Wanted: Realistic Hair Shaders for 3DL

Okay, this is a rewrite of a post in the Colorwerks thread. 

Iray only got added to Studio some three years ago and in just that shor period of that time there have been, not one, but *several* fairly ambitions, wide-ranging hair shader packages released for it. 

Where were these shader pakages for 3DL? We've needed something like that for *years*. Shaders are essential if you ever need to kitbash a wig, or if you have a continuing series of illustrations and want to give your characters more than one hairdo and have the colors match. And how many freebie wigs, with only one texture set are in your runtime? Or more to the point, excellent hair models which came with maybe four basic colors -- and no one ever released texture add-ons for them to give them a bit of variety?

And not eveyone is going to capitulate to Iray. We just won't.

What I want to know is whether there is any technical reason that keeps people from being able or willing to produce a *realistic* hair shader package for 3DL? 

And the situation is getting only worse now that people are releasing excellent hair models that *only* have Iray materials. After-market 3DL shaders are *needed*.

There are at least a few packages of 3DL hair shaders out there. Destiny's Garden did a fairly extensive set of Toon hair shaders. AliBea did a nice set of Fairy hair shaders. But nobody seems to have done anything about *realistic* hair shaders.

And conversion systems from Iray to 3DL do not appear to be particularly satisfactory. With the 30-day return policy in mind I finally bit the bullet and picked up the new Colorwerks set. And spent a day trying to get it to work.

I loaded a figure that I'd used in a previous illo and OOT's Marigold Hair. This is a hair with only Iray materials. I let Studio go ahead and use 'fit to'. It looked fine in the viewport under standard Texture view. I didn't go to Iray preview since I wasn't going to be rendering in Iray. I didn't bother about poke-through on the ear (or the shirt -- not sure where that came from).

Character is G3F 50% Toon Generations 2 (age 14.52) with various other dial spins. Texture VW Adele Eyes/Riyah Awan

Lights: Khory Caressed by Light 2 Preset 01.

And even though the character is a Toon, I wanted the hair to be as realistic as I could get it.

The Colorwerks shader also looked just fine in the viewport. But I haven't had much satisfaction in taking it any farther than that.

First off; I can't get a comparison render of what the Colorwerks shaders do in 3DL without conversion. The render just sat there for about half an hour at the point that it reached the wig and made no further progress, before I gave up. If it won't even *start* rendering after that much time, that certainly isn't something I'll be using to try to produce an illustration. Leaving something to render overnight is just about acceptable. But not if it won't even *start* rendering.

And, for that matter, rendering the unconverted wig, out of the box, with one of its original base textures in 3DL loses everything. It's almost enough to convince me to just forget about this vendor's wigs, instead of even bothering to put them in my content library for possible future use.

2nd; 1-click character conversion presets that come with a character don't seem to work on wigs. Not that big of a surprise, since they weren't built for wigs. But it's a disappointment all the same. That would have been very helpful if it had worked.

3rd; could someone tell me where to *find* the regular 3DLight Uber shader? I've got omnifreaker's various packages which can apply an UberSurface, a SimpleSurface or a HumanSurface, but none of those presets give me anything with the standard choice of lighting modes (plastic, metalic, skin, matte, glossy plastic, and glossy metalic) that I understand to be a part of the 3DL Uber shader.

So, I did a render using the HumanSurface shader. 

None of the omnifreaker shader presets keep the trans maps, and trying to re-apply it manually doesn't seem to work. That alone makes this lot of shaders usable only for Toons, and at that, only some Toons. And everything gets overloaded in gloss from somewhere. No clear idea of what sliders would fix that. Or if anything even would. Reducing spec and reflection certainly don't.

Same can be said for the UberHair shader (not sure whose that is). That shader doesn't keep the trans maps *or* the color. And all you get for adding color back is the diffuse channel.

Vyktoria's Convert It! package's base converter keeps the color, but not the transmaps, and also pumps up the gloss, although not as badly. Some of the other presets aren't so bad with the gloss, but the color goes wonky.

The Conversion kit/Merchant Resource from SickleYield and RiverSoftArt includes a hair shader. Theirs keeps the texture. It loses the transmaps in the viewport, but it keeps them when rendered. It also noticably overdoes the gloss (why does everyone seem to want hair to look like glass?). This one seems to be the best of the converters, but given my attempt with the HumanSurface shader, I'm not altogether sure it can be tweaked enough to make the Colorwerks shaders -- or anyone else's -- usable in 3DL.

For that matter, I'm not sure whether it's recognizing the mask and overlay color, but it is recognizing the base color, at least. And, for that matter, I didn't convert the hairbands or the cap. Those still have their Iray settings, but the scene still rendered.  Overall render time was just about an hour. Which would be acceptable if something could be done about the gloss. Maybe further tweaking of the bump, displacement and/or normals might give the gossy areas enough texture to make them convincing as hair. But I'm not convinced. 

*Nothing* seems to keep the transmaps in the viewport, But that's *about* all right if it will keep them in the render.

I would pay just as much of a price for an equivalent package of realistic 3DL hair shaders. I don't even care that much about a wide range of different shine settings. A usable reasonably broad range of realisic colors that can be applied to different wigs and come out basically the same color under the same lights. That is what I'm asking for. In all the years Studio has been around, why hasn't anyone produced any?

I don't see any reason why it would be considered impossible. But at present, none of the Iray packages seem to be convertable to a degree that would make them workable in a manner that is either a better execution, or less work than what i already have in my content library. And as things stand, while it's marginally possible (particularly for Toons) it's a thoroughgoing hassle.

So. Okay. for comparison, here another iteration of the same wig, loaded into the same scene, fit to the same figure, usung Destiny's Garden's Toon hair shader in the 'Natural Brown 03’ preset with a couple of additional hits from Marieah's Instant Infinite Variety for Hair shader with a couple of *her* different presets [Even Strands 02 and Finer Even Strands 02] in given two different different additional shades of brown, with the OOT transmaps applied manually and some adjustments to the color of the spec, spec2, velvet color and subsurface color.

As with the RSSY render the cap and hairbands weren’t converted.

It' about works. Needs some postwork where the edge doesn't blend very well. But it about works. For a Toon. Render time for this one was just over 3 hours. Not particularly optimal. But not as bad as some of the wigs in my library. 

But I would really like something that could be applied in a the same Base/mask/overlay procedure that seems to be standard for Iray shader packages. Will somebody please explain to me why is can't be done? It's not like nobody wants it. I can't be the only one.