Why is it so hard to get white (albino) hair?

kyoto kid

...I have been wondering why is it so difficult to get white hair. Even the so called "white" mats (particularly for Iray) tend to render grey instead of white. I have UHT2 and when I select and apply the "Stark White"colour as well as the highest Brighten setting, the hair still renderers grey.  The only way I've found to to get real white hair is to eliminate the diffuse/base colour(and in Iray, glossy) texture map but then you lose all the detail and the hair looks like a white featureless mass on the head.

I have been working on a true albino character, and albinos lack all melanin in both skin and hair hence their hair will either appear pure white with light golden lowlights (below) or have an overall extremely light golden tint (most often caused by the ambient lighting).  Working at adjusting every channel that affects the colour has been yielding no success.

Ghosty12

I think it has always been a problem getting pure white hair or anything pure white to render properly.. The only way I know how is to do as you have done and to fudge it with lighting..

The only hair products that do well for white are from Out of touch as well as the Toxic hair texture series from another site..  The below is the Leto hair with the supplied textures and about as good as I can get it in 3DL with no fiddling around..

Lyoness

I know that your goal is "white" hair. Yet most the white hair shaders are based more upon a fantasy white hair rather then RL white hair. Perhaps you should explore some of the platinum hair shaders or add yellow tones to the diffuse hair and see if that helps

Llynara

I have several characters with white hair in my Black Kat series. I was frustrated trying to get the hair to look right until I found the OOT Iray Hair Repair shaders (over at Rendo), which work very well on just about any hair. So do the ones here which are included in OOT's products.

Sometimes the default white in some hair products (if there is one) is too white for the lighting and looks cartoonish. I adjust the color and make it grayer on purpose. Ajax hair is pretty white, and the new Heath Hair is really REALLY white. I reshaded the one in the pic below with OOT and like it better. The rest here are also reshaded with OOT's shaders. I prefer those to most of the others, in any color. They just look better on most of the hairs I've tried them on.

Chohole

Pure white and it's opposite pure black have always been the most difficult colours to reproduce in art, whether it is 3d art or old fashioned 2d art.   Can also be difficult in photography, especially if using brighter lights.  Hair is especially difficult as at least with fabric you can use shading easier.  

You will find,  if you examine them closely that most images that have mamaged to portray white successfully, it is not actually pure white, but does have a very slight infusion of colour, blue, pink or yellow are popular tints, or of course even a tiny tad of grey.

3Diva

My advice is to take a light blonde hair shader and increase the lightness and decrease the saturation of the colors in the hair shader settings until you get the results you want. 

SimonJM

I dunno, some 30 years ago I woke up and ... white hair 

Valandar

Here's the reason it's hard to do white hair in 3D:

3D hair is not made of infinitessimal strands with a surface composed of overlaying layers of keratin.

No matter what you do, 3D hair will not behave like hair does in every light. 3D hair that looks "white" in a portrait light set might look like a glowing halo in an outdoor scene, and white hair that looks right in an outdoor scene might look gray or yellow (or even blue!) in an indoor portrait.

We do what we can, and different artists have a different take on what lighting setup should be "the most used", and tend to aim their settings towards that.

nonesuch00

Actually it's is a very light platinum blonde but if you try to use tradition colors of blond hair you won't get that blond of your lady there. And white hair in some people really looks to be a shade of grey or blue but they usually start out with very dark black hair. I'd try matching the white of elephant tusks so lookup the defined color wheel value for ivory and use that as your base color for the hair. 

Summerhorse

My cousin is an Albino. Her hair has a slight yellow tint in most lights.

I take most white hair into photoshop to get it right- otherwise it looks to grey, to yellow or even worse- totally blown out.

SickleYield

Valandar said:

Here's the reason it's hard to do white hair in 3D:

3D hair is not made of infinitessimal strands with a surface composed of overlaying layers of keratin.

No matter what you do, 3D hair will not behave like hair does in every light. 3D hair that looks "white" in a portrait light set might look like a glowing halo in an outdoor scene, and white hair that looks right in an outdoor scene might look gray or yellow (or even blue!) in an indoor portrait.

We do what we can, and different artists have a different take on what lighting setup should be "the most used", and tend to aim their settings towards that.

Yep.  Even Slosh's fabulous hair shaders (and I use them in every single product's promos) require tweaking in different lighting when black or white is used.  It's just something you have to do.

Saiyaness

Yep, I usually tone down white hair by adding a bit of grey or yellow to the Diffuse channel. 

I used OOT's shaders on Dax hair for this render, mucking around with colour until it matched the eyebrows. (Prince Albane II by RawArt). Albino hair is yellow-ish - even the beautiful Nastya Zhidkova has yellow hair, but it's colour-corrected in post, (she assumed :p).

When I think of true white hair, I think of my partner's dad who has wispy, thin, crazy scientist hair (good thing he's a scientist). It's very translucent and always seems to have that halo effect. :p 

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dracorn

You are right about the lighting.  I am working on a render of a white elf.  She is wearing SAV's Ades Hair rendered in bright light in 3Delight.  It's not oversaturated and the shadows are well defined. 

