Realistic Colored Fur? I have been trying to create a realistic colored fur shader, but have not been having any real luck with it.  The colors come out either too dark, too saturated, or both.

The render below is the closest I've managed to get to what I want.  However, it is still too dark to my eyes, and trying to lighten it has the effect of making it more saturated.  As well, In the upper right of the sphere, where it is catching sunlight head-on, it just gets brightened without any highlights, while the "rim" along the left and bottom edges gets highlighted.

Any feedback on what I'm doing wrong or what I should be doing would be appreciated.

And I realize the patterns on the fur are unrealistic, though I'm trying to get realistic light first.  As well, increasing density or strand thickness has the effect of making things even darker.



Below is a download link for the blend file:

http://www.pasteall.org/blend/36073
I managed to figure it out on my own.  Basically I needed to do less desaturation than I was doing on the fur, and apply more (as opposed to none) desaturation to the underlying skin.  That, and also doubling (and then clamping) the brightness of the transmission color.

This .blend contains the tweaks I did to fix it up: http://www.pasteall.org/blend/36094

And below is a render of the fixed shader.  Probably not 100% realistic, but it's better.