I was looking into why the hair looks so bad on NPCs, when I discovered that the hair lighting differs between the player character and the NPCs. The PC gets nice anisotropic lighting for his hair, but no other NPC does.

http://i1022.photobucket.com/albums/af346/jonwd7/Skyrim/ScreenShot591.jpg?t=1352413790
http://i1022.photobucket.com/albums/af346/jonwd7/Skyrim/ScreenShot592.jpg?t=1352413790
(The anisotropy is much more apparent in motion, since the highlights react very differently to lighting)


Both hairstyles used the same texture, and so when I upped the specular while testing the female hairstyle for any differences in lighting I noticed that the hair rendering actually differed. The specular highlights on the female hair are rounded and flat, and the specular highlights on the player are shiny and sharp. This is more in line with how hair appears in real life. Also, it seems that no matter what changes I make to the hair NIF for the female, the hair always appears the same. Dull, round specular, and a harsh look (normals too choppy, with bad alphas). The appearance of the player hair is softer; less harsh edges, less harsh bump mapping.

This is strange since all hair NIFs have SLSF1_Hair_Soft_Lighting checked, but it apparently only works when it's on the player. Even if I get rid of this and try for SLSF2_Anisotropic_Lighting it does not change the lighting model on the NPC's hair. It doesn't support soft or rim lighting either.

Has anyone else noticed this, and does anyone have any idea if it can be fixed? I've always been rather displeased (to be polite) with the vanilla hairstyles. They are dull (yet harsh) and lifeless, and now I have found out why.

This is yet another step back from Oblivion, where all NPCs had shiny anisotropic lighting on their hair. The first one I noticed is a lack in reflection mapping for anything but distant LOD.


EDIT:

Actually, now I'm even more confused, because I just noticed the other man has anisotropic highlights, but not the woman. Maybe I can find some difference in the hair NIFs...

EDIT 2:

For some reason females do not have anisotropic lighting on their hair, even when I add it to the meshes (and duplicate the lighting of the male hair perfectly). Unless I am missing some other properties in the female hair meshes.