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.

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.

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.

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).

Thank you so much, Ghostship2, for this gem

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

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.

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.

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.

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:

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.

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!

@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.

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)

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.

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.

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

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.

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:

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:

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.

@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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

Fantastic! Irresistible...

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

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!

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.

@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.

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

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

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: