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My favorite result of something I worked on personally is this one.
Combination of the right lighting and adjustments to the texture.
For that you could try and add a Top Coat to your hair (if you haven't already) and then set "Top Coat Layering Mode" to "Weighted".
Using "Top Coat Weight", you can control how much light is reflected back from the surface. A value of 0.05 f.e. means, that 5% of the incoming light is reflected.
I have been tossing back and forth for a few days on whether to reply to this thread or not because I don't want to come across as opportunistic. I have a hair shader product coming out for Iray "soon"... it is through testing and just waiting for a release date. It comes in 24 colors, 2 versions of each (wide textures and narrow textures, depending on the hair it is applied to), and there are several settings to compensate for glossiness, shine, and transparency issues. Basically, the shaders replace the original hair textures with my custom textures, but leave the original transparency maps. The reason I did this was so that I could match my bump, displacement, and glossiness maps to the textures. I won't derail this thread with excessive details, but here is just one of the promo images...
Seems good and an instant buy. :-)
Looks really nice. I'll probably grab that as well!
I put together an edited summary of this thread, up to this point, to help me out when I am trying to customize a hair model for Iray. This may be a little easier for someone to follow, and credit goes to everyone who has participated in this thread:
Iray Hair Shader Tips
For some more studying on human hair. This article was very helpful: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3250015/
Breakdown
The optical properties of an individual hair strand are mainly determined by the translucent material of the hair, the amount of pigmentation the hair contains, and the geometric properties of the surface of the hair strand.
A hair fiber is a translucent material with a regular refractive index of 1.55.
The cortex of the hair fiber contains grains of melanin, which are responsible for the coloring of the hair. There exist two types of melanin: the most common type is eumelanin, which is responsible for the black or brown coloring of the hair, and there is the less common pheomelanin, which colors the hair yellow or red. As with human skin, the color of hair is determined by the melanin content. The darker eumelanin and the lighter pheomelanin are distributed in different proportions in human hair, which result in the different color tones of hair among different people.
In science, a grouping of 11 to 12 different color tones are used, ranging from black to light blond. The natural appearance of a person's hair is genetically determined and depends on the skin tone and the eye color of that person. In gray hair, the hair shaft does not store pigment; the production of melanin has subsided and the melanin is replaced with deposited air bubbles.
The special structure of the surface of the hair, composed of overlapping scales, has a major influence on how the hair interacts with light. As a semi-transparent cylinder, a portion of the light is reflected directly off the fiber surface, which causes a specific reflection with the same color as the incident light.
Another portion of the light penetrates the fiber by refraction, is absorbed partially, and then returns through subsurface scattering to the outside, causing a diffuse reflection with the same color as the pigments within the fiber.
But unlike a perfect cylinder, the surface of the fiber has scales, which diverge the light rays slightly by an amount of just about 3°. This divergence causes the phenomenon of dispersion. Because of the scales, specular reflection and internal reflection follow different directions and produce separate peaks of reflection.
The specular reflection is the primary hair reflection and has the same color as the light, the internal reflection is the secondary hair reflection and adapts to the color of the pigments present within the hair.
The high resolution offered by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) makes this technique ideal for observing morphological changes induced by chemical agents on the hair fiber. Similarly, optical microscopy tools, though having lower spatial resolution relative to SEM, are useful for inspecting the morphology of both the surface and the interior of hair.
Comment: From that (Hair Settings Option 3), I treated the backscattering and refraction colors as the "melanin" layers and the top coat as the specular reflection from the "scales". I suspect that if you treat the backscattering color as pheomelanin and tint it with reds or yellows, and the refraction color as the eumelanin and tint it with browns and blacks... you could get some really visually interesting results. For these settings they are pure white though and use the color maps that normally go in the diffuse color slot in 3Delight shaders as the pigmentation instead. This is because I was striving for a good balance between simplicity and reality. Also, you can tint the top coat color for richer tones, but since the article mentioned that it reflected the color of the light shining on it rather than scattering more of the pigmentation of the hair, I chose to make it pure white as well to enable it to do just that. I did test multiple HDRs for different light colors and levels and the settings responded very well.
3Delight to Iray Conversion - Transparency Maps: On a transparency map grey basically equals translucency...and with 'natural' translucency the 'extra' from the grey areas on the map will make it almost 'not there', it's so translucent/transparent... Option: Convert to the Iray shader and then turn the opacity up to more than 1. Also: Set the material for the hair strands to the Iray base material then reset the the Cutout Opacity to a value of 2; and yes, big difference. Add a displacement map (basically the hair bump map) then set SubD to a value of 3 and the hair looks to have even more depth.
3Delight to Iray Conversion - The Lighting Model: This adjustment option works more for the benefit of 3DL as the settings no longer appear in the surfaces editor after converting a shader to any of the Iray ones. Just a quick note on this; the primary effect the Lighting Model has is to change the way the material is auto-converted to Iray. So, it's not useful in Iray, but if you change the Lighting Model before converting, the conversion will be different. This also helps if you are leaving your materials in their standard mode, but you want them to behave a little better in Iray. (For instance, I changed a wallpaper from Plastic to Matte, because when it was Plastic the autoconverted material was reflecting a nearby light. Once I changed it to Matte, the autoconversion no longer made it as reflective.)
3Delight to Iray Conversion: The modeling of the hair makes a huge difference. Some works just fine out of the box, others, not so much. One thing we tried, mostly successfully for hair that don't work out of the box, is to use two instances of the hair, scale one slightly differently (Larger or smaller depending on the hair) and add a little translucency. Instanced using the same maps should add little to the weight of the scene. As for the "scalp" it looks like the best Cutout Opacity setting is between 0 and 0.1. The hair looks best with the higher Cutout Opacity--set at: 3.0--even though it looks more plastic (not using a translucent echo).
Shader Option - Silk: If you want to start from an existing shader, you can use a silk shader (applied with CTRL-click to preserve texture images)--this may only work for straight/flat hair styles without too much fringe. Use a higher bump or displacement (greater than 1.0).
Diffuse & Translucency: I set the base colour to scatter and transmit, used a small amount of translucency (set to 0.2) on everything except the scalp, raised the gloss a little bit and added a light behind the young miss to get a nice halo effect. Play around with the Base Color; make it a bright blue, and it really shows where the Base Color is applied, and how strongly.
Translucency: If using translucency leaves areas of the hair white, that is a function of the Translucency Color, which is set to white by default when you set Translucency Weight to anything but 0.00. If you set the Translucency Weight to 0.5 and use the same color as the hair, that could eliminate the ghost.
Translucency Color & Weight: The right weight to use may be dependent on the hair object. With Translucency Weight set to 0.25, setting the Translucency Color to black or a color from the Base Color texture can improve the rendered results. Until you set Translucency Weight, the other settings for translucency are hidden. (This is true of a good number of Iray options. To reveal all the controls you can click on "Show Hidden Properties".)
Bump & Displacement: Turn up the bump (1 is a lower value in Iray than 3Delight). If the hair doesn't already have SubD, add it in the scene tab button and turn it up to 2 or so to make it look smoother and less jagged, too. You can also profitably fiddle with the gloss settings.
Gloss - Top Coat: If you are getting good results from the translucency layering, but can´t get the glossiness right, try adding a Top Coat to your hair (if you haven't already) and then set "Top Coat Layering Mode" to "Weighted". Using "Top Coat Weight", you can control how much light is reflected back from the surface. A value of 0.05 f.e. means, that 5% of the incoming light is reflected.
SSS - Wax Shader Option: I turned it (look up iray wax shader) to wax to get some back light scattering from behind. It also helped reduced the painted feel of the diffuse map and made it something softer looking. Apply the wax shader while pressing ctrl to retain the maps. Adjust the translucency stuff to your liking, I think I used 0.5, maybe less for the base scalp (and can`t remember the correct name of the value, it`s all too new).
SSS - Slider Option: You can get the same result without using the wax shader by turning up the SSS and translucency and giving them a neutral transmitted color (white or gray). It will slow the render but it will get that "light shining through the hair" effect.
Cutout Opacity: In situations where the Opacity map just seems blurry, you can sometimes use a quick sharpen filter (Photoshop or GIMP). You will see hairs, not just hair. What may be going on with the uber-transparent hair: Transparency maps were no longer being auto-corrected for gamma. So, you may want to try manually tweaking/shutting off the gamma correction on the transparency maps. The results are consistent with the maps being grey instead of black and white.
Opacity Maps: This could have something to do with the 'blacks' of the trans map not truly or fully black and the whites not being fully white for that matter. There was mention of the incorrect gamma being applied to the trans map by default; shunting blacks to a gray shade which would make more of the geom transparent. Note: trans maps that go in as jpeg are assumed to have gamma 2.2 applied and are not corrected by iray, something along those lines. HDRs stay at gamma of 1.0.
Regarding Transparencies: One fairly easy thing I've done is to go into Cutout parameter settings, disable limits, and then set cutout opacity to 1.5 or so. This effectively makes the map scale higher, and, thus, become less transparent/cut. (You can do the same in Refraction, if that's your method of choice, or whatnot)
Improving Transparency Maps: Try taking the opacity map to an image editor like Photoshop and change gamma to 2.2 using Exposure adjustment. Be sure to backup the original opacity map first. Your opacity map should then work as expected.
A Decent Test Lighting Setup: Use a sun node assigned to a DistantLight directly in front of the figure and a photometric spotlight on either side pointing behind the figure. For the translucency tests, another photometric light was directly behind the figure pointing to the back of his head. (Doesn't seem to have made any difference in the hair, though.)
Note: In the Render tab, "Crush Blacks" is at 0.2 by default, and does the opposite of what it sounds like. 0.0 gives far better grades of dark shadows, the higher the number, the more "brighter" things get crushed to black.
Hair Settings Option 1
Base Mixing: PBR Specular/Glosiness
Base Color: 1 rgb(0, 0, 0) - Product's Diffuse Color Map applied
Glossy Layered Weight: 0
Share Glossy Inputs: Off
Glossy Color: 0 rgb(0, 0, 0)
Glossy Specular Color: 0 rgb(0, 0, 0)
Refraction Index: 1.55
Refraction Weight: 0.75
Refraction Color: 1 rgb(0, 0, 255) - Product's Diffuse Color Map applied again
Refraction Glossiness: 0
Base Bump: 1 - Product's Bump Map applied
Top Coat Weight: 0.25
Top Coat Color: 1 rgb(0, 0, 255) - Product's Diffuse Color Map applied again
Top Coat Color Effect: Scatter & Transmit
Top Coat Glossiness: 0.75
Top Coat Layering Mode: Weighted
Top Coat Bump: 2 - Product's Bump Map applied again
Thin Walled: On
Cutout Opacity: 1 - Product's Opacity Map applied
EDIT: Default settings omitted. For red haired figures, I duplicated the hair node and added 0.50% scale to it, posed it a little different, and set the scalp on the duplicate to 0 opacity - this gave the hair much better volume.
Hair Settings Option 2
Base Color = texture map + color
Diffuse Roughness = 0
Translucency Teight = .1
Base Color Effect = Scatter Only
Transucency Color = (what you think the transparent color should be)
Glossy Layered Weight = .63
Share Glossy Inputs = On
Glossy Color = 1.00 0.95 0.80
Glossy Color Effect = Scatter and Transmit
Glossy Reflectivity = 0.49
Glossy Roughness .2
Glossy Ainsotropy = 0.97
Glossy Ainsotropy Rotations = 0.28
Base Bump Map = 2.6
Top Coat = 0.97
Top Coat Color (based on translucency color)
Top Coat Color Effect = scatter only
Top Coat Roughness = 0.52
Top Coat Layering Mode = fresnel
Top Coat IOR = 2.21
Top Coat Anisotrophy = .97
Top Coat Radiusotations = .25
Cutout Opacity = 1.15
Displacement Strength = .5
Minimum Displacement = -0.3
Maximum Displacement .3
SubD Displacement Level 2
Tips: Swap out hair textures with tilable textures set to 2+ horizontal tiling (also good for testing hair shader on a sphere for faster test rendering). Turn up specularity on blond or red hair (any fair hair, really). On hair without modeled strands, a tiling hi-contrast displacement (strength:0.5;min:-0.3;max:03;subd:2;) improves strand texture in hair flow, especially on sheer hair.
