How to Fix Transparency Issue with PNG Hair Textures in Blender 4.3 (Cycles)

[Jani Vagyok]

Hello,

I’m working in **Blender 4.3** and rendering with **Cycles**. I’m trying to create realistic hair for my character using PNG (with Image Texture) textures with transparency instead of particle-based hair. However, I’m running into an issue where the transparent areas of my PNG texture appear as solid black in the render, making the hair look unnatural.

I have tried:

* Setting up a **Transparent BSDF** with a **Mix Shader** to combine it with the Principled BSDF.

* Connecting the PNG texture’s **Alpha** output to the **Factor** input of the Mix Shader.

* Using a **ColorRamp** node to tweak the alpha values.

Despite this, the black background persists, and I can’t find any transparency options like **Blend Mode** or **Alpha Hashed** in the Material Properties, which seem to have been changed.

Could someone guide me on how to properly set up PNG transparency for realistic hair textures in Cycles in Blender 4.3? Any help is greatly appreciated!

[Jani Vagyok]

[Jani Vagyok]

[Martin Bergwerf]

HI Jani @janivagyok25 ,

Blend Mode and Alpha Hashed are used in EEVEE.

For Cycles, the Transparent Bounces are limited and for things like trees with many leaves, or hair cards, you probably need to increase them:

[Omar Domenech]

Can we also see a screenshot of your nodes? There might be something wrong there as well, so it’ll be useful to see what’s up. Man hair makes so much difference, I can’t believe that’s the same guy. Without hair he even looks like he gained weight. 

[Jani Vagyok]

Currently, this is how it looks. I have changed my settings to **Viewport Display > Settings > Blend Method**, and I have increased the **Light Path – Transparency** value. However, after setting it above 20, the hair starts disappearing completely.

Here is the nodes and settings:

[Martin Bergwerf]

Hi Jani,

I might be wrong, but I don’t think the Viewport Display Settings have any effect on the Render (hence the name).

The hair disappearing, could be due to the thickness of the hair, in combination with the resolution of the (hair card) Image, but those Transparency Bounces should definitely be set so high, that there is no more black from too many hair card layers.

[Omar Domenech]

Maybe this old course can give you new insights?

https://cgcookie.com/courses/creating-hair-cards-for-realtime-characters

There’s always golden nuggets of wisdom in old courses, no matter how much the UI has changed. 

[Dwayne Savage]

I may be wrong, but if I remember correctly The total bounces is the max number that will be used. So even though you have transparent set to 20, blender will only do 12. I think it was mentioned in a Glass shader video on the CGC’s YouTube channel or it might have been in one of the courses here. For some reason when I think about this I see Jonathan’s face. 

[Sascha Feider]

Actually the transparent bounces are independent from the total max. I guess it’s why they are separated from the rest. From Blender Manual:

It’s more the transmission bounces where that usually collides, because it’s easy to forget to set the total high too.

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