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I'm new to blender trying to import some hair meshes. I'd be grateful if someone could explain why the transparencies look fine in mat preview and eevee but not cycles, and how to fix this.

hair setup

Here is the blend file https://www.mediafire.com/file/482hk07aqvfrn7i/hair002.blend/file

Edit: I opened the blend in 2.8 (original is 3.2) and see a better resultenter image description here.

awanderer
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  • It's the stacked transparency of these so-called hair cards that cause the black areas in Cycles. The render engines Cycles and Eevee calculate transparency differently. (And the Material Preview mode is very similar to Eevee.) You need to increase the setting Light Path > Max Bounces > Transparent in the Cycles render settings: https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/42023/107598 – Blunder Jul 27 '22 at 17:43
  • Thanks for the reply. I've tried doing that previously, the transparent bounces don't seem to effect the render much at all past 30 and looks pretty much the same maxed out at 1024. I don't know if I'm doing something wrong or if you could confirm with the blend file – awanderer Jul 27 '22 at 18:33
  • Two more things: 1. the Normal Map node is missing. Add it between the Image Texture node and the Normal input of the Principled BSDF. Don't forget the Scalp_Scalp.dmx object. It's missing there, too. 2. The imported mesh has Auto Smooth enabled and uses Custom Split Normal Data. This causes shading issues. (https://blender.stackexchange.com/q/60592/107598). Turn it off in Object Data Properties (tab) > Normals – Blunder Jul 28 '22 at 17:22
  • If you only use a transparency shader in the material (=full transparency/invisible mesh) you can check how many bounces you need to remove the black areas. It's 59 bounces for me. The mesh is optimized for game engines and has double planes to counter the backface culling. I would not remove doubles because that introduces new shading issues. In the material setting, you only need the Principled BSDF when you connect the Alpha from the Image Texture node into the Alpha slot of the P.BSDF. The Transparency and the MixShader nodes can be removed then. – Blunder Jul 28 '22 at 17:25

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