She is Genesis 1 wearing the texture from RM Nieves for V4.  I'm very pleased with the pure white look. 

Taoz

Here's 3DUniverse' Haley Hair, it has only one texture color so I changed the texture in an editor and made some adjustments in DS:

 

 

 

kyoto kid

Lyoness said:

I know that your goal is "white" hair. Yet most the white hair shaders are based more upon a fantasy white hair rather then RL white hair. Perhaps you should explore some of the platinum hair shaders or add yellow tones to the diffuse hair and see if that helps

..,unfortunately The colours supplied with the hair (Rochelle Pony Tail Hair for G3F) are basic "natural" colours with the lightest being a light blonde.  One cannot use colour maps from other hair content which is why I resorted to trying UHT2 which as I mentioned has a "Stark White" colour.  I even took the light blonde map into Gimp, desaturated and lightened it so I still had the texture, then saved it under a different name.  After applying it the colour still came out grey.

I was so glad to get this as it is the first ponytail style that doesn't distort when morphed to extreme length. In the longest preset it almost goes down to the character's heels yet poses beautifully. I have tried so many others including fantasy styles but they were either to 'wild" or when lengthened to what i needed began to distort badly.  I must have invested around 100$ in different pony tail hair content over the years for this character.

kyoto kid

divamakeup said:

My advice is to take a light blonde hair shader and increase the lightness and decrease the saturation of the colors in the hair shader settings until you get the results you want. 

..see my post just above.

kyoto kid

Valandar said:

Here's the reason it's hard to do white hair in 3D:

3D hair is not made of infinitessimal strands with a surface composed of overlaying layers of keratin.

No matter what you do, 3D hair will not behave like hair does in every light. 3D hair that looks "white" in a portrait light set might look like a glowing halo in an outdoor scene, and white hair that looks right in an outdoor scene might look gray or yellow (or even blue!) in an indoor portrait.

We do what we can, and different artists have a different take on what lighting setup should be "the most used", and tend to aim their settings towards that.

...I am using a neutral white (6,500K) photo studio setup so I should get the results I am looking for. If anything there should be more a hint of very light gold than grey as in the photo I attached in the OP

kyoto kid

Taozen said:

Here's 3DUniverse' Haley Hair, it has only one texture color so I changed the texture in an editor and made some adjustments in DS:

 

 

 

...what programme did you use and how did you accomplish it?  I have very little expertise at actually creating textures, only making simple adjustments like I discussed above that apparently are not working.

nonesuch00

​There is a new hair today you can try that has closer to an albino color: http://www.daz3d.com/leora-hair-for-genesis-3-female-s

 

 

 

kyoto kid

...saw that, but it is the wrong style.  For the character I am working on it needs to have a long ponytail.

Here is an old sketch of the character I did many many years ago:

 

nonesuch00

oh well..

hphoenix

If you really want to try to simulate proper 'albino' style white hair, you're going to need a special shader.....and fiber hair.

Albinism causes the pigmentation in the hair to not develop.....so hair is primarily just keratin proteins in thin strands with virtually no pigmentation.  Keratin, is a translucent yellow-white protein.  So like all translucent materials, regular hair shaders are NOT going to do it justice.  Translucent materials have a sort of reverse fresnel effect on transparency, and involve sub-surface scattering (SSS).  Very intensive to calculate (slows down renders dramatically).  And since the translucency is per-strand, the coloration of the hair from a distance creates a shimmery lustre that flat-modeled groupings of strands (how most hair is modelled) isn't going to get that.  It also reacts much more strongly to lighting.....so when you see various albino hair images, the lighting has a much more profound effect on how it looks.....as does the indirect lighting and bounce lighting.

Since most hair's translucency is moderated by the pigmentation in it, these effects are almost unnoticable in normal (non-alibino) hair colors.  They are still present, and actually modelling and shading them properly will bring out some of what is missing in the hair's appearence.  But at a huge cost in time and effort.  It's a trade off.  Also, except in close ups where the hair detail is more visible, and at very high resolution renders.....the fine details that makes it look right get lost anyway.

 

Taoz

kyoto kid said:

...what programme did you use and how did you accomplish it?  I have very little expertise at actually creating textures, only making simple adjustments like I discussed above that apparently are not working.

I used Affinity Photo, ReColor and Brightness tools. But I found another way to do it, using Irfan View, which is free (but I think practically any image editor can do the same):

1. Convert to greyscale (ctrl + G)

2. Color Corrections (shift + G), set Brightness to 115 (or more if you want it brighter). You can also try Gamma Corrrection instead.

3. Save (Original folder) with different name (quality 100%)

Then replace the original texture in the channels using it with the edited one, and play with the surface settings.

