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Have you downloaded and installed the new "dForce Starter Essentials" that came out when the hair options were added to the clothes options?
heya :) at the moment the public beta is the same version as the general release so that shouldn't make a difference if you have the latest, 4.11.0.383?
my general checklist is this...
1. latest DS version 4.11.0.383?
2. dforce starter essentials up to date?
3. make sure you haven't currently got a geometry editing tool selected, select the pointer tool instead and then try to render again.
4. load the free sample mohawk in a new empty scene and see if that renders for you.
(found in Content LIbrary > [your library] > People > Genesis 8 Male > Hair > Strand-Based Hair Samples ... and also in the Genesis 8 Female folder)
5. latest nvidia drivers?
edit: SpottedKitty was fast :) I also wanted to emphasize #3 above ... that one's really obscure and a new "gotcha" - I would like Daz to make it more obvious that strand hair won't render if a geom editing tool is selected.
I'm having the same problem. Latest version of Daz. I've re-re-re-downloaded the dForce Daz Essentials. I don't have Geometry editing on. The sample mohawk only shows up as a series of yellow lines and doesn't render and I just updated my nvidia drivers. I'm pretty lost on what I'm missing.
Do you use the iray preview by any chance?
Yeah, generally. Does it only work in regular render?
I believe you have to change a setting to make it render on iray preview. It was mentionned in one of the threads maybe the one about the beta.
Can you try to do a regular render and see if that works? Maybe I can find back the info for the iray preview.
Here it is : https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/4581461/#Comment_4581461
May 14 Flag
Dynamically calculating hair is very complex and can get very resource intensive — so it doesn't make a lot of sense to (potentially) bring a user's machine to its knees while it attempts to cope with the sheer amount of work we ask it to do, by default.
To help reduce the demands we place on your machine (and your patience) while we do a ton work to represent something as complex as hair, by default we limit display of the hair to the Style Curves that are responsible for controlling the basic flow of the hairstyle — we are not displaying the actual individual generated hair strands by default. The idea here is to give a rough idea of the hair/fur/grass, so as not to make the speed of interaction so slow that it becomes impractical to work with.
Then, if you consider the fact that Iray does not currently provide native support for a hair/fur/grass/curve "primitive" (a "simple" representation of the data that the render engine inherently understands), you come to realize that it takes considerably more data to describe this collection of strands to the renderer. To accomplish this, we tessellate our polylines (generate polygons), on-the-fly, prior to sending the scene to the renderer.
So, now that I've explained a (simplified) version of the "Why?" behind it... I'll tell you that enabling the "Preview PR Hairs" property ("PR" is an abbreviation for "Pre-Render") on the hair node will cause said tesselation to occur prior to an actual render taking place, which will make it visible in the viewport and available to the Iray DrawStyle.
-Rob
Ahh, well that all explains that. Yeah, it's fine if I just change the render target to new window. Thanks for digging that up!
How can I hide dForce hairs so they aren't rendered? (e.g. parts of fur)
I've been playing with the SBH editor for a while. I'm quite happy with a simple short hairstyle although I haven't figured out all the settings in Clump and Tweak. To me, the basic hair texture looks realistic enough for my taste ... it's a very simple hairstyle and it's my first attempt, so it's still very basic compared to the cool examples of what has been shown in this thread. I just started out learning the SBH editor.
Although I like the general texture, I can't help but feel the hair in general looks very flat to me. Now hair usually falls in strands and does not fall like a piece of cloth but this is how I feel how the hair looks like to me. Looking at the example of creations of everyone else, guess there is a setting to create individual "strands" on top, like some kind of layers of hair over a layer of hair. In PhilW's dForce hairs in the store, there is even a setting to blend individual hair strands (in the promo images) in although I can't say whether this is a dForce-exclusive feature or not because I haven't bought any SBH hairs yet.
I have read in this thread that it's possible to create multiple layers of hair - I couldn't figure out how to do this in the SBH editor. What I tried before is creating layers of hair via the Style tab by selecting different hair curves and shaping them individually. While my "layers" look quite distinguished in the editor when I view the curves alone, the layers soon dissolve once I turn on the view and set all hairs to visible. And whenever I render, nothing of it shows up in the render. All I can see of the "layers" are some lose hair strands flying around, but the effect is not very visible.
I experimented with the Clump settings whether I could achieve an "individual" hair strands effect with I couldn't figure it out yet ... is there a way to create individual strands in the SBH editor to create strands layering on top of the hair, or that stand out visibly?
