No it's not just you. However, the problem isn't what you think it is. The transparency has not been modified. The wierdness you see is because, having removed the painted-on highlights, the shader is calculating accurate highlights for the real light position and the geometry of the mesh. Unfortunately, the mesh really isn't done in a way that the strips lay along the same angle where they overlap. The strips are kind of bowed out, so as you go from one strip to the next, the angle changes a lot. You don't notice this with Koz's shader, because he painted the speculars and has the specular calculation turned off.

Which was the whole point of the exercise - how to get rid of the fixed, immovable, unrealistic painted on speculars and replace with real dynamic speculars.

The calculation of specular reflection, which is very sensitive to the angle of the surface, is producing very different results from one strip to the next in the same area because of the rounded shape and overall angles of the strips.

So it's not that great a solution I guess. Since I posted this, I've become much more capable with the shader nodes, and I tried a few devious tricks to get around the problem. But I can't find a way to make the anisotropic specular stop lighting the strips so glaringly. I can do it with the regular specular node, but it doesn't look hair reflections. The anisotropic shader node specifically simulates the broad blurry specular reflections produced by finely grooved surfaces. Without it, the reflections look like plastic reflections, not hair.

I suppose you could load the mesh into a modeling tool and flatten the strips so they aren't so round any more. That would fix the problem.

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Renderosity forum reply notifications are wonky. If I read a follow-up in a thread, but I don't myself reply, then notifications no longer happen AT ALL on that thread. So if I seem to be ignoring a question, that's why. (Updated September 23, 2019)