a clearer desktop and quieter computer room.

Still have fun with the shaders . Amphitrite, goddess of the sea. 

Hair from OOT, character Tempesta. 

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,

TheAnimaGemini posted at 6:05 AM Sun, 1 May 2022 - #4437960

Still have fun with the shaders . Amphitrite, goddess of the sea. 

Hair from OOT, character Tempesta. 

Woah... gorgeous picture 😍

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Very nice.  The lighting is superb.  Any post work to get that delicate, soft look?  

Y-Phil posted at 6:41 AM Sun, 1 May 2022 - #4437962

TheAnimaGemini posted at 6:05 AM Sun, 1 May 2022 - #4437960

Still have fun with the shaders . Amphitrite, goddess of the sea. 

Hair from OOT, character Tempesta. 

Woah... gorgeous picture 😍

Thank you 😊

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,

hborre posted at 6:41 AM Sun, 1 May 2022 - #4437963

Very nice.  The lighting is superb.  Any post work to get that delicate, soft look?  

Actually not much. I add just some contrast. The soft blur comes from DOF. I had it at 5.6 and high key light with colors. 

Thank you ☺

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,

Here a screenshot of the cam settings. 

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,

@TheAnimaGemini that is beautiful!

W10, Ryzen 5 1600x, 16Gb,RTX2060Super+GTX980, PP11, 11.3.740

ghostship2 posted at 9:48 AM Sun, 1 May 2022 - #4437975

@TheAnimaGemini that is beautiful!

Thank you 🤗😊

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,

Whoa. Learning. That is such a delicate, beautiful combination of lights and camera along with the colors. Thank you for sharing!!

Rhia474 posted at 12:09 PM Sun, 1 May 2022 - #4437981

Whoa. Learning. That is such a delicate, beautiful combination of lights and camera along with the colors. Thank you for sharing!!

Thank you so much ☺🤗☺

The background is just a simple backdrop, pure white. Lights are high key lights. 3 of them. 1 left 1 right and one on top 1 of them colored for more accent. 

I scale up the Area lights very big for very subtile shadows. 

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,

I couldn't help but test one of the most beautiful hairs I've had: Danae's Bliss Vision Hair, It dates: 2004, and it was for vic3. Thanks to Ghostship's Hair system: wow...

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looks great!

W10, Ryzen 5 1600x, 16Gb,RTX2060Super+GTX980, PP11, 11.3.740

ghostship2 posted at 11:04 PM Sun, 1 May 2022 - #4437994

looks great!

This is thanks to you, so thank you twice :grin:

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@Y-Phil 

Agree, Bliss hair is still amazing. 

Great render and the hair are looking good with the new shader

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,

TheAnimaGemini posted at 10:38 AM Mon, 2 May 2022 - #4438012

@Y-Phil 

Agree, Bliss hair is still amazing. 

Great render and the hair are looking good with the new shader

Indeed: and I'm the first astonished... :grin:

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Does she charge extra for the show?

I was finally able to get this. I see it has for horizontal, vertical, or a combination. Is there any way to use it for maps where the hair goes every which way without resorting to using the texture maps that it comes with that have horrible baked-in highlights?

---

Available on Amazon for the Kindle E-Reader Monster of the North and The Shimmering Mage

Today I break my own personal record for the number of days for being alive.
Check out my store here or my free stuff here
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hborre posted at 12:03 PM Mon, 2 May 2022 - #4438017

Does she charge extra for the show?

:grin:

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Predominantly, the script relies on the transparency maps and the textures that Ghostship provides.  You do have an option to use vendor texture maps if they are well prepared and have little to no highlights.

@RedPhantom I agree with hborre. Some hair pieces need those specialty texture maps (radial orientation). I'm crap at painting hair otherwise I might provide a couple. The main culprit is older hair pieces. Vendors have figured out how to make hair so they don't have to re-invent the wheel with each texture map.

W10, Ryzen 5 1600x, 16Gb,RTX2060Super+GTX980, PP11, 11.3.740

Yeah, these are older hair. I should just abandon them, but there are a few styles I like that I haven't replaced yet.

---

Available on Amazon for the Kindle E-Reader Monster of the North and The Shimmering Mage

Today I break my own personal record for the number of days for being alive.
Check out my store here or my free stuff here
I use Poser 13 and win 10

If the radial hair is just on a skull cap, with some other layers over it that are horizontal or vertical, at least sometimes you can just use that original map and it's ok. Give it a try. I've been quite pleased with the results. And I thought I had good shaders before just based on things we discussed on the forum here, but these are better.