Yes, the key is in the Clump settings. You may find this page from the original Garibaldi website helpful: https://www.garibaldiexpress.com/docs/Clumping_Workspace
And if you want to have manageable sections to cut/style, like you would in a real-world hairstyle, it requires either actually creating several hair objects with distributions overlapping very very slightly, or using the selection lists feature: https://www.garibaldiexpress.com/docs/Style_Workspace#Selection_Lists - these approaches both have their pluses and minuses, so it's a matter of trying both and figuring out your personal preference.
You're welcome!
There are still things for the Clump setting that I didn't fully understand ... for example there are always some wonky strands behaving strangely that I can't get to comb back to their place, but I guess I can handle Clump way better than I could some days ago. I created 2 very simple hairstyles and to my skill level they are OK looking. For both styles I almost modelled every style curve individually and spent the majority of the time styling the top layer style curves:
I'm more familiar with the comb tool now, so I guess my next hairstyle won't take so much I hope!
To my eyes, this looks pretty fantastic!
Looking great!
As for wonky strands, yes you do need to keep close watch on style curves. The final hair positions are sort of interpolated from the neighbouring guide curves, so it's like if an underlying curve has gotten jagged somehow or caught inside the mesh, it will affect the final hairs above it.
Hey guys. Scrolled through this entire thread but didn't see anyone mention my problem. I used Garibaldi quite a bit in the past and am pretty familiar with it, but I've never had this "floating hair" problem. Anyone else? I don't know what I potentially did to contribute to this. Suggestions other than "start over?" Thanks!
M
Do you have a transparency map in there somewhere? I can't duplicate that.
No, I don't. It's just a hair shader. tx
Welp, I just went ahead and started over and things seem to be fine - for now...
I got something similar when I set the thickness for the hair root, (sorry, I don't recall the exact parameter name off the top of my head,) and I did something that DS doesn't like in a number field. Sometimes my keyboard gives me double of things, like ".." instead of ".", so when I was trying to change the value to .15 or some such, the double dots caused it to go to 0.00. When I rendered it, the roots appeared to be invisible. That's where I'd look first, anyway.
ETA: Sorry I didn't see your post before you started over. But if it happens again, you'll have an idea of where to look.
Ah! That sounds feasible. LOL Thanks. I'll know next time.
Just a heads up. Many of you commenting in this thread have "indicated" (understatement!) you'd like to have access to the hair provided by the PAs, to edit and so on. Call this a PSA, but Jepe's Roderick for Diego 8 comes with 12 separate SBH presets. The presets include very short hair for his head, a similar length full beard, and an assortment of body hair that can all work together.
Even if you don't buy/own Diego 8, the hair can be used on any G8M, though you'll have to go through some hoops to set it up. It's not dForce, but it's the closest thing I've seen, so far, to getting what many of you have been asking for. Might be worth taking another look…
@AprilYSH
your new front whisps. 
Thanx alot for the additional product support for DF Lea with DF Lea 2!
Really great having more options. And
[archived image]
What I would wish ... if we had a comb tool for the clumping curves so we could edit them like we can edit the styling curves. That would make the final hair tweaking workflow so much easier. Currently most of the time is spent on figuring out which styling curve to manipulate in order for one clumping curve to behave differently because you can't control the clumping curves directly.
Other than that? Honestly I'm very happy with the strand based hair. Sure the editor isn't easy and understanding the features and the dual lobe hair shader takes time but I'm very pleased with my results so far. I don't have 3d modeling experience and I'm generally a fair newbie when it comes to 3D and daz and I have only a limited amount of time I can dedicate to this wonderful hobby so when even someone like me can create good hair this shall speak for itself :) You talented artists out there can do so much more than I can do.
Where does one find ths "Preview PR Hairs" property? Because I am not seeing it anywhere I look.
/edit Found it. But it doesn't work.
why is this thread stil active? the public beta is now of 412 lol
i find dforce hair to take so long to process at least for me. maybe ill try it again sometimes. but it seems as others have said the less complex something is in dforce the better off you are.
Click on Line Tesselation, in the left column. In the right column, check to see if the value for Tesselation is 2 or higher. I think if it's only 1, it won't show up in the viewport. The Beast isn't awake yet, so I can't test this to be sure.
Because it keeps the Strand-Based Hair questions and answers in one place. It's far easier than having to look through a dozen threads to find an answer specific to the SBH. The thread will remain live as long as it serves a need, regardless of the original title.