Daz Studio Beta Strand Based Hair Changes

RobotHeadArt

The beta for Daz Studio has the following changes in the changelog:

• Source maintenance

• Implemented support for NVIDIA Iray curves/fibers for strand-based hair/fur

  • The Render Settings > Render Mode > “Render Mode” property must be set to “Photoreal”

  • For display via the NVIDIA Iray DrawStyle, the Parameters > General > Line Tessellation > “Viewport Line Tessellation Sides” property must be set to 1

  • For offline rendering, the Parameters > General > Line Tessellation > “Render Line Tessellation Sides” property must be set to 0

• Extended get_line_root_to_tip_blend in ./shaders/iray/daz_3d/basic.mdl to support both vertically and horizontally UV oriented hair strands

• Extended the DzMdlDAZ3DBasicGetLineRootToTipBlend (Get Line Root To Tip Blend) Shader Mixer brick to allow discrete setting of “Fiber UV Orientation”

DAZ Studio : Incremented build number to 4.20.1.20

---

• Source maintenance

• Extended material functions in ./shaders/iray/daz_3d/basic.mdl, dual_lobe_hair.mdl, irayubermaterial.mdl, pbr_skin.mdl to consider hair

• Added ./shaders/iray/daz_3d/fiber_chiang_hair_fur.mdl

• NVIDIA Iray curves/fiber type is now discretely set to BSpline for strand-based hair/fur

DAZ Studio : Incremented build number to 4.20.1.21

 

Has anyone tested else done any testing of the new native Iray curves? The shaders for existing SBH seem to give a different color and glossiness when rendered with the native Iray curves vs the Daz tesselation.  The test render I did took more iterations for convergence but took two minutes less for the Iray curves vs the original Daz ones.

RobotHeadArt

Here is an example using https://www.daz3d.com/dforce-ingrid-hair-for-genesis-3-and-8-females

Notice how the orange from Tip Transmission Color doesn't work with the Iray curves.  Also, you can see that the Iray curves are more smooth and the Daz curves are jagged and sharp.

For the second test I used https://www.daz3d.com/dforce-speakeasy-hair-for-genesis-8-81-and-3-females

The pink color is missing with the Iray curves and it is also missing the glossiness and shine.

 

chevybabe25

Just so I understand, this is the newest beta released in Dim?

I am just a little behind. I don't normally do betas but a few of us have been talking about how 4.2 has been optimized.

barbult

4.20, not 4.2.

chevybabe25

Thank You Barbult I edited that post 3 times and missed that :)

I just installed the beta. Yes, you will get a different, dark look with the line tesselation at 0. Changing it to 1 will make it look more like it is supposed to.   It isn't perfect by any means, but the resources this update saves is monumental :) 

 

 

Richard Haseltine

The changes are discussed in https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/7487046/#Comment_7487046

As for the colour shifts:

The difference in color likely comes from root-to-tip blending and the difference between UV orientation of the curves/fibers (X) vs the default UV orientation of tessellation (Y). This can be accounted for by importing the (Blended Dual Lobe Hair) shader applied to a hair surface into Shader Mixer, locating the "Get Line Root To Tip Blend" brick, dragging a connection from a newly added "Fiber UV Orientation" input on that brick to the "Auto Add" output of the "User Parameters" brick (which will create a new output of the correct type/label) and then apply it to the hair surface(s). Once applied, find the new property in the Surfaces pane and change its value to fuvo_x - the root-to-tip UV orientation of the curve/fiber and the shader will then match. There may be other contributors to differences in (perceived) "color," such as anisotropy, but root-to-tip UV orientation is the most obvious.

Leonides02

What is this supposed to do? As usual, no explanation from Daz.

chevybabe25

The Beta has updated how the NVDIA viewport renders the strand hair. This is pretty cool, as the line tesselation would have to use 2 at the very least to render hair at all. 3 to look like the hair normally would.  As you add more sides, you need more resources to run. It would bog down a lot of computers. The downfall is the color. The UV solution Richard pointed to, does not fix the color, increasing sides does. 

