Hair material properties settings to make it look real

[Heiner]

Hi there,

I am doing a charakter which will have also hair.

Does anyone have some good settings for the

material properties to make it look nice and real?

I am just asking in order to save some work on

experimenting and searching for propper settings.

Thanks already!

Heiner

[robcat2075]

One crucial detail for most human hair is to use the "MuhHair" options in the Diffuse and Specular shaders at the bottom of the surface settings in the hair material properties.

 

They are powerful but complicated. They have quite a few settings that interact with each other so it is daunting to get it looking good the first time out.

 

I recommend you get the lighting in your scene done first, then start adjusting MuhHair settings for the desired look.

[NancyGormezano]

First enable MuhHair -

 

Now don't go setting materials settings - start of with the MuhHair settings and then as a last step add other settings.

 

The important things to be set are the hair color. This can be set in the Hair emitters surface properties and if it is not set there, it will use the color of the hair emitter's surface properties.

 

Second you need to set the specularity color. Again set it in the Hair, or set it for the emmitter. Now just do the rest in MuhHair.

 

You do need to understand the settings, because otherwise the specularity can make the hair glow to a rediculous point. MuhHair gives some really great control over the look of the hair.

 

The key settings is in the MuhHair Specular render shader settings. Just remember that "Primary" refers to specular highlights", "Secondary" is the actual hair color.

 

So you usually have to make the primary width much smaller - even down to a few percent unless you want your character to look like someone in a hair conditioner commercial.

 

Primary strength usually needs to be high so that the specularity is still strong where it is occuring.

 

The Deviations pushes the effect either towards the base of the hair or towards the ends, Positive values are towards the ends. So for example, a Pimary Deviation of 80% will cause all the specular highlights to be near the ends of the hair.

 

If you are doing black hair, you do not need to use the Diffuse settings for the hair color at all. Instead is can be used to do that blue sheen that some kinds of black hair has, or the flourescent colours that some black hair dye products have. Just back the Secondary settings way down and use then to control this flourescent color. Anywhere that doesn't have either specularity, or diffuse shading will just default to black.

 

I know that is an extremely quick explanation but it should get some nice hair happenning.

 

the above is an excerpt from Rick Harrowell in a post in a discussion on "hairy questions" from 2007 (found in archives), perhaps to get you started in what items are best to tweak.

 

http://www.hash.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=26834&p=222085

 

EDIT - just uploaded a pdf from another thread - describes the properties in more detail (from 2006, by Kevin? Cosmonaut). Scroll down to post #9 in the pdf

MUHAIRproperties.pdf

Edited June 30, 2015 by NancyGormezano

[Heiner]

Hi Folks,

thats exactly what I aam looking for:

Plenty of stuff to learn from!

Thanks so much,

Regards

Heiner