Corona Hair Material - C4D
In addition to the below content, see also: Corona Hair Material at Chaos Docs
If you didn't already know, It is possible to render Cinema 4D's hair with Corona Renderer. By default, Cinema's standard hair material is supported by Corona and it can be used to fine-tune the final look you are going for, i.e.: hair, fur, or grass. Cinema 4D's hair material is a post-process material, It's applied at the time of render and gives the illusion of geometry.
By default, Corona hair type is set to "rounded" and its appearance can be changed using the drop-down list under the ''Generate'' tab.
Adding Corona Hair to your scene:
Adding Corona hair to an object is extremely straightforward. With your object already imported into your scene and selected, you can now assign Corona Hair to it. From the Corona dropdown menu, choose ''Corona Hair'' to apply it to your object. This will automatically create a Corona Hair material as well as a standard C4D hair material. These two work hand in hand. The standard C4D hair material controls the physical look and shape of the hair such as Thickness, Frizz, Clump, Bend, and, Curl to name a few. The Corona Hair material is responsible for the overall appearance of the hair such as color, glossiness, glints, etc.
Color:
Controls the overall intensity of the hair color, affecting all pigments as well as the tint.
Melanin:
Controls the absorption inside the hair fibers by setting the total amount of melanin pigment in the hair. This sets the overall color of the hair. A value of 0% (no pigment) leads to white hair, while a value of 100% leads to completely black hair.
Pheomelanin:
Controls the relative amount of reddish pheomelanin pigment among the hair pigments and thus, the hair's redness. A value of 0% leads to 100% of eumelanin (brown pigment) and a value of 100% leads to 100% of pheomelanin (reddish pigment causing ginger coloration).
Randomize melanin:
Randomizing melanin from the default of 0% (no randomization) to 100% will result in various melanin levels across different hair strands.
Examples:
Default hair material settings. This is what we get out of the box when a new Corona Hair Material is created:
Material Setup:
Color > Level under Basic options changed to 0% (from the default 100%). This results in completely black hair:
Material setup:
Melanin lowered to 0% (from the default 50%). This results in completely white hair:
Material setup:
Melanin lowered to 25% (from the default 50%). This results in brighter, blonder hair, compared to the default rendering:
Material setup:
Melanin increased to 75% (from the default 50%). This results in darker, brown hair, compared to the default rendering:
Material setup:
Pheomelanin increased to 1 (from the default 0). This results in a reddish hue visible in the hair:
Material setup:
Diffuse color changed to blue (from the default black). This results in hair appearing covered with a layer of paint, or some other material, which is added on top of it. It can be used to add dust or dirt to the hair:
Material setup:
Diffuse color set to blue again, but this time the diffuse level has been lowered from the default 100% to 50%:
Material setup:
Random melanin changed from the default 0% (no randomization) to 50%. This results in various melanin levels across different hair strands:
Material setup:
Tint changed to pure red (from the default white). This gives the hair surface a reddish overall tint:
Material setup:
Transmission tint changed to pure red (from the default white). This gives the hair volume a reddish overall tint:
Material setup:
Colored reflection glossiness lowered from the default 50% to 25%. This makes hair appear matted and less shiny:
Material setup:
Colored reflection glossiness increased from the default 50% to 75%. This makes hair appear more shiny and oily:
Material setup:
Colorless reflection glossiness increased from the default 0% to 50%. This makes the colorless reflections more focused and the hair shinier:
Material setup:
Softness (aniso) lowered from the default 100% to 50%. This makes hair appear softer by reducing its reflection anisotropy:
Material setup:
The highlight shift increased from the default 2 to 5. This moves the colored and colorless highlights farther from each other, effectively splitting them into two separate highlights:
Material setup:
Highlight shift reduced from the default 2 to 0. This moves the colored and colorless highlights close to each other, in this case making them perfectly overlap with each other:
Material setup:
Glint strength lowered from the default 20% to 0%. This affects the tiny variations of the hair structure. Higher values mean that hair is more damaged. In case of this value set to 0%, the structure is uniform, so the hair does not appear damaged at all:
Material setup:
Glint strength increased from the default value of 20% to 100%. This changes the structure of hair making them appear more damaged and less healthy:
Material setup:
IOR lowered from the default 1.55 to 1.1. This reduces the overall hair reflectivity:
Material setup:
IOR increased from the default value of 1.55 to 2. This increases the overall hair reflectivity:
Material setup:
Texturing hair. A rainbow gradient from the roots to the tips can be achieved by applying a gradient map set to 2D - V coordinates for example:
Material setup:
Texturing hair. A checker map was used in this example to vary the hair diffuse color. Note that the texture is evaluated on the surface of the base mesh and then is evenly distributed along hair strands based on that:
Material setup:
Some fun examples:
Interesting patterns can be made using a gradient shader.
Corona Hair was used to simulate the ''Peach fuzz'' look.
Corona Hair can be used to make grass, rugs, and even carpets.
