[WIP] Hair Material with anisotropic reflections

**UPDATE: Release thread here -> **[FREE] Hair Material - Community Content, Tools and Tutorials - Unreal Engine Forums

Hi all!

I’m making an anisotropic reflections hair material since few days ago. (Maybe some of you see it in My Twitter)

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4817133/UnrealForums/TracerHairLite.gif

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4817133/UnrealForums/HairMaterialTestAnim.gif

First gradient color test

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4817133/UnrealForums/HairMaterial2.png

Update 2

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4817133/UnrealForums/HairMaterialAnimeStyle2.png

My actual roadmap:

Hair color
[X] Solid color
[X] Gradient color
] Color by texture

Light
[X] Lit mode (actually unlit only for maximize light control)
[X] Light color affects material
[X] Light intensity affects material

Reflections control
[X] Different textures for anisotropic control (more real hair, anime style…)
] Flow Maps for aniso direction

Mask
[X] Anisotropic reflections masking for maximize control
] Better alpha mask, using SSS for “smooth” cutout

Material instance
[X] Instancing the material

Blueprint for Light Source
] Point light compatibility (actually sun light only)
] Auto-select primary light source (intensity, distance…)

I would like to share my hair material with the community when I finished it.

I hope that this material will be useful for people’s projects :slight_smile:

If you like how my hair project is progressing, please tell me what do you think and also you could…

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4817133/UnrealForums/buymeacoffee.png

All 3D models by Mizuko

English isn’t my first language, so please excuse any mistakes. :slight_smile:

1 Like

Super awesome…lots of improvements on skin in UE4 I was starting to get worried no one would update the hair…Great job…

what’s the Paypal email address…English being my only language that link takes me to a page that’s a little hard to understand…

Hi, thanks!

I fixed the paypal button, please let me know if it works :slight_smile:

Hair has certainly been problematic in UE4. The projects I have seen were far too glossy. This is definitely a more natural reflection.

Just sent you $5. Great work. We could definite use this in our project so please keep it up. Will keep donating as we land more business. How long do you suppose all this will take you?

Wow, you’re doing an awesome job there. Bookmarked this thread already to follow your updates :slight_smile:

Wow, this is what I was looking for. How did you manage to get anisotropic shading in UE4 while it doesn’t support it?

Great seeing this in here on the forums!

This is awesome! How did you do the anisotropic shading? Looks great!

Like a charm…donated some…thanks…

Thanks :slight_smile:

I hope to have a basic version in one or two weeks, it depends if I found many troubles in the process

In any case, I will update this thread with new progress soon :slight_smile:

Thanks all, I’m glad that you like it :smiley:

Thanks :smiley:

I read some documents about hair reflections and techniques (Kajiya-kay, Scheuermann, and some HLSL) and I tested some times until it worked, classic trial and error method :slight_smile:

Thanks for the coffee :smiley:

Yay, thread bookmarked :slight_smile:

Have you looked into Marschner’s hair model? Kajiya-kay is rather dated (though it has the advantage of being highly straightforward) and doesn’t hold up very well in modern scenes. Without the second highlight coming from backscattering, situations where characters are backlit feel like something’s missing. Plus, it’s not physically based, which is rather important to maintain in UE4.

Marschner’s model is very technical but it’s the building block for Disney’s model, which retains the physically based constraints but instead adapts the inputs to more intuitive ones.

Ty! :slight_smile:

Yep, the main base are from Scheuermann’s GDC 2004 presentation, mix of Kajiya-kay and Marschner’s model, “simple” but I think that it works :slight_smile:

A little update

[X] Different textures for anisotropic control (more real hair, anime style…)

b400a6046e5e04002add8da69a638211f9b9e62f.jpeg

“Realistic” texture for anisotropic control vs Cartoon/Anime texture for anisotropic control

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4817133/UnrealForums/HairMaterialAnimeStyle2.png

Very cool MiDaEm

11050698_761647597245672_8391146170870178946_n.jpg