OctaneRender 2021.1.6.83 and DAZ strand hair breaks

[MasterWayZ]

Running DAZ Studio 4.20
OctaneRender plugin version 2021.1.6.83
Windows 11 host, RTX 3090 Ti for the GPU with Studio driver 517.40

I'm trying to use strand-based hair. From what I gathered on the forums but this should work but as you can see in the screenshot it doesn't quite work for me.
The hair product is https://www.daz3d.com/high-ponytail-for ... 81-females.

Octane viewport:


DAZ viewport:


What could be going wrong here? I'd really like to use this product if we can make it work.

[toby_a]

Hi MasterWayZ.

As a general rule, if the hair shows up in the Daz viewport then it should be visible in the Octane render as well, but clearly it's not quite that simple.

First off, have you tried the "Final" render mode in the Octane viewport? Doing that adjusts a few properties of the hair to make the geometry more useable by Octane, such as the tessellation settings. In particular, Viewport Lien Tessellation Side needs to be 2 or 3 for it to be rendered by Octane.

The screenshot looks like the material for the ponytail might be at least part of the problem. You might need to set up the Octane material for it manually if the auto-conversion doesn't understand the Daz material settings. Take a look at that - maybe there are some textures that need to be used?

Cheers,
Toby.

[MasterWayZ]

Hi Toby,

Clicking the Final button works! I personally never use that button but it seems like I will start going to use it.
For the white material, it seems that it autoconverted somewhat properly. For some reason in DAZ the base color is white as well. I'm not sure what dials I have to set then.

Here's the material in Octane:



And the same material in Iray:




Thanks,
MasterWayZ

[huakiami]

Hi MasterWayZ,

The material you're looking at is not for the hair, it's for a separate object the vendor included with the hair to help hold the ponytail strands together during the simulation. The opacity is set to 0 - which is why you don't see it in the DAZ viewport, if you changed it to 1 you would see the same white object you're seeing in the Octane viewport.

This screenshot may help clarify (click to view it full-size):

[toby_a]

Hi Toby,

Clicking the Final button works! I personally never use that button but it seems like I will start going to use it.
For the white material, it seems that it autoconverted somewhat properly. For some reason in DAZ the base color is white as well. I'm not sure what dials I have to set then.

Here's the material in Octane:

And the same material in Iray:

Thanks,
MasterWayZ

Thanks for that info. @huakiami has nailed it - that material should be transparent, i.e. set Opacity to 0.

The need to use Final mode to see the hair is pretty annoying, I know, sorry about that. The hair geometry is so heavy that it's not really practical to work with it visible all the time. I'm hoping that some of the newer feature in the Daz SDK will allow a better way to deal with hair in the future, but for now your choices are either Final mode or adjusting the settings so that the hair is visible in the Daz viewport.

Cheers,
Toby.