Hair Tool for Blender
Hair Tool is add-on for Blender 3.3 and above that will help you generate hair-card based on 3d curves in non destructive way.
Links:
- Online documentation
- Discord server where you can get support and report bugs
- Hair Tutorial Part 1 and Part 2 by SinHouse
- YouTube channel with videos related to HTool
Business vs Individual license: if you are company with above 170k $ income you are Business. Otherwise you can buy individual license
Some of customers who purchased Hair Tool:
UNIGINE, Tactical Adventures, Ubisoft , Digital Extremes, Keyword Studios , Rocksalt, Sharkmob, Black Forest Games, QLOC, Emberstorm and others.
There are multiple ways to generate hair-cards with Hair Tool:
- Hair System - procedural hair generation based on geonodes - great for more complicated hair styles (braids, curls etc)
- using guide mesh (grid surface) - best for modeling long hair strands (its being rewritten to use new hair curves)
- interactive grooming - old method that uses particle hair to generate hair-cards, it will be replaced by Hair System
- by drawing hair strands (similar to Grease Pencil drawing (its being rewritten to use new hair curves)
- using short hair modeling method - for short to medium length hair - animal fur, short human hairstyles
- using shell hair modeling - great for very short hair (fur, carpet). Bit complicated to setup in game engine.
Some of the features:
- tools for curve based hair modeling (cutting, extending, deforming etc) - (rewrite to new curves is vip)
- automated UV workflow (you can define uv regions, which can then be automatically assigned to hair strand)
- easy hair rigging and animation with Jiggle physics
- textured hair-cards preview directly on curve and mesh ribbons
- hair library that contains various hairstyles,
- adjust ribbons profile (tapering radius, randomizing tilt, editing profile etc.)
- convert: Curves to Particle Hair, Particle Hair to Curve ribbons, Curve ribbons to mesh ribbons and so on.
- curve resampling and decimation (increases/decreases curve points count)
- generating vertex color/weights gradients, transferring UVs and vertex weights from character to mesh haircards.
- texture baking from curves, particle hair of Geometry Nodes hair; supports: normal, ao, diffuse, tangent, ID, root maps etc
- build-in addon auto-updater
- and more
Hair tutorials for Blender 3.0 series (these are quite old - I'm in the middle of moving all the tools from od curves to new hair Curves):
- Introduction video
- Working with materials and uv in Hair Tool 2.1
- Example of making hair in Hair Tool 2.1
New Videos (for Blender 3.3 and above) showing new Hair System based on Geometry nodes:
- hair setup in one minute
- short hair creation using Shell Hair and Short Hair modeling techniques
- create hair without grooming
Hair Tool can be used to export hair to Character Creator.
- Check out CCreator Smart Hair system
- Hair Tool to Character Creator workflow video tutorial
- Smart Hair Shader Part 1 - Basic Parameters & Base Color in CC
- Smart Hair Shader Part 2 - Effects & Save Materials in CC
Past Updates:
Update 1.7.1
- hair resample and simplify operators preserve material order
- added options to remove, resize, reset - uv boxes when using "Draw uv area for Hair" operator in imaged editor window (found under spacebar).
Update 1.8:
- Particle Hair Combing with Interactive Ribbons see video - https://youtu.be/r4da3J5omd8
Update 1.8.4:
- early support for texture baking. Baking panel is located in -> 3d View -> Tools -> Hair Baking panel. I will make short guide video soon. https://twitter.com/JoseConseco3/status/975484075841605633
Update 1.8.5 (11.04.2018):
- finished and polished hair baking in blender (ao, id, root mask, tangent map, normal, depth etc).
- added channel packing nodes (beta but should work 90% of time)
- video showing example worfklow and how baking works: https://youtu.be/0UAxl549pNA
Update 1.9.2 (day 20.07.2018) - some bug fixes added in 11.08.2018:
- added select Next/Previous to curve editmode -> Select menu. I will select next point on curve.
- Interactive Child particles count can be set manually over 2000 (use with caution)
- generated curve ribbons will now have the rotation applied (this fixes bad curve ribbons aligning - 90deg offset)
- New: Ability to copy hair curve profile. Located in HT menu -> Next to 'Close Profile'
Update 1.9.3 (26.08.2018):
- Fixed UV bug when going back and forward between curve and mesh mode.
- Randomize curve tilt - tilt can take positive or negative values.
- 'Include Parents' - option added in interactive hair combing - this will take into account Parent strands when using 'generate children option'.
- align curve tilt - make it work only on selected points. Previously it would align whole curve.
- Curve from grease pencil - now it has option to generate curve ribbons on the fly (https://bartoszstyperek.files.wordpress.com/2017/07/pg_to_curveribbon.gif?w=575&zoom=2).
Update 1.9.4 (03.11.2018): - New clumping option added for - 'Curves from grid surface' operator.
- Speed boost to all tools that use curves resampling, including 'Interactive hair combing'. This affects lots of tools, but hopefully this didn't introduce any new bugs.
- fix jumping particle hairs when converting curves to particle hair
- Some of parameters can now be set above maximum value, by manually entering bigger values (eg. max curve ribbon width can now be set above 10)
Update 2.0.6 (27.03.2019):
- added auto-update feature, in addon preferences. When new release is out, you can use auto-update to automatically download and install new version.
Update 2.0.10 (22.05.2019):
- added compatibility with latest blender api changes - use only with blender builds after 21 may!
