"My" Hair Shader [WORK IN PROGRESS] (Patreon)

Hey, let me tell you a story.

I was not always a smut-maker. I indeed have always enjoyed making 3D art and, after a while, got into the technical aspects of it. I like sculpting 3D models, working with shaders, materials, textures, etc.

As a result, I have developed the habit of reworking almost every model I use in my images. Making skin or hair shaders from scratch, for an example. The issue with that, if you know anything about anything, is that it's *more work*. Not only that, but it's more work that is hard to share between models. Not every model is made equal.

Thinking long and hard about this, I decided to look for model-agnostic solutions, that is to say, things that will work with (virtually) ANY model I throw at it simply because it does not depend on a model's unique attributes.

That's how we get to this:



This is "my" hair shader, the one I've been using for essentially every model I've worked with over the last few weeks, and it's a culmination of everything I've learned so far about hair materials.

I say it is "mine" because none of this is new, or groundbreaking. It's just what works for me, and I'd like to share it. I have worked hard, however, to make it as straight-forward as can be.

Recommended for detailed, high density "hair cards", not for particle hair. CYCLES ONLY.

How it works:

tl;dr append the node group and use it as your one and only hair shader. Connect your color, alpha and (optionally) normal maps into it, and mess around with the sliders/settings until you get a good result!

1. Download the .blend file attached.

- 1.1 In Blender, open the scene you're working on.

- 1.2 On the top left, go to File > Append.

- 1.3 Find wherever you placed my .blend file and double-click it.

- 1.4 Inside, look for a folder called "NodeTree" and inside that look for "HAIR (Append)". Double-click it.

2. You should be thrown back into your scene. Click on the hair you'd like to apply this to.

- 2.1 Assuming it already has a material, go into your Shader Editor window (with the model and material still selected).

- 2.2 Inside, press Shift+A, and click on "Search".

- 2.3 In the search bar, look for "HAIR". You should see it pop up as a "Node Group". (Watch out for Hair BSDF, it's not what you're looking for. Mine is just "HAIR (Append)".)

- 2.4 With it inside your Editor, connect "Output" into your Material Output as the "Surface".

3. Assuming you now have something that looks like the image below, let's go into what everything means. 

- "Hair Color" is where you'll input the texture used to give your hair color. At first it might not look right, so mess around with the sliders below, though try to keep "Glossiness" at 0.1, since other values are either too dull or too shiny.

If nothing works, remove the texture from the shader and try to manually input a similar color using the color wheel. It might give you better results. Always use references of the characters you're working with so that you get it right.

- "Brighten / Darken" does what it says. Though keep in mind that bright is SUPER BRIGHT, and dark is TOO DARK, so don't abuse it.

- "Saturation" is just to boost/desaturate the hair color.

- "Glossiness" is essentially "Roughness", but it's very aggressive. Some hair is glossier than others, but 0.1 is usually fine, so keep it there. You MAY be able to get some extra detail by plugging in a roughness map, but it's up to you to experiment. Often not necessary.

- "Alpha" is where your alpha texture goes.

- "Normal Map" is where your normal TEXTURE goes, not your normal NODE, since it already has one inside. It's honestly optional, since I've not seen normal maps do a whole lot to most hair models.

Comment below if you have any issues, but please do read through beyond the tl;dr as your problems might be your own fault. :)

Some examples of this bad boy in action: