Thank you @ RLOwens for this good explanation!

I would add that this is not something that changes the actual geometry of the hair, hence any strands that are facing their SIDES towards the camera won't be affected in a much noticeable way.
But as you said correctly, it can help a lot with strands facing backward and thus make the hair look "fuller", or avoid unwanted shading.
I use it universally in all my hair models.

@ operaguy:

Now that's a great style!
Didn't imagine that my little parting and sassy morphs would be usable even with such rather extreme morphs.
Nice trick to use the inverted "Over Eye R" morph to add to the messy effect.
Great work, and please buy the gal a bottle of sun blocker at my expense. Would be a pity if she gets her nice skin burned... [cool]

Great contributions: Thank you both!

K

Ouch!

That's a really "unexpected" result.
I mean, I had it before on some hairs that changing the shaders caused a slight change in colour - but not this extreme.
Mostly it rendered a tad darker or brighter. But here the whole colour has shifted from reddish to greenish. Weird.

So here's a comparison of

- how it actually renders (1)
- how it renders with default shader (2)
- and how it should render with my shader (3)


(I cheated a bit in (3) because I don't have that hair model, so I bad to approximate the effect by using a bit of blur)

The red dots show the problem areas.
Especially the strand near the rightmost red dot should become MORE transparent. Instead, it renders like one of Saturn's rings...

ARE you sure that you used the correct maps for transparency and bump/specular, and that you didn't mix them up? (happens to me ever so often)

Also (though not properly readable because the full file name is cut off : "biscuitshairt...") could mean that this hair has no separate specular/bump map and you used the transparency map instead.
Try disconnecting the "Specular and/or Bump" node from the "Specular_Value" and "Bump" inputs.

To save you render time, only make Area Renders of the areas marked by the red dots.

It just occured to me:

The vertical "spikes" you have in the hair near the left red dot (and horizontally in the neck area too) are caused by the Morph Tool's "Tighten Fit" which you obviously used to make the hair closer fit the skull.

You should always be aware of this bug - emm I mean "feature".
You can best cure it by using the Smooth Brush with a diameter of less than 0,050 (my units are metres):
Turn the "Stroke" option off, aim for the the vertex that strayed most, and then keep the mouse button pressed until it's "back in the line".

TIP 1:
(You could also use a much larger brush diameter to give the hair an overall smoothing which will also eliminate the spikes. However be aware that the Smooth Brush will reduce the width of the individual hair strands, so those actually will get narrower!)

TIP 2:
To counteract this you can make them wider again by setting the Morph Brush to "Pull", "Relative to: Surface"
and use a similar brush diameter. Best switch to "Hidden Line" view to watch the precise results!

TIP 3:
Of course this will also increase the hair's volume again, so we're caught in a kind of vicious circle: Shrink, grow, shrink...

--> Always remember to create a new morph for each of your actions! You can name them a1,s1,g1, whatever...
In the end you can experiment in mixing these morphs until you have an acceptable result.
Then spawn a new morph target and delete the intermediate a..,s..,g.. morphs.


OK, that was today's "tour de force" about the possibilities of the morph brush. :D:D

My final advise?
Learn how each of the countless options of the Morph Tool work.
Explore what you can do with them, how they interact, and how you can combine them with spawned intermediate morph targets, and so on and so forth.
Even I still discover new ways of using it!

THIS is THE ONE most powerful tool in Poser, and the prime reason why I wouldn't EVER migrate to any other program as long as Poser still exists and works on my computer.[cool]

K

Last one for tonight (I promise!) [rolling_eyes]

but it shows quite well how easily one can get lost when playing with the hair shader:


I made this render for Wild Hair, and then I noticed (after the two-hour render, of course) that I forgot to apply the transparency map to the "Front_Strands" material, which resulted in the odd "cut-off" look in the red circle.
(The odd highlight above her right eye is also cause by this)

SO as often, the devil is in the detail, and human error is a multiplicator...

K