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The Hair material is primarily designed for rendering hair and fur. The material is based around three components: a primary specular component, a secondary specular component, and a transmission component. A diffuse component is also provided for rendering of materials made up of cloth threads or other non-translucent fibers.

The primary specular component represents light that is reflected off the outer surface of a hair strand. The secondary specular component represents light that goes through the hair strand and is reflected off the back surface. The transmission component represents light that goes through the hair strand.

The image below illustrates the meaning of the three components:

Please note that V-Ray Hair material does not produce hair strands. You can use V-Ray Fur to procedurally create fur, hair or grass. V-Ray Fur produces flat strands if Hair material is applied to it.

Some parameters are only available in Advanced mode.

Overall Color – A common color multiplier for all color components in the material (except for opacity). Used to easily change the look of the entire hair material.

Transparency – Controls the transparency of the material. Making the hair more transparent towards the tip may produce more smooth and realistic anti-aliasing at the expense of increased render times. If you map the tip opacity, make sure you do not make the strands thinner at the tip as well - transparency already creates the effect of thinning strands. You can enable the Opaque Shadows and Opaque GI options to reduce render times for transparent hair. Note that with transparent strands, it may be necessary to increase the Max. Transp. Levels option in the Global Switches rollout of the V-Ray settings too.