Hair Tool for Blender

By

bartoszstyperek

I developed Hair Tool, addon for Blender, to simplify creation process of low/medium poly hair models

This addon will help you generate hair mesh ribbons with uv's from bezier/nurbs curves. It is how most current games are doing hairs for characters.

For blender 2.8 use Hair Tool 2.0.x series. For blender 2.79 use HT 1.9.x.

Documentation

Features:

• ability to generate and interactively  comb hair ribbons based on blender particle hairs (since 1.8 version)
• generating hair ribbons from mesh surfaces
• ability to uv unwrap and preview textures on hair curve ribbons
  
• easy and convenient switching back and forth between curve ribbons and  mesh mesh, while preserving mesh uv's
  
• ability to adjust ribbons radius profile over strand length to taper the ribbons shape
• ability to convert curves to blender Particle Hair system
• Generating vertex color and weights gradients for ribbons.
• and more
  

Part of $ I make on this addon wil go to Blender Foundation (I think around 20%).

Basic workflow is:

• create grid mesh (quad only) in basic shape of hair, that will be source of hair curves
  
• mark one of border edges as sharp - it will be root of generated hair
• Use button 'Curves from surface' - to generate curves. Play with F6 setting to vary the look, amount of splines
• Generate hair ribbons by pressing 'Hair setup' button.
  
• If you want to switch to mesh version of you curve based ribbons, press 'Curves to Ribbons' button.

Detailed info, links to youtube tutorials can be fund on MY BLOG

Discord server where you can report bugs: https://discord.gg/cxZDbqH

I also recorded tutorial about using this addon, with some tips and tricks, problem solving and stuff: https://youtu.be/FLHbzCXOijg
Old video: https://youtu.be/WE0aBe8SNls
Video about hair shader: https://vimeo.com/229043427
Video about creating texture: https://vimeo.com/228873075

What you get:

• hair Tool addon
• demo blend file, with models that were used to render promo image for Hair Tool. It contains: female head, hair material, hair alpha texture, hair ribbons (4 styles), surface objects that were used to generate hair splines.
  

Update 1.1:

• works better with custom unit scale
• added radius param, to 'Change radius profile' operator
• source surfaces will take modifier into account (eg. mirror)

Update 1.2:

• Adjust generated curves tilt, so it is aligned to source mesh surface with new - 'Align curve tilt' button
• Added ability to generate hair spline ribbons from blender Particle Hair system.
• Improved speed when generating curves from surface
• Improved UI
• Minor tweaks, bug-fixes and optimizations

Update 1.2.1:

• normalized scale for generated ribbons (bigger ribbons for bigger objects,  smaller ribbons for small object
• normalized hair generations (similar look of generated strands for small and big objects)
• improved 'strands generation from Particle hair' - operation will update previously generated ribbons if exist (before it would create new child ribbons each time )

Update 1.3:

• added 'Randomize Tilt' operator
  
• added 'Smooth Tilt' operator
  
• added 'Randomize Spacing' option when generating curve hairs from surface
  
• added 'Uniform' option (for hair spacing, and strand points) when generating curve hairs from surface
• Bugfixing and UI tweaking.

Update 1.4:

• added ability to attach curves as particle hair system 'Particle Hair from Curves' (this can be used to import zbrush fibermesh curves and use them as blender Particle Hair system)
• added 'Generate ribbon weights' - make vertex group with gradient from ribbon root to tip
• added 'Generate ribbon vertex color' - make vertex color with gradient from ribbon root (black) to tip (white)
  

Update 1.5:

• added ability to draw multiple uv boxes when using 'UV hair' operator. Each ribbon will pick random uv box. It helps differ the texture look.
  
• Added 'Curve Resample' - changes number of points the curve is made from.
• Added options 'Select Tips', 'Select Roots' under Blender 'Select' menu (visible during curve edit mode, on bottom header bar)
• other tweaks and speed improvements

Update 1.6:

• Updated UI
• New option 'Ribbons from particle hair with children' - gives better result compared to child particles generated by build in blender child particles (more even distribution, better aligning of child ribbons to surface). Great for short Hair.
  
