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.

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

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.

@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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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"...

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

@hornet3d these look great!

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).

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

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

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

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.

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!

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.

@hornet3d these look great!

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

Hair from OOT, character Tempesta. 

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

Hair from OOT, character Tempesta. 

Woah... gorgeous picture 😍

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

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 😍

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?  

Thank you ☺

Here a screenshot of the cam settings. 

@TheAnimaGemini that is beautiful!

@TheAnimaGemini that is beautiful!

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!!

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. 

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...

looks great!

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

looks great!

@Y-Phil 

Agree, Bliss hair is still amazing. 

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

@Y-Phil 

Agree, Bliss hair is still amazing. 

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

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?

Does she charge extra for the show?

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.

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

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.