Manual setting of materials for average DAZ transmapped hair

SnowSultan

Could someone suggest some manual material settings for typical transmapped (using opacity maps) DAZ hair? I've tried the following as a very basic setup and would just like to hear some recommendations on how to improve it, but I do not want to use Diffeomorphic or the DAZ Bridge; I want to set this up manually so I learn how different nodes affect the final look.

Using Principled BSDF with base color texture, hair's opacity map into Alpha, Bump or Normal maps into Normal (via Bump or Normal nodes, reduced strength). Node Wrangler likes to connect any Roughness maps into an Invert Color node before passing it along to the Roughness input. I have 32 set in the Render Properties for Min Transparent Bounces and Transparent Max Bounces. The hair looks OK, but has no highlights, and I'm not sure whether to use a Top Coat, Sheen, or what. I'm also not positive if the overall opacity settings are correct because they've been changed at least twice that I know of since Blender 3.6 or so, and I can't even find the Alpha settings that are supposedly in the Viewport Display for Cycles.

I am rendering with Cycles, using Blender 4.3. Thank you very much in advance for any help.

Padone

For the highlights on transmapped hair you have to use the anisotropic effect. You can also learn from the diffeomorphic setup, as each node is explained in the blender manual.

SnowSultan

Doesn't Diffeomorphic create a custom shader that more closely matches the DAZ Uber shader though? I really want to use basic Blender shaders and the BSDF if possible.

I thought maybe I had to use the anistropic method, but the hair I tried it on (curly hair) did not work very well. Thank you for confirming.

Padone

Well yes, for transmapped hair it is a conversion from the uber shader so it could be complex depending on the daz material. Or you may want to convert to particles or hair curves, which can use the principled hair bsdf.