• Resample - more options, and keeps curve tilt and rotation.
• 'Particle Hair From Grease Pencil' strokes painted in grease pencil, can be converted to particle hair (with some options available under f6)
• 'Flip UV' option in preferences - if enabled random strands will have uv's flipped in X-axis
• Bug fixing.

Update 1.6.2:

• Fix 'uv hair' operator cancel not undoing changes
• 'Only selection' option set to False when working in 'Object mode', and True when in 'Edit Mode'
• Added option in preferences to hide grease pencil strokes. Hiding can be disabled now.
  
• remade and streamlined  Hair Too manual on my site.
  
• bugfixes.

Update 1.6.4:

• mostly bugfixes, tweaks, better button descriptions.
• ability to add 'random vertex color per ribbon'. Can be also used on non hair meshes, to add random ID vertex colors per loose mesh parts.
• ability to add presets for 'Ribbons from particle hair with children' operator

Update 1.6.5:

• added "Smooth scale" - similar to 'Smooth Tilt' but smooths the radius
  
• added 'Edit curve profile', 'Close Curve Profile' - if you want  to adjust curve bevel profile by hand
  
• ability to taper roots of curves ribbons (previously you could taper just tips)
• added 'Placement jittering'  F6 option for 'Ribbons from particle hair with children' button - helps a bit to get more uniform child strands distribution.

Update 1.7

• ability to preview hair texture directly in curve ribbons stage. See video explaining new feature: https://youtu.be/gtbhmYEKGZE
• linear deformer tool - for curve modeling can be downloaded here: https://github.com/JoseConseco/mira_tools  (how this tool works is explained in video above)

Update 1.7.1

• hair resample and simplify operators preserve material order
• removed Target option from 'Particle hair to Curves - it was buggy, and made the workflow to complicated.
  
• 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
• Added/improved embed operator
• bug fixes, speed improvements.
  

Update 1.8.1:

• added particle hair overlay when using interactive hair combing (introduced in previous update). Previously curve ribbons would obscure particle hair view.
  
• added smoothing slider for interactive hair combing panel.
  
• bug fixes, speed improvements- combing with hundreds of child ribbons should be faster now.

Update 1.8.2:

• normalized ribbons width size
• make draw parent strands option always available in Interactive Hair Combing .

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 1.8.7 + 1.8.8  + 1.8.9(17.04.2018):

• added parameter - Output texture name - for hair baking
• changed 'Randomize Curve Tilt' operator - this change makes it now possible to make curly hair.

• added 'Generate Braid' Operator. See video below.
  

• In this video you will see who to create curly hair and Braid: https://youtu.be/iXjBCxesA_I
• bugfixes in 1.8.9
  

Update 1.9.0 (day 5.05.2018):

• fixed converting curve ribbons to mesh ribbons -  mesh not updated correctly (broken in previous update)
  
• fix local mode (/) causing curve ribbons/ mesh ribbons conversion error (fixed by disabling local model)

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
• Allow Rendering 8k Cards
• 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 1.9.6 + 1.9.7:

• Fixed difference between curves and mesh ribbons render.
• Fixed 'Curves From Grid surface'.
  

Update 2.0.0:

• First blender 2.8 release. Some features are missing, and bugs are there. Do not use for production.

Update 2.0.1 (24.01.2019):

• video with progress on porting HT to blender .2.8: https://youtu.be/09CL8PbIHY0

Update 2.0.2 (27.01.2019):

• bug fixes, more speed,  plus particle hair to curve now works.
  

Update 2.0.4 (09.02.2019):

• Curves from grid surface will now remember its previous settings, when executing for the second time.

Update 2.0.5 (09.02.2019):

• bug fixes for compatibility with latest daily blender 2.8 builds
  
• fix  being unable to generate mesh ribbons weight gradient