- Improved speed in interactive hair combing and generation of curves from grid suface
Update 2.1.4 (25.08.2019)
- Show warning popup when opening baking scene,
- Hide braid deformer visibility in cycles,
- added option in preferences to disable drawing grid mesh as 'WIRE',
- fix braids generation, when only one curve is selected
Update 2.1.6 + 2.1.7 + 2.1.8(For Blender 2.81 16.10.2019)
- support for blender 2.81
- adjust particle hair length added (in 'interactive combing' panel)
- more hair examples in hair baking blend scene
- randomize rotation in interactive combing
- flip UV in V (top-bottom) direction
- new drawing mode - connected
- fix hotkey - disabling drawing hair would erase ctrl+shift+H pie menu hotkey, and possibly other hotkeys too!
2.20 (for Blender 2.82 only 06.03.2020)
- texture baking added padding support and new channel compositing nodes
- mesh ribbons - added vertex AO bake with bounces approximation
- taper curve profile (hack)
- added flatten scalp to UV option in baking scene
- mesh ribbons - added UV Pick from target
- replaced default hair material - it no longer needs special light hack. But anisotropic highlights are still faked. It uses new texture too
2.22 (for Blender 2.83 only 26.07.2020)
- Added Hair Modeling Workspace Tool
- non square UV baking support,
- added Straighten strand tool,
- added ability to define custom texture suffixes in addon preferences,
- interactive combing now support length vertex group,
- you can pick uv which will be assigned to drawn strand,
- added finalize option (merge all selected hair into one, new output mesh)
2.23 (for Blender 2.83 only);
- fixed baking on solid background
- fixed Z-up aligning error on curly hair generation,
- possibly fixed auto-updater on MAC,
- fixed uv drawing on curves with no materials,
- fix error when using 'Curves from grid surface' with bezier curve output type
- fix drawing particle hair regression.
2.24(for Blender 2.83 and 2.9x) 22.12.2020:
- added Adjust Length for curve strands
- Hair Draw - added Extend option
- New 'Set UV region'
- added Direction bake pass
- faster and better looking texture padding
2.30 - 16.06.2021
- Compatible only with Blender 2.93
- Added UV Curls
- 'Profile Generate' now support generating round profiles (required for UV curls)
- Added Auto UV with optional length threshold masking
- Added 'Slice Curve Using Mesh' operator
- Lost of new presets added to Hair Library. Get them from HT Gumroad site.
- added cleaner uv for Vertex Groups masking in Interactive Grooming
2.35-2.36 - 20.12.2021 (For Blender 2.93 and 3.0 )
- fixed braid generation in blender 3.0,
- fix error when selecting hair strands that are too close to camera,
- added hair rigging with jiggle,
- Interactive combing now has option to use Blender particle hair settings,
- Curves from grid now will work on single row of polygon meshes,
- Load baking scene wont override the default baking scene. Added option to reset baking scene to default one,
- Interactive Combing - added clumping option, updated UI,
- fix curve from grid surface on blender 3.0
added Hair Generation with Geometry Nodes (VIP - mostly for baking textures, I take no bug reports yet, no docs were made yet),
2.37-2.38 - 12.06.2022 (For Blender 2.93 and 3.x )
- Added Short Hair - new modeling technique
- Jiggle simulation now works on multiple armatures simultaneously, it also works in animation mode too now (thus can be baked into animation),
- Short Hair - now support picking UVs, Weights and other mesh hair operations,
- added proper undo/redo to 'Hair UV' operator and improved box interaction precision,
- Finished implementing 'Radius from UV width',
- big speedup in UV Sampling and Weights Sampling operators (they are few times faster),
- MMB will now adjust strand stiffness for workspace hair modeling tool,
- added control over root radius in hair baking scene,
- Short Hair - added option to keep sharp border edges when remeshing,
- short hair - added option to rotate strands randomly (located in modifier props),
- possible fix to Interactive Combing not generating profile on hair ribbons,
- restored function of bringing back previous vertex groups in Curves from Grid surface,
- Display warning when trying to bake texture with texture clamp size enabled in preferences,
- fix ParticleHair from Curves when using Cloth grooming tool type,
- added option to align Short Hair strand to comb direction"
2.40 - 11.12.2022 (For Blender 3.3 and above )
- Huge update to Hair System - can be used for hair-cards generation now
2.41 - 13.12.2022 (For Blender 3.3 and above )
- Fix being unable to add mask on Windows OS
- Added UVs and Color transferring option (under Profile -> Utils)
2.42 - 09.03.2023 (For Blender 3.3 and above )
- Remade UV and Color sampilng for short hair,
- Short Hair Uvs can now be masked (and layered) by using vertex groups,
- added Vert Color sampling operator for Mesh Hair objects
- fix drawing UV boxes if not material is present
2.45 (for Blender 3.3, and above - Last update 12.05.2023)
- Added New Shell Hair modeling technique,
- Added Curls Profile,
- Added Deformers: Braids, Align to Target, to Parent, Push Out, Embed Roots,
- Hair System Uvs support multiple UV regions now,
- added option to Bake curves generated by Hair System to curve object data,
- Added option to bake Hair System uvs regions to mesh,
- use new Interpolation in Blender 3.5
2.46 for Blender 3.3, and above - Last update 25.05.2023,
- Added Track Curve and Mesh Deformers,
- added Mirror Deformer,
- Automatic parting of Hair System strands based on loose mesh islands,
- Added Resample and Set Resolution operators for new Curves,
- Synced Baking Texture setup with Default Hair Texture Setup,
- fix - curve profile correctly supports UVs of profile made from multiple curves