Graphics Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 14.71
The mother with crummy hair materials, and a ball of fur with effective particle materials
The two most important components of a good mate-
rial for fur and hair are the Alpha texture and the Strand
settings. Let's start with the Strand settings. Figure 14.72
shows the Strand pop-up menu for the mother's hair
material. The key to good hair and fur is to enable Use
Blender Units . Without this setting, a strand's render size
will be measured in pixels, meaning that far away strands
will have the same apparent width as near ones. It is a
screen space sizing method and will produce poor results.
With Use Blender Units enabled, strands are given a
specifi c size in real Blender units, and this will be refl ected
in the renders.
After you've chosen Use Blender Units , though, what is
a good size? Some back-of-the-envelope calculations and
a bit of trial and error lead me to a value of around 0.020
Blender units for the thickness of a hair strand. Of course, this value is dependent on the overall scale of the rest
of the project and may need to be fi ne tuned up or down to suit your own needs. Rather than use Strand menu
sizing to generate a taper in the hair, I used an Alpha texture, so the Start and End values are the same.
Figure 14.72
The Strand menu
The Minimum setting below Start and End specifi es exactly that: the minimum value in Blender units that
will be allowed when calculating the strands, regardless of how far away they might be from the camera.
For human hair, those are the relevant strand settings.
Looking at the dog's fur in Figure 14.73, the settings are a bit different. The Start size for fur strands is
larger, 0.050 , thinning to 0.020 for the End value. Note that the Minimum value is 0.035 . This means that
the End will be forced to at least 0.035 . However, this does not produce the same effect as simply setting
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