Customizable material for stylized or realistic-looking hair. It uses UE5's Layered Material Pipeline, so you can get creative and use as many layers as you need to achieve your desired look.
Quick demonstration:
https://youtu.be/eZ61U5y3E5M
Tutorial, main features described:
Does not contain any hair models.
Does not have post-processing features.
For the layers to work properly, you must use the included Material Layer Blend asset.
For the material to work correctly, your mesh must have UVs that run from root to tip (top->bottom OR bottom->top).
It can be used without textures, relying entirely on curves.
Shader complexity and performance depend on the number of layers used.
Available Layers:
Anisotropy. The core layer of this material, offering extensive control over anisotropic highlights. It includes Anisotropy, Normal, Roughness, AO, and Opacity settings to control the PBR properties.
Selecting Sun Light as the source provides standart anisotropic lighting behaviour. You can also select Head Light, making the anisotropic highlights follow your camera and remain visible from your viewing angle. Alternatively, you can select and configure a custom light direction.
For all the light sources mentioned above, you can adjust the position of the anisotropic highlights horizontally and vertically. You can also lock their vertical position in world space.
The shadow source can be customized independently.
You can stack multiple Anisotropy layers and configure each one differently to position and shape the highlights, allowing you to achieve your desired look.
BaseLit. A basic PBR material layer with basic settings, including Diffuse, Normal, Specular/Metallic, Roughness, AO, Emission, and Opacity. It was designed to serve as a background layer for realistic-looking hair.
FakeLit. This layer has no PBR settings apart from Normal and Opacity. It uses the scene's Sun Light to simulate stylized self-lighting. It was designed to serve as a background layer for stylized or toon hair.
Fresnel. A quick way to add fresnel effects. It also supports curves and normal-based adjustments. You can select the shadow source.
Rim. Similar to the Fresnel layer, but it behaves like a directional rim light. You can adjust the light's relative angle and spread.
Additional Features:
Shared Textures. You can add texture in the SHARED section and configure it's target UV channel and tilling. You can then access this texture from different sections, such as Normal, Roughness, AO, and more, while selecting the texture channel to use (R, G, B, A). This reduces the number of texture samplers and allows you to use different packed maps into single texture.
Normal Spherization (Experimental). Sometimes, anisotropic highlights can appear distorted or broken on uneven surfaces. This feature allows you to adjust the normals used by the anisotropy layer, making them more similar to those of a sphere.
However, this feature may not work well with every hair model, as the normals are adjusted relative to the model's center. If the center is poorly positioned, the effect may look broken.
Included:
5 material layers.
1 layer blending asset.
10 material functions that are used by the material.
7 fiber/hair grayscale textures.
35 pre-created curves.
1 overview scene with 10 material samples.