User:LeonardoSegovia/GSoC 2018/Reports/Community Bonding

= Implementing a Hair Shader for Cycles =

BlenderArtists community survey
bzztploink on IRC suggested:

Thread is here.

Summary:


 * A substantial number of users asked if the end result would be a principled shader (à la Disney über-shader).
 * Brecht says this will be indeed the case:
 * There were a number of complaints about:
 * The lack of documentation on the current shader. There is no explanation on how to setup a proper hair material, only the physical meaning of the parameters and that’s it.
 * The usability of the current shader. Some artists try to make the most of it by using complex nodegroups, but that’s a stopgap measure at best.
 * The primary concern was about the shader’s interface:
 * Would the modes (R, TT, TRT) stay separated?
 * Intuitive parameters

Development environment preparation
I’ve setup MS Visual Studio 2017 on Windows 7 x64. I had CUDA installed from an earlier postgrad course, so no news on that front.

I tried to follow the BlenderWiki page on the subject. The make script finds only the 32-bit toolchain, even if called from within the 64-bit Build Tools CLI. I ended up following Manual CMake Setup to force a fully x64 build toolchain, using the CMake GUI to finish off the process.