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In actuality, hair appears more as a series of stacked cones. This produces the secondary specular highlight.ДЄs shown in the diagram above, a strand of hair is not a perfect cylinder or tube.

Transmission-reflection-transmission path, in which light enters the hair follicle, reflects off the inside boundary of the surface, and then exits. This is how light scatters within a volume of hair. Transmission-transmission path, in which light passes into the hair follicle and back out the other side. This produces the primary specular highlight. Reflection-only path, with light bouncing off the surface of the hair. The growth (root to tip) direction of the hair follicle. See the table below for descriptions of each part of the process.

The Hair shader approximates the same effects with highly realistic results.Д¬ross section of single hair follicle showing how the hair shader approximates interaction with light, demonstrating the three primary types of paths light will take. For sake of this document, we will refer to these as primary and secondary specular highlights. In the real world, hair tends to have multiple specular highlights: one representing the color of the light and another that is a mix of hair color and light color. To utilize the UE4 Hair shader, set the Shading Model property of your Material to Hair. The shader approximates light's reflection from the surface of the hair with anisotropic specularity, as well as its refraction through it and its scatter throughout multiple strands. This shader is physically based shading model based on research by Eugene d'Eon, Steve Marschner and Johannes Hanika and currently used by Weta Digital. Hair shading is handled by way of UE4's Hair shader model. There is nothing out of the ordinary in its setup for this example. The normal map works as expected in typical material setups, supplying the tactile texture to the surface by perturbing pixel normals. The color of the scatter is managed by the Subsurface Profile asset. Areas that are dark will exhibit very little scatter, such as the cheeks, while lighter areas will have higher amounts of perceived scatter, such as the nose and ears. The scatter map controls how much light is going to be scattered through the surface of the skin.

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This map boosts specularity at areas where the skin may be stretched a bit tighter, and dampens it in areas where we don't want to see reflection, such as the center of pores and within wrinkles. It is important to note that the default value for specularity is 0.5. The specular map scales the amount of specular highlight visible across the surface of the skin. Also note that the hair texture on the head is pushed out to fully rough (1.0) this prevents any stray specular highlights from the scalp, which will give a much more significant sense of depth to the hair. This causes those areas to appear less shiny, accentuating the look of depth provided by the diffuse and normal map. Note that the roughness increases within pores and wrinkles. This is a common technique used to minimize the amount of textures in use. The roughness map is stored within the alpha channel of the diffuse texture. Any darkening of wrinkles will accentuate the texture supplied by the normal map. At 4K, you can see the tiny capillaries just underneath the surface. The diffuse map supplies the Base Color for the Material. This skin setup utilizes five total texture maps: diffuse, roughness, specularity, scatter, and normal. The textures were then cleaned up and tweaked by artists at Epic. The textures used on the character's skin are all at 4K resolution and were originally produced from facial scans of the actor.

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In this way, artists can standardize approaches to generating certain types of surfaces, knowing that a fundamental change to a single Function will update all instances where that Function is being used. This is done as a reusable authoring approach to creating Materials for Paragon. Note the use of Material Functions to set up the base for the skin Material. The character's skin is created through the use of UE4's Subsurface Profile shading model. To view this showcase, simply open the project and press Play In Editor to see the cinematic pan-around.ДЇor more information on the tech used to produce this character, please refer to this Unreal Engine Livestream - Tech & Techniques Behind Creating the Characters for Paragon. The purpose of this showcase is to demonstrate the use of high-quality character shader techniques, similarly to those used on characters from Epic's MOBA game Paragon.

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