Enhanced Hair Shaders for iRay for Any Hair and Any Generation [Commercial]

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Comments

  • sextinosextino Posts: 37

    William, thanks for the examples, I am sold on this one.  Can't wait to try it out.  Hair seems to be the most unrealistic looking element in most of my renders and this will help.

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,009

    Whenever LAMH2 comes out (hopefully this decade?), this shader will help!

     

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,009

    Sextino: I've also been struggling with hair. The issue I've had is that a lot of hair solutions try some INCREDIBLY complex stuff (top coat! Specialty-built new shaders! Jazz hands!)

    And then any little thing gets off and the hair looks weird and you can't for the life of you figure out what the heck to do to fix it.

    I also find that often all those solutions are incredible overkill and the difference between a complex layered hair and just regular hair is miniscule.

     

    This product is a lot easier to use and get decent results.

     

     

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,009

    And now... da bears.

    As usual, left is straight conversion, right is with enhanced hair shader, though I had to tweak it a bit. LAMH's many strands behave a little differently than regular hair models

    I was originally going to do a panda, but the way LAMH shaders work, converting to fiberhair, all the surface maps for a single shaveset are combined. So when you have face and torso and limbs, it all gets piled together and doesn't come out right.

    So with the squirrel it was ok because there's only one UV map for everything furry (and even then, it was divided into a lot of shave sets).

    So I went with a brown bear, since the fur didn't need to vary much (though that would have looked a little better...)

     

    Da Bears.jpg
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  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,009

    So LAMH seems to require a lot more roughness than normal. I tried out something similar, using Real Short hair and Andrew eyebrows/mustache, since it's fiber based... but I found, here, the presets already developed work fine.

    Maybe the LAMH hair is so small it behaves very differently than other stuff; I've noticed, trying to apply other shaders, that it's gotten very glittery/sparky and requires very limited specular or it looks weird, so that's consistent.

    I was also going to try out George hair, which is strand-based... but frankly George hair is really terrible in closeups, no matter the shader -- the 'strands' are quite visibly flat noodles, and don't look that great with any shader I've tried.

    Anyway, Andrew Eyebrows and Hair, Real Short Hair, all with 'Golden Brown' preset, soft shading, on Andrew HD No Eyebrows Iray skinned figure.

     

    Andrew hair test.jpg
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  • AreynaAreyna Posts: 24

    This is another image I did, this time with Victoria 8. I like how the amount of back lit transparency, along with the amount of shine on the hair, can be adjusted directly in the settings for Hair Lustre.  

    Portrait of Victoria 8.jpg
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  • AreynaAreyna Posts: 24

    This isn't a proper render, per se. I figured I'd upload it for all of you who are following this thread to let you know that the shaders do work on the fibermesh eyebrows that ship with Victoria 8. The effect is subtle. (Look for the tiny red hairs.) I think it adds a little more variety and realism to the eyebrows.

    V8 Fiber Eyebrows+Lustre.jpg
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  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,145
    Areyna said:

    This is another image I did, this time with Victoria 8. I like how the amount of back lit transparency, along with the amount of shine on the hair, can be adjusted directly in the settings for Hair Lustre.  

    Thanks Areyna, that is a beautiful portrait! And I think it nicely shows how these shaders react much more realistically than the majority of standard hair shaders.

  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,145

    And now... da bears.

    As usual, left is straight conversion, right is with enhanced hair shader, though I had to tweak it a bit. LAMH's many strands behave a little differently than regular hair models

    I was originally going to do a panda, but the way LAMH shaders work, converting to fiberhair, all the surface maps for a single shaveset are combined. So when you have face and torso and limbs, it all gets piled together and doesn't come out right.

    So with the squirrel it was ok because there's only one UV map for everything furry (and even then, it was divided into a lot of shave sets).

    So I went with a brown bear, since the fur didn't need to vary much (though that would have looked a little better...)

    Thanks Will, that is a huge difference!

  • Richard John SRichard John S Posts: 389
    edited June 2017

    I just bought this and did a couple of renders, a really great product, thanks! I love the large selection of different shades of color.

    Post edited by Richard John S on
  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,145
    edited June 2017

    I just bought this and did a couple of renders, a really gread product, thanks! I love the large selection of different shades of color.

    Thanks - good to have real user feedback on this! I am looking forward to people sharing their renders.

    Post edited by PhilW on
  • RedzRedz Posts: 1,459

    Just bought this and it works very nicely with my fiberhair models. I'm finding it works best if I start with a shade similar to what I want to apply, eg blonde for blonde, darker for the fantasy shades. I especially like the fantasy shades. Very nice work PhilW, thank you. 

    lustre2.png
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    lustre3.png
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  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,145
    Redz said:

    Just bought this and it works very nicely with my fiberhair models. I'm finding it works best if I start with a shade similar to what I want to apply, eg blonde for blonde, darker for the fantasy shades. I especially like the fantasy shades. Very nice work PhilW, thank you. 

