Hair rendered in Cycles lacking shine and luste

Comments

• Padone Posts: 3,998

  August 11 edited August 14

  You can try the daz weighted fac to 0.8 instead of 0.5 to push it more toward glossy.

  However your light in daz studio doesn't seem the default HDRI it is much more flat, or perhaps you're using the camera headlamp that's not imported in blender, that may explain the difference in reflection or "shininess". Also there's some artifacts in the bottom you may want to increase the transparent bounces to 64 or 128, which is needed for complex transmapped hair as this one.

  render tab > light paths > max bounces

  Tone mapping also plays a role in highlights, as they tend to be dimmed with filmic, while khronos tends to be more saturated, best "shininess" is with the standard tone mapping but you risk overexposure this way. Note that you can change tone mapping after rendering to choose what you like best.

  render tab > color management

  p.s. Then for manual tweaking the extended principled option for materials is much easier as it is based on the principled shader. While BSDF may become quite complex depending on the iray shader as in this example.

  Post edited by Padone on August 14
• DrGonzo62 Posts: 364

  August 14 edited August 14

  I have spent quite a bit of time trying to recreate the shine and luster I can get out of hair in DAZ.

  At this point, I don't think that it is possible to make hair look as good in Blender as it can look in DAZ, but with enough tweaking, you'll be able to get it close.
  You can get highlights in Blender, but not the smooth shine that DAZ can render. Probably has to do with the DAZ shaders being fully optimized for this task.
  Because that's what DAZ is for - rendering people as good as it'll get. While Blender is more like the Swiss army knife of 3D apps. It does it all - okay-ish.
  You will have to fully understand the Diffeo created shaders in order to tweak some shine into the hair. I don't think that there are shortcuts for this.

  Think of Blender as a good trade-off to DS, not a full replacement. You win some, you lose some.
  On the left is how good I've been able to make hair look like. Highlights in Blender always seem localized, not generating evenly spread luster like in DS.
  It's a fine line in Blender between improvement - and the look falling apart.
  And it also depends largely on the hair asset. If it is dull looking in DAZ, it'll look worse in Blender. And if it's very shiny in DAZ, it may look broken in Blender.

  On the right is hair rendered in DAZ. I don't think that kind of luster can be achieved in Blender with the currently available shaders.
  Someone please proof me wrong! 8^)

   

  

  

  Ethel Blender.jpg

  682 x 716 - 120K

  

  

  Ethel Hair DS.png

  858 x 885 - 468K

  Post edited by DrGonzo62 on August 14
• Padone Posts: 3,998

  August 14

  Yes you are quite right, but it also depends on the hair. For common transmapped hair the conversion is quite similar. The case by the OP is apart because iray is using the "weighted" mixing, that's more complex to convert to cycles, instead of the common "pbr metallicity/roughness". Finally for SBH hair the iray shader is very approximated as there's no equivalent in blender, thus the materials may look different.
• DrGonzo62 Posts: 364

  August 14

  Thanks Padone.
  While I'd love to have the hair looking like it does in DS, this is a downgrade I for one can live with.
  I've tried cranking up the shine in DS to see if that helps once imported into Blender, but that didn't really work. The hair started to look funky.
  Still plenty of advantages in Blender over DS to stick with it though.
  I'd pay good money for a nice hair shader for Blender! Wink, wink...
   
• Padone Posts: 3,998

  August 15

  Well diffeomorphic is a daz importer, so of course it also tries its best to import the daz hairs. However in general most daz hairs don't really fit to blender, as they are extremely heavy both in geometry and texture size. If possible it is much better to import a daz figure without hair then use some blender native hair, which will look better and also render much faster.

  https://joseconseco.github.io/HairTool_3_Documentation/hair_library/

  The general concept here is that not all the daz content fits to blender. Extensive corrective morph sets are another example, which imports in blender hundreds of morphs thus making the figure extremely heavy. As blender users we should rather take from daz what works and discard the rest, especially when blender has better native options.
• DrGonzo62 Posts: 364

  August 15

  I hear what you're saying. No doubt that DS hair can look so great because it is pretty heavy on the system.
  And I have seen decent looking hair for Blender, but I don't think that I want to wrestle that issue on top of all the other things a DS convert has to deal with.
  I can get DS hair to look good enough for me at this point.
  But thanks for your insight, Padone. I fully agree with you.
• hardwire666 Posts: 74

  August 19

  
  All of what's said above it fairly true. The trap people fall into every time at the start is thinking "Should be better becasue Blender!!" and that's just not the case. One thing I disagree with is the anology "Blender is more like the Swiss army knife of 3D apps. It does it all - okay-ish.". This is inaccurate. Blender is a tool box and its up to you as the mechanic to learn to use those tools well to yeild good results. Blender, Maya, 3DS Max, doesn't matter they all require the same basic understaning of how to properly build and light a scene, render it, and then process that scene.
  
  I know I say this all the time, but its true. Daz and Blender are compleatly differnet pieces of software. So the materials need to be aproached compelatly different. The same is true for translating Daz assets over to any DCC for that matter, or more importantly translating materials over to different renderers all together. Materials in general are a giant time sink and theres no way around it. There is a reason that in a professional pipeline people get higherd just to deal wiht them, Blender is no exception. I say this becasue trying to make renders in Cycles look like renders in Daz is alwasy going to be an uphill battle. It's like forcing a butter knife to be a flat head screw driver. Sure they have some similarities but are fundamentally different tools. To get good results with Blender you need to learn to use and get good result with Blender. The same goes for Maya, or any other DCC. All of this is why I, and some others, junk the materials in import (i use diffeo) and build them form scratch.
  
  All that said there are things to consider. Card hair in Blender will always be difficult to get looking good without all the apropriate maps. As far as cycles is concerned when you hit render its rendering a plane, not hair. The best results in Blender are alwasy going to be form stand/particle/geonode based hair. Card hair can be done, but again you have to have all the apropriate maps and use them properly.
  
  This brings me to another horse I have to beat to death all the time. Lighting and color managment. Daz takes care of all of this for you, alt least for the most part. Daz is meant to be a kind of one-click solution. Belnder is not. To get good results you have to work for it. That means proper lighting setups, and not just relying on an HDRI. Then theres the color managment side which will greatly effect shadows and highlights. The Default "Standard" View Transform is very, very, very, very, very, flat. Change it to AgX, or even better (in my experience) Khronos for far better results. Also don't forget almost all great renders you see get some sort of post processing. Often in something like Photo Shop.
  
  TL;DR - Daz does a lot of stuff for you while Blender does NOTHING for you, and you have to work for it.