Page History

...

This example shows how transparency mapping can be used to simulate hair thinning towards the tips with improved quality. Since transparency also increases render times, the BRDFHair3 material the BRDFHair3 material provides two options to optimize this - the  Opaque for Shadows  and Opaque for GI options allow to skip the transparency calculations for shadow and GI rays, thus speeding up the rendering.

For the first image, the thinning of the strands towards the tips was done by setting the Taper parameter of VRayFur to 1.0. The opacity of the hairs for the 2nd, 3rd and 4th image is done with the  VRayHairSampler the VRayHairSampler texture in the Opacity slot of the BRDFHair3 material, while keeping the Taper parameter in VRayFur to 0.0. The scene is illuminated with one point light with sharp raytraced shadows to better show the difference between the options. Note how opacity mapping improves the anti-aliasing of the hair, while still preserving the same overall look, at the expense of somewhat increased render times. However, the first image also required increased AA samples compared to the rest.

...