Creating anisotropic highlights using the Unreal Hair Shader

Development Rendering
1

Hi,

I am relatively new on the Unreal scene and wondered if anyone has successfully managed to create the illusion of the anisotropic highlights that occur on short fur. The best example I have found is the way highlights play on the fur of a black stallion.

I have been briefly looking at the new hair shader in Unreal to see whether this is a possible solution, however there seems to be no documentation on how to implement the shader. I have been looking to see whether creating a vector map in Mari would help to drive the tangency of the hair. I wonder has anyone else had any success with using the hair shader in this way? Any potential tutorials on where I might be able to find useful documentation would be fantastic.

Cheers

2

There are some difficult details, but the main thing you will need is to make a tangent map in place of a normal map. This would be the 3D vector direction of the hair at each point on the texture relative to the mesh surface. When you use the hair shading model in your material, it will have a tangent input. This should give you correct anisotropic lighting.