    Thanks for your kind words - I am delighted that it works with your products - I think the blue looks particularly fetching!

  • RedzRedz Posts: 1,459

    I like that blue too! One more quick test render, Default Blonde on the left and vanilla blonde llustre shader on the right. Love how it picks up the light in the hair.

    lustre.jpg
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  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,145

    When I was testing it, I've had people mistake it for Carrara's strand based hair, which I take as high praise!

  • Oso3DOso3D Posts: 15,009

    The critical thing is that it softens the appearance of hair; a lot of hair often turns out looking like wires, otherwise.

  • OdaaOdaa Posts: 1,548
    Areyna said:

    This is another image I did, this time with Victoria 8. I like how the amount of back lit transparency, along with the amount of shine on the hair, can be adjusted directly in the settings for Hair Lustre.  

    Well done! This is probably the closest to photorealistic I've seen Genesis 8 come in the short time its been out.

  • FerretmaniaFerretmania Posts: 883

    Wauw these shaders looks really really great. 

  • Richard John SRichard John S Posts: 389
    edited June 2017

    I just have a quick question. I noticed that some of the presets don't change the actual texture. Are we supposed to apply them to certain default hairs? I applied one of the presets to the default blonde and this is what happens. It looks good overall but the colors don't blend properly.

    Capture.PNG
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    Post edited by Richard John S on
  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,145

    Wauw these shaders looks really really great. 

    Thank you, delighted you like them!

  • escrandallescrandall Posts: 487

    I have spent too much this month, but this is too tempting...  

  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,145
    edited June 2017

    I just have a quick question. I noticed that some of the presets don't change the actual texture. Are we supposed to apply them to certain default hairs? I applied one of the presets to the default blonde and this is what happens. It looks good overall but the colors don't blend properly.

    Yes, I explained in the notes (although I realise that not everyone reads these!) that these shaders work with the existing textures, and that they are applied at 80% strength. If you select 100% strength, the existing textures will have no effect, and I have also included a 60% strength to allow more of the existing texture to show through. It is also best to have a complementary iRay texture already on the hair - so a blonde texture for a blonde Lustre Shader - it doesn't have to be an exact match, just in the same ballpark.

    However I don't think that is your issue here - it looks to me that there are probably multiple shading areas on the hair you are using, and it looks like you have applied the Lustre shader to some but not all of the shaders.  if you want a uniform effect, make sure that you apply it to all of the shading areas on your hair.  Alternative you can use this creatively to mix and match different Lustre shaders on different parts of the hair - this can also look very cool (but is obviously dependent on what hair you are using - I actually quite like the effect in your example, although I recognise that it perhaps wasn't what you were aiming for).

    The other possible explanation is that some of the Lustre shaders have built-in colour variation - they generally have something in the titles to indicate this - "X & Y", "X Streaks", etc. If you don't want this, choose another close Lustre shader that is a single colour and you will get a more uniform effect.

    I hope this was helpful.

    Post edited by PhilW on
  • Richard John SRichard John S Posts: 389
    edited June 2017

    Thanks for the information PhilW. My bad, I am one of those who don't read instructions lol. I guess I should start. Anyways, here is my render of Camille with the shader working! Again, great product!

    Camille3.jpg
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    Post edited by Richard John S on
  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,145

    No problem, it won't do any harm to share the above details on here as well - and great render, looks very natural!

  • SimonJMSimonJM Posts: 5,980

    Just did a quickie using these shdares on head and body hair (beard used supplied shaders) and posted it here

  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,145
    SimonJM said:

    Just did a quickie using these shdares on head and body hair (beard used supplied shaders) and posted it here

    Thanks for shaing that - you guys keep coming up with new uses for this product!

  • StormlyghtStormlyght Posts: 666
    edited June 2017

    Hi,

    I thought I'd share a comparison. Please ignore that the pose is not exactly the same.

    The top image is Perrin hair with @PhilW's new white hair shader and the bottom image is with the white Iray hair material that came with Perrin Hair. 

    Edit: I also used the shader on the eyebrows and on the eyelashes.

    Trish

     

    testing-new-hair-shader-perrin-hair.jpg
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    Post edited by Stormlyght on
  • FenixPhoenixFenixPhoenix Posts: 3,083

    I have spent too much this month, but this is too tempting...  

    I know your pain. I have this product on my cart and I'm like... I've spent so much but this product... I want. @PhilW, fantastic job on the product.

  • PhilWPhilW Posts: 5,145

    Thanks all for sharing the images and for the kind comments - I have been delighted by the response this product has received.

  • IceDragonArtIceDragonArt Posts: 12,548

    I broke my self imposed spending freeze to buy this one lol.  I am dying to try it out the examples are really amazing. 

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