Hair Tool 3

Hair Tool 3 (for Blender 3.6 and above)¶

Hair Tool

Hair Tool is Blender add-on for creating hair cards based on 3d curves. Art by Ellinor Morén

This add-on will help you procedurally generate hair card with UV's, bake them to real geometry curves and then tweak with modeling tools:

procedural Hair System with Deformers
Curve Modeling Tools (edit: radius, tilt, resample curve, extrude, subdivide, cut etc). Blender 3.6 and 4.x as of today (2023) does have built-in tools for modeling new hair curves,
Guide Grid mesh - hair will follow guide grid mesh,
Track Mesh - sculpt your hair rather than groom.
Hair Drawing (or extending) - very fast way to create hair cards from scratch,
Hair Library - learn and modify by using one of many hair presets,
automated uv handling - UVs can be assigned to each strand automatically,
various Hair Profiles types to choose from,
one click Convert hair to mesh
Sample vertex color/weights from mesh,
Automated rigging with jiggle physics,

And more!

Quick Start¶

Hair Tool Art by Ellinor Morén

Fastest way to get started with Hair Tool:

One minute Hair Setup - quickest way to create hair using hair draw feature (no speedup)
Two minute Hair Setup - basics hairstyle with split, and grooming
hair SubSystem types - first step when you want to generate hair - click [+] in Hair System panel
Hair Deformers - they affect hair look, can be stacked one after another. I would suggest to at least browse through the list of deformers to get idea what they do.
Input Masks - any Deformer input can be masked by eg: vertex group, texture, length etc. (you can create stack of masks)
Define/Modify UVs - resize or add new UV regions to map your haircards.
Finalize Hair - the last step before exporting hair to game engine or rendering in Blender. Convert curve hair to mesh haircards (with .

Video Tutorials¶

Often longer videos

Overview of Hair System - for new Hair Tool 3.0. After 10 min overview, I also show how to make example hairstyle with split.
Explanation of how Input Masks work, in Hair Tool 3.0.
Explanation of how Deformers Masks work, in Hair Tool 3.0.
Curves From Grid - modeling technique explained
Track To Mesh - modeling technique explained
setup hair-cards in 1 min - for HTool 2.46 - but the workflow is very similar in ver 3.0,
Short Hair modeling technique - for HTool 2.46 - but the workflow is very similar in ver 3.0,,
Track To Curve and to Mesh video

Add-on location¶

Hair Tool Pie Menu and panels in right Sidebar(N)

It is best to use addon from Ctrl+Shift+H Pie Menu (hotkey can be changed in preferences).
There is also Hair Tool panel - located in right Sidebar(N): "Hair Tool" tab.
Last but not least, you can find Hair Tool Modeling Tool in left sidebar(T) in - see icon outlined in yellow on the image above.

Installation¶

To install Hair Tool you need zip file from your Gumroad account. Then, inside Blender, go to:

Edit > Preferences > Add-ons, and click 'Install' button.

And navigate to hair_tool_3.xy.zip file location.

Installation For Blender 3.6 use hair_tool_3.x zip files!

Updating¶

Hair Tool has build-in auto updater which will download and install the latest add-on release. To use auto updater go to:

Edit > Preferences > Add-ons > Hair Tool > press Check for update.

If new version is found, press Update addon button, wait few seconds and restart blender.

Note: To prevent excessive email notifications and minimize spam, I publish smaller updates and bug fixes without increasing the version number. When enough new features or fixes are implemented, I release a new official version with an increased release number. If you want to get the 'smaller' bugfixes but the addon shows that you already have the latest version, use Reinstall Current Version. This will download the smaller incremental bug fixes..

You can also download updates manually by getting new zip file from your Gumroad account. You should have received download link to zip file, with email when you purchased Hair Tool.

Update Addon Checking for new version of Hair Tool from Preferences panel

Limitations¶

~~No cross-profile support (X like profile - where profile is made from two crossing haircards). It is on my TODO list~~ Implemented in HTool 4.0
Pasting hair-preset won't work (using blenders Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V). This is due to Blender limitation. As a workaround is to store preset in hair library and then append it from there to new file.
If you use 'Add' brush in hair curve Sculpt Mode, profile will not be visible on new strands. This is due to bug in Blender - reported here. As a workaround use 'Set Radius' deformer with 'Build up' option disabled - to override haircard radius to 1. Fixed in Blender 4.2
~~You can't move vertices in curve Edit Mode, if 'Strands Overlay' is enabled. This is due to bug in Blender - reported [here]~~(https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/issues/116763). Fixed in Blender 4.2
~~Undo won't work after editing curve radius in Curve Edit mode. This is due to bug in Blender - reported here.~~ - fixed in Hair Tool directly.

Support¶

Hair Tool Art By Colin Nitta

For support or bug reports use this discord server.