What is really neat, is the lines themselves have been optimized.  At render, you will no longer "need" a render line tesselation of 3. You can reduce it to 1 and still have it render a head full of hair with little change to how it looks.  On average, the strand hairs I have in the store are around 11 million verts with a render line tesselation of 3. Reducing it to 1 in the newest version of Daz will lower that weight to about 3 million verts. If your computer wouldn't render my strand hair in previous versions of Studio, it may now with 4.20. 

images attached with explanations:

Richard Haseltine

Leonides02 said:

What is this supposed to do? As usual, no explanation from Daz.

What do you think the quote was? If you need some expansion on what it is saying perhaps you could indicate where you need the help.

RobotHeadArt

chevybabe25 said:

The Beta has updated how the NVDIA viewport renders the strand hair. This is pretty cool, as the line tesselation would have to use 2 at the very least to render hair at all. 3 to look like the hair normally would.  As you add more sides, you need more resources to run. It would bog down a lot of computers. The downfall is the color. The UV solution Richard pointed to, does not fix the color, increasing sides does. 

What is really neat, is the lines themselves have been optimized.  At render, you will no longer "need" a render line tesselation of 3. You can reduce it to 1 and still have it render a head full of hair with little change to how it looks.  On average, the strand hairs I have in the store are around 11 million verts with a render line tesselation of 3. Reducing it to 1 in the newest version of Daz will lower that weight to about 3 million verts. If your computer wouldn't render my strand hair in previous versions of Studio, it may now with 4.20. 

images attached with explanations:

The Iray curves are enabled on Render Line Tessellation Sides of 0.

 

RobotHeadArt

I tried the shader mixer change, set fuvo_x, lowered Anisotropy to 0 and set Anisotropy Rotations to .25.  That brings the gloss back but the color is still pretty dark.

chevybabe25

@RobotHeadArt

Messing with my shader on the speakeasy hair: 

Render Line Tesselation 0

Glossy Weight 0.90 

Highlight Roughness 0.5

Anistropy 0.75

Highlight Weight 0.01

 

Try it and see what you think!

 

 

Leonides02

Richard Haseltine said:

Leonides02 said:

What is this supposed to do? As usual, no explanation from Daz.

What do you think the quote was? If you need some expansion on what it is saying perhaps you could indicate where you need the help.

I think the quote was a statement with no explanation as to the utility of the change, or why it was made. And I think that I needed expansion was obvious. There's no need for snark, Richard. chevybabe25 provided an explanation, which is obviously what I was asking for.

Thanks, chevybabe25.

RobotHeadArt

chevybabe25 said:

@RobotHeadArt

Messing with my shader on the speakeasy hair: 

Render Line Tesselation 0

Glossy Weight 0.90 

Highlight Roughness 0.5

Anistropy 0.75

Highlight Weight 0.01

 

Try it and see what you think!

 

With those changes it looks great! Thanks for checking:

Chumly

Yeah... thanks Chevybabe25 for your explanation!
 

the "new version highlights" usually don't let us know the what/why of the updates... so it is nice of you to decifer what they are trying to say for us.

chevybabe25

You are very welcome :)

 

lilweep

am I crazy or this does not actually work....

Does this only work with PA's SBH or our own SBH too?

How do you actually enable this? Whenever I render with Tesselation Sides = 0, the SBH do not render.  (No, I am not talking about Iray preview render, and yes, Render Mode is set to photoreal.)

I am using Daz Studio 4.21

 

barbult

lilweep said:

am I crazy or this does not actually work....

Does this only work with PA's SBH or our own SBH too?

How do you actually enable this? Whenever I render with Tesselation Sides = 0, the SBH do not render.  (No, I am not talking about Iray preview render, and yes, Render Mode is set to photoreal.)

I am using Daz Studio 4.21

 

I use Line Tessellation 1 for SBH hair and 0 for dForce hair.