Hair Settings Option 3
Models:
Genesis 2 Female
Toulouse Hair
Basicwear Top & Shorts (gray)
Shape:
Personal Character 100%
Materials:
Bree Diffuse/Bump/Opacity Maps - personal Iray adjustments
Toulouse Hair Bump/Opacity Maps + Jewel Hair Diffuse Maps
Pose:
G2F basic pose 04
Excitement Expression = 0.25
Happy Expression = 0.25
Smile Full Face Expression = 0.25
Smile Open Full Face Expression = 0.25
Eyes Up/Down: 0.50
Eyes Side-Side: -0.35
Camera:
Headlamp = Off
Render Settings:
1080x1080
Photoreal
Optimization = Speed
Filtering = Firefly & Noise
Environment = Dome Only & Finite Sphere w/Ground
Map = SnowPano_4k_Ref.hdr "New Snow"
From: http://hdrlabs.com/sibl/archive.html
Environment Lighting Resolution = 4000
Ground Origin Y = 0.50
Iray Uber Settings:
Base Mixing = PBR Specular/Glossiness
Base Color = 0 (Pure Black) - No Maps
Diffuse Roughness = 0
Translucency Weight = 0
Glossy Layered Weight = 0
Share Glossy Inputs = Off
Glossy Color = 0 (Pure Black)
Glossy Color Effect = Scatter Only
Glossy Specular = 0 (Pure Black)
Glossiness = 0
Glossy Anisotropy = 0
Backscattering Weight = 0.65
Backscattering Color = 1 (Pure White) + Diffuse Map
Backscattering Glossiness = 0.75
Backscattering Anisotropy = 0
Refraction Index = 1.55
Refraction Weight = 0.45
Refraction Color = 1 (Pure White) + Diffuse Map Again
Refraction Glossiness = 0
Abbe = 0
Glossy Anisotropy Rotations = 0
Base Thin Film = 0
Base Bump = 1 + Bump Map
Normal Map = N/A
Metallic Flakes Weight = 0
Top Coat Weight = 0.25
Top Coat Color Effect = Scatter Only
Top Coat Glossiness = 0.75
Top Coat Layering Mode = Fresnel
Top Coat IOR = 1.55
Top Coat Anisotropy = 0
Top Coat Anisotropy Rotations = 0
Top Coat Thin Film = 0
Top Coat Thin Film IOR = 1.50
Top Coat Bump Mode = Height Map
Top Coat Bump = 2 + Bump Map Again
Thin Walled = On
Emmission Color = 0 (Pure Black)
Cut Out Opacity = 1 + Opacity Map
Displacement Strength = N/A
Horizontal Tiles = 1
Horizontal Offset = 0
Vertical Tiles = 1
Vertical Offset = 0
UV Set = Default UVs
Smooth = On
Angle = 89.90
Round Corners Radius = 0
Round Corners Accross Materials = On
Note: These settings appear to have completely fixed all the hair problems some people encountered. It can help to save a preset shader with these values; you still have to go in and add the diffuse, bump and opacity maps, but these settings can save enough on tweaking time that it's no problem at all to update a couple of things manually.
Presets: A "Shader preset" is only for a single surface, and can be applied to any surface. A "Material(s) Preset" is for a collection of surfaces (there is a selection box to chose what), and only works on items that have the same zone names. A "Scene Subset", is kind of like saving a "Scene", except you can select what you want to save. To save a Preset, you can select the "Save As..." option in the main menu, or you can click on the "+" option found in the lower right corner in the content library. The "+" option saves the preset in the path that is currently open. Unless you change the path in the save window that opens up. For a Scene Subset, you will then see a dialog asking what parts to save.
Product Hair Shaders: You can get good results using the Iray shaders from Mec4D Unshaven 2 for Genesis 2 Male(s). The shaders are totally independent from textures. The Iray shaders from Leyton Hair for Genesis 3 Female(s) and Genesis 2 Female(s) by AprilYSH. While they are setup to work with the product textures you can apply it to other hair products pressing Control/Command key to preserve the original texture. It is a good starting point. OOT IrayPair Hair Shaders for DAZ Studio Iray by Outoftouch has a completely different shader setup. It works better on multi-layered hairs and brings a lot of textures to make the work a little bit easier. Some of the most beautiful results using an Iray shader comes from the fibermesh hairs. Unfortunately, there are few products using this technology.
