I've looked around and haven't found this question anywhere, so my apologies if this is a repost.

Does anyone know how to change the length to which the root color can appear? I'm trying to create a material where just the tips of the hair strands are a different color than the rest of the hair. I know how to change the root/tip colors, but can't get the root to extend further out the length of the hair.

Any ideas?

I'm using PPro2014, Windows 7.

Appreciate any help. Thanks!!

A gradient node?

To my understanding:

When using the hair node, the root is UV-texture-based, the tips is UV-texture based (same UV for the same hair-strand), and from root to tip (W-coordinate from 0 to 1) the color is linearly interpolated between those two UV-texture-colors. This makes the hair-node the only UVW-node in Poser.

There is no mechanism to alter the (linear) interpolation along the way. Sorry.

So assign the gradient to a map or doesn't the strand map?

Use a colorRamp node and put your root colour in the first three boxes, and the tip colour in the last. It's still imprecise, but it should get you most of the way there.

Quote - There is no mechanism to alter the (linear) interpolation along the way. Sorry.

Sigh. It would be so great if people who don't know how to do something would just not answer. If you must answer, say "I don't know how, but probably bagginsbill does."

Thanks.

There is a hidden "W" coordinate that goes from 0 to 1 along the hair. It seems impossible to reach this coordinate, let alone influence it, but it is possible, and I know how.

Rather than repeat myself, I will refer you to the the thread on the topic from four years ago.

http://www.renderosity.com/mod/forumpro/showthread.php?thread_id=2807241

Once you extract that W coordinate, you can use it to calculate any gradient of colors with any evolution from 0 to 1 that your heart desires.

Try influencing it with a Math:Bias node and then run that into a Blender. You put the colors you want on the blender, not the hair.

I hope I'm not doing anything wrong here. I have no idea where the thread is (it was several years old). Bagginsbill posted this shader to demonstrate gradient hair strands. As I hinted, you could use the same technique to just colour the tip, although I think you could do it more simply than this.

x-post

Hah! thanks, Bagginsbill, you beat me to it.

Edit: I guess Rendo's forum search function hasn't improved much. That thread didn't come up under "gradient hair."

I searched for "w coordinate", author me. I remembered what I wrote.

Open post to BB:

Sigh. It would be so great if people who don't now how to deal with real human beings just limit themselves to the virtuals ones, and to node tree building.

If you limit yourself to the facts, you'll recognize that my actual statement was and is correct, and was just limited to the notion that a single hair node could not solve the issue. This was to save OP from further investigations along that route.
I never suggested that there was no alternative, or anything else. I did not refer to you as you explicitely stated in another thread that you were off this weekend.

Thanks for offering some solutions with mutiple hair nodes though, but just being good at node-juggling and being respected for that (and for more) in the Poser forums gives no rights for King of the Mountain behavior, nor for other forms of sheer arrogance.

If you want to be left alone with only critiqueless admirers around: please say so. Unfortunately, I'm not one of them. I think you're just human, you're inconsistent (aka: suffer from increasing insights), that sometimes you're just plain wrong, and that you only look at things from a limited perspective. Like me, and all other knowledgeable people around. Perhaps just less inconsistent and less often that wrong.

I do appreciate your contributions.
I also do appreciate forum posts without arrogance or forum-ownership-like behavior.

Thanks all for the replies and sorry to have started a tiff.

I'll try this later today. 

The solution is straightforward and recommended, I just hadn't the time to put it on immediately as I was in the middle of other Poser research issues. And as BB said he was off for the weekend, I didn't want you to wait all the time, or to experiment in fruitless directions. Sorry for being incomplete.

As the hair-node makes a lineair transition 0..1 from root to tip then with a black root and a white tip the result gives the position along the strand. From there you can apply all the math, blends and ramps you like. Put textures in the color-ramp slots, and possibilities become endless.

I apologize for other things happening in your thread, but there is a lot of debate on proper forum behavior, and I just don't like to be harrassed for just offering some well-meant help to a fellow Poser user.

have fun !

I'm against well-meant false information at all times and no matter how you characterize it or my reaction, I'm going to point out that it's better to be silent than misleading.

I fully agree!

And as no post in this thread - except for the last one - contained any false or misleading elements, I strongly suggest to practice what you preach...

=== handing back the thread to the OP, let's dye hair ===