Iam trying to learn implementing characters in unreal 4 . so far everything seems fine but I am stuck with getting the hair to look decent. I am using the shaders from unreal’s photorealistic character project.
The hair looks fine in that proejct but when I migrate the shaders into my project the hair looks horrible. Its really dirty, fuzzy and looks low quality.
I have settings set to epic and temporal AA. Even at the default settings on the shader itself i just cannot seem to get rid of the fuzziness. I want to get the hair to look sharp and clear as the demo project. This is another project by Thomas Pecht and his attempt at unreal hair is stunning: ArtStation - Nova - Skin and Hair elements
Post your textures or samples, it can help. Also, maybe he created 8k screenshots and scaled it down later? Hard to say. Always you can ask Thomas Pecht.
Hi Vaheva, yes i spoke to him. He said he played with the thickness which is probably what i have to try but i cant seem to get the correct amount. I am also working to real scale values.
I have no big experience with hairs in ue, but here similar rules like with rest of materials (mostly). I believe you followed this tutorial Photorealistic Character | Unreal Engine Documentation
Comparing your and his material I think, his hair is thicker and maybe better antialiased (texture). I don’t know textures resolution your and his, here can be key too. Another idea - overall hair mesh complexity. You said, you have temporal AA. Here another problem, because “Temporal AA does not currently work with the console command “HighResShot” to make screenshots that are bigger than the screen resolution. You have to turn Temporal AA off or use FXAA to make those screenshots.”1.14 - AA Method | Unreal Engine Documentation
Next important factor - gpu. Different graphic cards can do some things better or worse. Not mention overall gpu quality. Back to temporal AA, as you see, you have to use production AA and run it as final “game” on good gpu and high resulution, maybe 4K or better with max AA settings.
This all above can be important, but key can be elsewhere of course, but I think, is something in this I described.
Another important factor I noticed just now, you have very bad lights/shadow settings comparing to his example. I not noticed it before, because weird skin material, but this is very important too. Set your shadow settings max and correctly, this is very important too. Look on shadow over right eye of your guy. This looks very bad, scattered. If overlapped on hairs, it can create very bad effects. If I can suggest, post high res image of your hairs and this head, errors like this can be faster visible.
Thank you for taking the time to see this Here is two high res shots with alia fxaa and temporal AA. I have the quality settings set to cinematic. IT doesnt seem to change anything. ='(
And also looks better lower res. Anyway, you should play with shinning. For hair this is little different than standard metal node, but I see you have hairs rough 100% - looks like.
I hope you set material as hair?
and you have correct specularity, transparency and masking? It need a lot of tests and experience, and settings are different for different textures. I think you should make your hair mask thinner and tweak other settings, but second sample looks already better. Don’t forget, he maybe tweaked output screenshots too in ps or other software (noises, unsharp mask etc).
And his overall light/shadow settings are different, more saucy, darker etc. Here dozens of dozens settings, you can lost, I know this problem
Here is two high res shots with alia fxaa and temporal AA. I have the quality settings set to cinematic. IT doesnt seem to change anything. ='(
