HAIR - No specular effects [solved-ish]

[Douglas Ferrin]

 

Greetings all!  I've never used the hair material before and don't understand why I'm not getting any specular effects.  I’ve tried everything I can think of, but I have a feeling I’m missing something basic.  Anyone?  Thanks much.

Doug F

[robcat2075]

Hi Doug,

First make sure that the light that is in the position to cast a specular highlight has "Specularity" ON in its properties.

Cool-looking head!

[robcat2075]

Here's a sample PRJ that shows specular on hair in v19.0p

hairtestForSpec03.zip

 

This is the standard specular. Better looking specular can be had with the mu hair specular shader but that is another topic.

 

[Douglas Ferrin]

Hey Rob,

What would AM do without you?  Thanks so much for the advice and the compliment!  As you can see, still not working on the guy, but rendered fine on my hairball.  I'm thinking maybe there's a bug in my project file?  I'm going to load the model into a new project and see how that goes.  Hope it's not a bug in the model.  One way or another, I'll show you how it goes.

Doug

[Douglas Ferrin]

Whoops.  Here's the screenshot.

[Douglas Ferrin]

Rob,

OK, bringing the model into a new project worked.  Hooray. I need to tweak the settings - I'll have a look at the tutorial you sent - but anyway it's working. Thank you so much again for your help!  All my best,

 

Doug

[Douglas Ferrin]

Rob,

If you see this, could you please tell me about the mu hair specular shader that you mentioned.  A few searches on the forum brought up nothing.  Thanks very much!

 

Doug

[robcat2075]

It's mentioned in this post...

It's something you choose in Surface>Specual Render Shader

[robcat2075]

It has a lot of parameters that are tricky to set right. I used it on my Al Capone Head

https://forums.hash.com/topic/40421-possible-human-head-tutorial-subject-al-capone/?do=findComment&comment=371829

 

[itsjustme]

I couldn't find it in a search, but, I made a PDF the last time I found it...so here is what I have.  It's a portion of a thread where all of the controls of muhHair are explained.

 

Hope that helps.

muhair.pdf

[robcat2075]

I had never known what the Kajiya-Kay shader was for until I read that thread.

[Douglas Ferrin]

Rob and David - thanks much for all the info.  I'm

not sure if mu-hair should be built in to mu AM, but it isn't; I somewhat combed through the links you two sent, but didn't see a download for the actual shader.  Do either of you have a link?  By the way, great Al Capone head Rob!

Here's an update of the head I'm working on if you're curious.  Incidentally, did anyone ever make just a face rig, and an installer?  Thanks much.

Doug

[Fuchur]

It should be built in current versions. You are using something recent (after v15 or something like that), right?
Just to mention it: You will have to activate shaders in the rendering dialog of A:M.

Best regards
*Fuchur*

[Douglas Ferrin]

Hi Gerald,

Yeah, I'm using v19; I know to look in the render dialog, and that's where I'm not finding it.  ideas?

Doug

[robcat2075]

Doug,

In the Render settings you just turn "Plug in Shaders" ON, you don't set any particular shader.

 

The two hair shaders only appear as options in the Surface Properties of a Hair Emitter and must be set there.

 

[Douglas Ferrin]

Yep, and there it is.  Thanks Rob and Gerald.