shave + vrayHairMtl3

[sharktacos]

What we do is plug the diffuse output of the hair Sampler into these inputs of the hair material

• diffuse color
• secondary spec color
• transmission color

This will pipe the nHair color, with randomization, into the vray material. You can also therefore use UV maps applied in the nHair color. We keep the other parameters pretty standard (based on the presets) but raise the diffuse a bit up to 0.2. With the presets it's important to have GI on to get a good look.

Optionally you can also connect the vrayHairSampler's distanceAlongStrand output into the vCord of a ramp texture and then input the ramp into the material's transparency to get tip fade (the ramp should be black at the bottom and white at the top for the tip, using an exponential falloff). It is preferable however to do this with the hair system hair width graph as adding transparency to the material will increase the render time.

hope that's helpful

[jpwestmas]

What we do is plug the diffuse output of the hair Sampler into these inputs of the hair material

• diffuse color
• secondary spec color
• transmission color

This will pipe the nHair color, with randomization, into the vray material. You can also therefore use UV maps applied in the nHair color. We keep the other parameters pretty standard (based on the presets) but raise the diffuse a bit up to 0.2. With the presets it's important to have GI on to get a good look.

Optionally you can also connect the vrayHairSampler's distanceAlongStrand output into the vCord of a ramp texture and then input the ramp into the material's transparency to get tip fade (the ramp should be black at the bottom and white at the top for the tip, using an exponential falloff). It is preferable however to do this with the hair system hair width graph as adding transparency to the material will increase the render time.

hope that's helpful

Thanks a ton, you've already sparked a bunch of great ideas, plus, it takes me a bit to remember things that I did years ago.

[jpwestmas]

What we do is plug the diffuse output of the hair Sampler into these inputs of the hair material

• diffuse color
• secondary spec color
• transmission color

This will pipe the nHair color, with randomization, into the vray material. You can also therefore use UV maps applied in the nHair color. We keep the other parameters pretty standard (based on the presets) but raise the diffuse a bit up to 0.2. With the presets it's important to have GI on to get a good look.

Optionally you can also connect the vrayHairSampler's distanceAlongStrand output into the vCord of a ramp texture and then input the ramp into the material's transparency to get tip fade (the ramp should be black at the bottom and white at the top for the tip, using an exponential falloff). It is preferable however to do this with the hair system hair width graph as adding transparency to the material will increase the render time.

hope that's helpful

I'm at a loss on how you are using the paintFX hairSystemShape Node along with the Vray Hair Material. Are you somehow graphing them together using the connection editor?

I only ask because just hooking up the diffuse, secondary spec and transmission to the vray hair material, doesn't appear to change the colors or use the color randomization field from the Hair System Shape node for paint FX. So I'm thinking you are graphing something with nHair colors that I'm not understanding.

[sharktacos]

I'm at a loss on how you are using the paintFX hairSystemShape Node along with the Vray Hair Material. Are you somehow graphing them together using the connection editor?

I only ask because just hooking up the diffuse, secondary spec and transmission to the vray hair material, doesn't appear to change the colors or use the color randomization field from the Hair System Shape node for paint FX. So I'm thinking you are graphing something with nHair colors that I'm not understanding.

For Maya nHair that you can add a vray attribute to the hairSystemShape and connect a Vray Hair Material to it. Much easier than with Shave. Then in the HyperShade you connect the hair Sampler (middle mouse drag) into the various inputs of the Vray Hair Material in the attribute editor. By default it connects the outColor to all of them, which is what I want.

[jpwestmas]

For Maya nHair that you can add a vray attribute to the hairSystemShape and connect a Vray Hair Material to it. Much easier than with Shave. Then in the HyperShade you connect the hair Sampler (middle mouse drag) into the various inputs of the Vray Hair Material in the attribute editor. By default it connects the outColor to all of them, which is what I want.

Ah ok, so you don't use Shave at all then I presume. I was hoping to use shave dynamics, it's faster and better performing for me. I'm creating long hair which isn't easy.

[sharktacos]

Ah ok, so you don't use Shave at all then I presume. I was hoping to use shave dynamics, it's faster and better performing for me. I'm creating long hair which isn't easy.

No, we pretty much stopped using Shave and switched over to nHair. But I'm pretty familiar with Shave too. You should be able to hook up the materials similarly.

[jpwestmas]

No, we pretty much stopped using Shave and switched over to nHair. But I'm pretty familiar with Shave too. You should be able to hook up the materials similarly.

Unfortunately no, nothing seems to work yet outside of just rendering the raw shave colors (which is much slower to render). I tried hooking up the randomize color feature from a separate nhair system to the overall hair color but that will not provide random colored results, only a single color. I also tried the randomByStrand feature in the hair filter and hooked that up to the vCoord of a VRamp with 3 colors on the ramp. No joy there, it will only render a single color, which is the color at the bottom of the ramp.