Here's a couple of pony tails, modified that way:

nonesuch00

Taozen said:

kyoto kid said:

...what programme did you use and how did you accomplish it?  I have very little expertise at actually creating textures, only making simple adjustments like I discussed above that apparently are not working.

I used Affinity Photo, ReColor and Brightness tools. But I found another way to do it, using Irfan View, which is free (but I think practically any image editor can do the same):

1. Convert to greyscale (ctrl + G)

2. Color Corrections (shift + G), set Brightness to 115 (or more if you want it brighter). You can also try Gamma Corrrection instead.

3. Save (Original folder) with different name (quality 100%)

Then replace the original texture in the channels using it with the edited one, and play with the surface settings.

Here's a couple of pony tails, modified that way:

That's the best yet. You can do the same in gimp too as that is how I converted hair from one color to another.

dracorn

Taozen said:

kyoto kid said:

...what programme did you use and how did you accomplish it?  I have very little expertise at actually creating textures, only making simple adjustments like I discussed above that apparently are not working.

I used Affinity Photo, ReColor and Brightness tools. But I found another way to do it, using Irfan View, which is free (but I think practically any image editor can do the same):

1. Convert to greyscale (ctrl + G)

2. Color Corrections (shift + G), set Brightness to 115 (or more if you want it brighter). You can also try Gamma Corrrection instead.

3. Save (Original folder) with different name (quality 100%)

Then replace the original texture in the channels using it with the edited one, and play with the surface settings.

Here's a couple of pony tails, modified that way:

 

Yes, very good indeed.  I will definately try this out.

Taoz

I've uploaded the preset for the Rochelle hair here if anyone wants it (it was a bit complex to get right so it may save you some time, or serve as a starting point for further experimentation):

http://taosoft.dk/temp/OOT_Rochelle_Hair_White_Mat_Iray.zip

To use it, first load the "06OOTRochelleHair.jpg" in your library into an editor, convert to Greyscale, then set Gamma Correction to 2.50 (I'll recommend Gamma Correction in general instead of Brightness, too much Brigthness may make the texture look washed out). Save edited file in the same folder under the name "06OOTRochelleHair_white_1.jpg". Do the same with the cap texture "06OOTRochelleHairCap.jpg", and save as "06OOTRochelleHairCap_white_1.jpg".

 

 

 

kyoto kid

..Taozen, Thank you.  That looks great and definitely fits my need.  Downloaded and will give that a try tomorrow as it is late and I've had a long busy day dealing with laying the groundwork of getting a new business started, doing my marketing for the week, as well as being a "concerned citizen".

@ hphoenix:  The issue with fibremesh is there is no hair content which comes close to the style of Rochelle Hair.  If I had LAMH (which can be converted to fibremesh) I would have taken a stab at creating it.  I have Garibaldi, but unfortunately for rendering in Iray it requires converting the hair to a .obj, file and with a full tail at the length and with the flexibility I need, the poly count would be ridiculous.

Taoz

kyoto kid said:

..Taozen, Thank you.  That looks great and definitely fits my need.  Downloaded and will give that a try tomorrow as it is late and I've had a long busy day dealing with laying the groundwork of getting a new business started, doing my marketing for the week, as well as being a "concerned citizen".

You're welcome. And I wish you success with your new business project!

RCDeschene

Saiyaness said:

Yep, I usually tone down white hair by adding a bit of grey or yellow to the Diffuse channel. 

I used OOT's shaders on Dax hair for this render, mucking around with colour until it matched the eyebrows. (Prince Albane II by RawArt). Albino hair is yellow-ish - even the beautiful Nastya Zhidkova has yellow hair, but it's colour-corrected in post, (she assumed :p).

When I think of true white hair, I think of my partner's dad who has wispy, thin, crazy scientist hair (good thing he's a scientist). It's very translucent and always seems to have that halo effect. :p 

[/unhelpful comment]

Wow! LOVE the face on that one! What's your recipe? :) 

kyoto kid

..ugh kept getting issues with pathname errors.  Seemed PSP first kept wanting to save the changed files as a .png even though the original specified .jpg (evne after I manually changed the fextension), then it duplicated the base file name.

After I finally got that nonsense worked out everything, the colour applied fine. 

I still had to make some minor adjustments using the UHT2 Utilities as it renedered as a very light blonde even under a white (7200K) halide light setting.

Taoz

kyoto kid said:

I still had to make some minor adjustments using the UHT2 Utilities as it renedered as a very light blonde even under a white (7200K) halide light setting.

The preset has a yellow tint, how it looks depends on monitor calibration (it looks quite different on my two monitors). On the same monitor it should look like the second Rochelle render I posted, otherwise something's wrong. You can get a pure white by selecting all surfaces except Bands, then set Base color to white (1.00 1.00 1.00).

Try this one, if still too yellow increase the last number in the Base color. It's a bit more shiny too.

http://taosoft.dk/temp/OOT_Rochelle_Hair_White_Mat_Iray_1.zip

EDIT: fixed bad link