...I just use Slosh's UHT2 shaders which give excellent results and have several setting options for cutout opacity, translucency, and brightness. Not into spending a lot of time fiddling with every channel each time I work on a new character as I feel I'll never get any work done if I do. Skin is bad enough (which is why I have Beautiful Skins for G3F as well as am waiting on the release of Skin Builder Pro3)
I have OOT's IrayPair Hair Shaders, but I have a number of hair items that don't work well with it. I really appreciate having all the settings in one place, where I can refer to them when the hair shaders don't give a satisfactory result. (Loved this so much, avmorgan, I put it in a Word doc and created my own pdf of your post! Thank you for the effort.)
Nice compilation, thanks. But I found some errors, the ones marked in red. The color black, or "0" as given, would rather be (H 0, S 0, V 0), since (H 0, S 0, V 255) would be plain white! If someone not that experienced would put that into the "Emission Color" parameter, it will make that hair an emitter. I'd also recommend to better either use common sRGB (0 - 255) or linear space values (0.00 - 1.00) to list the respective color values for the R, G and B color channels. Hue, Saturation and Value are rather seldom used. The one marked in green are defaults, and for that reason I wouldn't explicitly list them. Dropping those would make a parameter value listing less "wall-of-text" and IMO easier to read and work off.
That's basically what I did, then I came back here and dropped in the whole summary.
Oooo. Glad you caught that. Obviously, I copied the original verbatim; that's exactly the kind of thing I'd follow to the letter and go crazy trying to figure out what I'd done wrong!
I corrected the blacks to rgb (they seem to have been redundant even as HSV values in the original, but I'll leave the clarifications in) I also cut out the defaults you recommended. Thanks!
Been there, done that.
And then I wondered why in all heavens would someone make the head of a figure turn into a lightbulb. 
Sometimes, when you apply the Iray Uber Base to a 3delight material, the Emission Color parameter will automatically receive a RGB 255,255,255 color in the process. The Fairy Queen: Dynamic Royal Dress is one of them f.e. Barely noticeable in bright daylight, but in dim lighting the dress "starts" to glow in a "Clash of the Titans" fashion (the one from 1981, not the remake of 2010). That's why I became accustomed to always check the Emission Color parameter after converting a 3delight material into an Iray one.
Most of the time I use MEC4D's "Unshaven 2 for Genesis 2 Male(s)" presets and multiply bump strentgh by 10.
I have not run into the emission conversion glitch, but I appreciate the tip! There are a few iray hair shader presets I'll use for convenience; f.e. the ones in Subsurface Workshop - SSS Shaders for Iray, as well as Mec4D's Unshaven 2 for Genesis 2 Male(s). I'll remember the bump multiplication--half the time I seem to forget to adjust that. The thing that got me to tinkering with hair shader settings was my desire to make better redheads--and even blonds can be hard to get right. Mostly, I want to see the right interactions with my lighting, so I play with the translucency, transmission and gloss quite a bit.
These are my tests regarding hair and IRAY. Hope the picture is self explaining.
Seems mostly it's the texture quality and then the light settings. I just save as a shader preset the settings for a hair that looks good in iRay & then apply those shader settings to a hair that doesn't look as realistic. Different iRay settings though can change which hairs look good and which don't. Sometimes iRay settings and shader settings just aren't enough to make a hair realistic for iRay.
I know that things made in Wings 3D may do it because the default shader that Wings uses has emission in it. Not sure why, but it does ;). I made a backdrop prop and when I pulled it into DS and ran the Iray Uber shader script, it glowed. LOL
Laurie
I know that some hair is hit and miss with IrayPair because (and I'm not going to name names), while I love the vendor's hair styles and I do buy lots of their hair, I really don't like the transmaps they make. IrayPair uses the original transmaps. If those look bad, IrayPair can only do so much ;).
Laurie
Any AMBIENT color/strength combo on the 3DL base shader will translate to EMISSION = ON when translated to Iray!
In other words if Ambient is not 0 0 0 or 0% (or both), then it will have an active emission channel when translated to Iray.
I didn't read the whole thread so if this was already mentioned. Sry. One of my favorite tricks to the double up hair props. (Half the opacity but 2 wigs) Resulting in double the strands, double the morphs and twice the volume. Making them appear soft, and silky. Rather then looking like straw, or wood.
Examples Below
...nice work. The first two are totally adorable.
I've done this myself a couple times.
Thanks! That's a great tip and some fantastic renders. Can't wait to try it out!
Avmorgan,
This was very helpful! Thank you very much for sharing all these settings.