This is probably a bug, unless someone else has found a workaround!
I want to have head hair on a character, but because the character’s mesh has a subsurf modifier on it, the hair floats just a little bit above the head. To avoid this, I moved the hair particle system to the bottom of the modifier stack (under the subsurf modifier), and then the hair particles correctly come out of the mesh’s surface instead of floating above it.
However, in order for the hair to not be oddly scrambled by the subsurf modifier, I have to check the “Use Modifier Stack” option in the Hair Particle’s settings. I’m using 2 levels of subsurf both for preview and rendering, but when I hit F12, Blender crashes. Unchecking the “Use Modifier Stack” option allows Blender to render fine, except the hair doesn’t behave correctly (it gets scrambled in places).
Has anyone else experienced this?
Thanks very much for your time and advice!
EDIT: I just discovered that rendering with only 1 level of subsurf on preview and render rendered fine. Maybe it’s a lack of RAM issue?