Ornatrix 3dsmax: How do I get hair strand colour variation in Mental Ray shader network?

Hi I am trying to build a Mental Ray shader network for my Ornatrix hair groom. However I am finding it almost impossible to setup hue variation between strands. I have tried assigning a noise map to the diffuse slot of a Arch & Design material and different gradient ramps to each colour slot of the noise map. The gradient ramps are contrasting gradations of colour and their coordinates are set to WU so the gradation goes along the length of the strand which it does. However the hardest part of working out the shader is trying to get the noise map to provide variation of colour between strands along the emitters surface. Please advise how I can achieve hair strand colour variation? Hope you can help regards Brendan
17 July 2014 #5363
Michael McCarthy	Howdy Brendan, You can use any color variation map that is supported by MR for sure. You can create something like this your self by blending together a UVW mapped texture for the color variation and a WU texture for root to tip. I will try to make a video that shows something like this shortly. Thansk Michael
19 July 2014 #5368
bhobbs	Hi Michael Thansk for confirming the method for producing a hair shader in Mental Ray. I had got as far as setting up a Ramp Shader withg WU coordinates linked to a Arch & Design material. But it was late night and I could not get the variation to work, think a long day at work clouded my judgement of which setting to use for UV layout of variation map. I have now worked out a shader network, thanks again for pointing me in the right direction. I have set up a Arch & Design material with dffuse channel linked to Noise (set to Explicit Channel, UV Tiling no W). This will provide the variation of hair colour between strands. Then I linked a Gradient Ramp to each of the Noise slots and set these to WU coordinates for root to tip coloration. This is the simplest procedural version of a Mental Ray Hair Shader. I will probably build on this as a base to increase the level of realism in future projects.
21 July 2014 #5375
Michael McCarthy	Yep that is a simple and good way to start. I will likely make a quick vid of doing this shortly for others. Glad its working well for you! Thanks Michael
22 July 2014 #5376
bhobbs	Look forward to seeing the video. Let me know when and where to look when you have finished the video.

Posted by:		bhobbs
Data created:	16 July 2014