Unfortunately, the cap shows as they're updos or the hair is pulled back.

---

Available on Amazon for the Kindle E-Reader Monster of the North and The Shimmering Mage

Today I break my own personal record for the number of days for being alive.
Check out my store here or my free stuff here
I use Poser 13 and win 10

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 .

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,

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.

hborre posted at 10:08 AM Tue, 3 May 2022 - #4438080

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.

No, not really till now. At last not in Poser.  I am still a novice in portraits, but thanks for the idea. Will check this out.

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,

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.

hborre posted at 11:55 AM Tue, 3 May 2022 - #4438082

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.

Thanks. I have experience in Blender lights with blackbody, but it is kind of difficult to archive the same quality in Poser. 

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,

@ 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.

W10, Ryzen 5 1600x, 16Gb,RTX2060Super+GTX980, PP11, 11.3.740

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. 

La vie est éternelle. L'amour est immortel.

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.”
― Marcus Aurelius,

Fantastic idea... Thank you!

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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.

---

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Check out my store here or my free stuff here
I use Poser 13 and win 10

@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.

W10, Ryzen 5 1600x, 16Gb,RTX2060Super+GTX980, PP11, 11.3.740

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

---

Available on Amazon for the Kindle E-Reader Monster of the North and The Shimmering Mage

Today I break my own personal record for the number of days for being alive.
Check out my store here or my free stuff here
I use Poser 13 and win 10

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!!!  :grin:

_______________

OK . . . Where's my chocolate?

Butterfly Dezignz

@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

W10, Ryzen 5 1600x, 16Gb,RTX2060Super+GTX980, PP11, 11.3.740

@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.

---

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Today I break my own personal record for the number of days for being alive.
Check out my store here or my free stuff here
I use Poser 13 and win 10

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

@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

But a subject I totally forgot about, so thanks (again) for the reminder.  :wink:

_______________

OK . . . Where's my chocolate?

Butterfly Dezignz

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

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.

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.

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.

The trans map is the one provided with Ali's Hr-159 Hair set, and I used it according to Ghostship's instructions in the PDF file he included with his set of Shaders.  That said, however, I do agree the trans map seemed to do a better job on my first attempt, with the lighter shade for the hair.  I also believe it's a lighting thing, since I just did quick renders with my default lighting.  I am planning on doing better renders with better lighting, which should help a good deal.

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.

_______________

OK . . . Where's my chocolate?

Butterfly Dezignz

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

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

Hmmmm, I just loaded SAV's Marina Hair in a new scene in P12, and checked to see if Casts Shadows was indeed turned off, and it's not.   The Casts Shadows in the Properties Panel is checked, and since I didn't do anything as far as that's concerned when I was working on that Hair yesterday, I didn't specifically turn it on or 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.

_______________

OK . . . Where's my chocolate?

Butterfly Dezignz

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. 

W10, Ryzen 5 1600x, 16Gb,RTX2060Super+GTX980, PP11, 11.3.740

ghostship2 posted at 5:17 PM Sat, 7 May 2022 - #4438273

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

AHA!  I'll double check that.

_______________

OK . . . Where's my chocolate?

Butterfly Dezignz

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.

W10, Ryzen 5 1600x, 16Gb,RTX2060Super+GTX980, PP11, 11.3.740

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

W10, Ryzen 5 1600x, 16Gb,RTX2060Super+GTX980, PP11, 11.3.740

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 ❤

𝒫𝒽𝓎𝓁

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Y-Phil posted at 2:59 AM Mon, 9 May 2022 - #4438322

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 ❤

I'll second that!!  :grin:

_______________

OK . . . Where's my chocolate?

Butterfly Dezignz

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

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Very nice!

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

Very nice!

Thank you :smile:

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@Y-Phil

Beautiful!

W10, Ryzen 5 1600x, 16Gb,RTX2060Super+GTX980, PP11, 11.3.740

ghostship2 posted at 5:01 PM Sun, 15 May 2022 - #4438642

@Y-Phil

Beautiful!

Thank you so much Mr. Ghostship2 :smile:

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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)

Poser scripts by Snarlygribbly

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

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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.

Poser scripts by Snarlygribbly

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