[Solved] OmniHair always renders black

animsakari_38ac6442c6

Hopefully, someone else has run across a similar issue and can suggest some possible other things to try.  I have read several threads here about OmniHair issues, but my issue seems unusual.

On my Alienware Aurora R15 Win 11 RTX 4090 desktop, my hair products with OmniHair shaders always render black no matter which color materials I apply.  (e.g. products "dForce Nordic Knots Hair", "dForce Holo Hair", "dForce HS Ursula Ponytail")

I updated my old Dell RTX 3060 Laptop with the matching Daz & Nvidia driver versions, copied the same scene files to it, and the hair colors render correctly.

I have uninstalled and reinstalled the latest Daz app, resources, & NVidia drivers: 

• Daz 4.22.0.16 Pro Edition (64-bit) [on Win 11]
• deleted & reinstalled Default Resources for DAZ Studio 4.22+ via DIM
• installed and rendered with both the NVidia version 555.99 (06/04/2024) GeForce Game Ready Driver and Studio Driver
• verified the "OmniHair Root-Tip Blend" shader and its .duf file are available (Ursula Pontail uses this shader)

I've cleared the Daz logs and looked at every line after loading the hair onto the figure and after rendering.  The logs show no errors or unusual messages.

I've included a screenshot which shows the Nordic Knots hair on a stock G9 figure

• with the Acquatic Blue material applied
• and Surface panel open showing the root/tip/glaze with the blue colors
• the hair still renders black in the spot render (same was true in the viewport w/ Nvidia Iray Draw Style and a full render)

Any suggestions would be appreciated.  Thanks.

ChangelingChick

Just to confirm, do you do full renders and they're black or the preview renders are black? Because they can give different results.

 

chevybabe25

*scratching my head* Is it possible you have more than one installation in a different place on your computer? 

ChangelingChick

This is gonna sound crazy, but is there any chance you have two copies of the hair loaded on the figure?

 

gcjellyfish

This is a head scratcher for sure.
Updating nvidia drivers can leave behind certain common drivers files. Choosing the usual clean install options doesn't replace all of those files. If one of those has become corrupted, it can lead to odd behavior. If you haven't already, you might consider trying something like DDU to completely remove your driver files, and then reinstall from nvidia.

https://www.guru3d.com/download/display-driver-uninstaller-download/
if nothing else, it would eliminate driver corruption as a variable to consider.

animsakari_38ac6442c6

ChangelingChick said:

Just to confirm, do you do full renders and they're black or the preview renders are black? Because they can give different results.

 

The hair renders black in full renders as well as the preview render and the viewport with the Iray display style.

I have recreated the figure/hair multiple times with different hair products, so definitely not 2 hairs assets on the same figure.

animsakari_38ac6442c6

chevybabe25 said:

*scratching my head* Is it possible you have more than one installation in a different place on your computer? 

I'll find some identifiable files and search all my drives for them. I may not have searched everywhere when I looked originally. Thanks.

Richard Haseltine

animsakari_38ac6442c6 said:

chevybabe25 said:

*scratching my head* Is it possible you have more than one installation in a different place on your computer? 

I'll find some identifiable files and search all my drives for them. I may not have searched everywhere when I looked originally. Thanks.

Also check you don't have a Connect (through Daz Studio) install that hasn't been updated as that will be used in prefrence to any DIM instalaltion.

animsakari_38ac6442c6

gcjellyfish said:

This is a head scratcher for sure.
Updating nvidia drivers can leave behind certain common drivers files. Choosing the usual clean install options doesn't replace all of those files. If one of those has become corrupted, it can lead to odd behavior. If you haven't already, you might consider trying something like DDU to completely remove your driver files, and then reinstall from nvidia.

Thanks for the DDU suggestion.  I wasn't aware this was available.  I will give this a try after I search for other out-of-date copies of the hair products.

animsakari_38ac6442c6

gcjellyfish said:

This is a head scratcher for sure.
Updating nvidia drivers can leave behind certain common drivers files. Choosing the usual clean install options doesn't replace all of those files. If one of those has become corrupted, it can lead to odd behavior. If you haven't already, you might consider trying something like DDU to completely remove your driver files, and then reinstall from nvidia.

Thanks gcjellyfish!  The DDU cleanup followed by a fresh install of the latest NVidia driver did the trick. (I did not find any duplicate installs of the hair products or omnihair shaders.)

I was hoping someone might know of some obscure plugin/component/driver type issues to delve into, and you came through.  Thanks a million for the tip.  I was dreading the prospects of rendering all my scenes, and then offloading a hair canvas render onto my old laptop for OmniHair colors.

Thanks everyone for the suggestions and scratching your heads with me.

ChangelingChick

I'm just glad you got it fixed XD We were definitely all scratching our head :D