Creating Low Poly Fur in Blender

Low poly fur is away of simulating particle fur without using a particle system. By creating a plane with a fur texture on it , you can use Blenders Particle Instance modifier to put low poly fur on your model that can also be styled using Blender's hair particle tools. This technique is also useful for creating grass and similar foliage.
The files created in this video can be downloaded here:
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Music:
Morning Mandolin - Chris Haugen

[@alex-qn5xp]

This is probably one of the best ways of creating game ready hair cards, even with addons like hair tool you can't get this much ease of use or control.

[@nicko3151]

you saved me! I've tried doing hair for my models as a beginner and I searched for this exact thing you are doing and I couldn't find anything until now, thank you so much!!

[@Ali-Farzin-Abri]

wow this is just amazing. I can't thank you enough.

[@potaterjim]

From what I've seen, this is by far the most efficient way to make game ready hair The only trouble is the uniform color, since this is all using one texture. What do people recommend if you want to color the hair differently in places? I was thinking, make the hair in gray-scale, and then when the hair cards are in place, create a secondary set of UVs and unwrap all the cards, and then texture paint some nice gray-scale gradients. Then in unity or unreal, make a custom shader that uses the main hair cards for alpha and roughness, but multiply it by the secondary UV colors, and then multiply _that_ by whatever color you want

[@GalaxyPedlar]

Sounds like a good idea, although you cannot see that in the Blender viewport. Something else you could try is just to use two different hair cards and hair particles for different types of fur. Blender is working on physics nodes for hair, so hopefully this is a much better way to doing this in the future.

[@TheKyshu]

Neat! Thanks for the tip with the Particle Instance modifier!

[@mikagal3030]

Сложно же без знания Английского. Thanks for the guide. this method solves my problem, which I have not been able to solve for a long time

[@nightingalesims4036]

Thank you so much for this tutorial!!!!!! You saved my life! ♥

[@GalaxyPedlar]

Glad to help. :)

[@scully376]

This is super helpful!!

[@brittlecourage9193]

I was trying to figure out how to do this effect by myself for a bit now. Your video helped me put the last pieces of the puzzel together, thank you.

[@michaeldavis6702]

I was digging deep to find out how the Valheim devs made the Lox fur, this is about as close as I think I'll get.

[@dannyl5771]

this is god tier, thank you !

[@WheresThaHate]

this is very helpful thanks mark

[@1000sidekick]

Thank you so much for this omgggg

[@esuriddick]

Video is a bit old (1 year) but it was really helpful to see how to work with hair cards. Thank you very much :) Unfortunately, some of the planes are not properly rotated towards the camera (I've seen you mentioned that this issue is yet to be fixed by Blender), which impossibilitates a good otimization. For a decent amount of fur in the object, I end up with a lot of tris. Do you recommend any process to properly clean the fur mesh in the end?

[@GalaxyPedlar]

Unfortunately, Blender still has fairly limited options for generating this kind of fur. I'm hoping it will be possible to do something more useful once geometry nodes include more options relevant for hair. I did hack the Blender source at once point to provide a way to use UVs to smooth out the fur, but it was rejected because of the geometry node rewrite. The best advice I have is just to crank the random hair rotation to maximum to get a decent appearance from all angles.

[@boochadu]

Awesome tutorial! mark: How do I export this as a USDZ/GLB file and still retain the hair? TIA

[@GalaxyPedlar]

Make sure that you have Apply Modifiers checked in the GLB export.

[@boochadu]

@@GalaxyPedlar Thank you!

[@Oreloki]

Any way to set up a material so that the fur samples the hue of the mesh underneath it, similar to how the default hair particles do? I'm furring something with a lot of gradient colors, and making an individual texture for each and every shade sounds a little extreme.

[@GalaxyPedlar]

There's not a way to do it using the system I outline in this video. There may be a way to do it using Blender's new geometry nodes. I'd have to look into it.

[@GalaxyPedlar]

I put together something that lets you provide an image for coloring your fur, and gives you some extra ways to control the fur as well. kzbin.info/www/bejne/fmHZYaZpe858lbc

[@eduardocastro4623]

Great video. Thanks for share.

[@vazak11]

This is brilliant!

[@cecilbrews]

This was super helpful, thanks! I'll keep investigating, but today I tried adding fur to a creature I made and in some parts it looked good (upper body) but in others (arms) the hairs looked like they were not coming out of the base but like parallel and making weird shapes, is there a way to make sure the bottom of the hair/alpha map will always be against the body and not weirdly rotated?

[@GalaxyPedlar]

Blender doesn't give you any way to control the rotation of the fur hairs on your model. I actually was able to hack the Blender source and fix this and even submitted a patch to the Blender team (developer.blender.org/D9100), but as far as I can tell they are completely ignoring it. Maybe if a few more uses bugged them about it they would get this patch implemented. Also, check out this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/rqnInJWwebOBZpo

[@anticstudios]

thanks for the video

[@gerydwayne2178]

what blender version. im using 2.9 and my Particle instance dosent look like that :(

[@GalaxyPedlar]

I just loaded the demo file I've linked in the description using Blender 2.93.2 and it seems to be rendering properly. What problems are you having?

[@gerydwayne2178]

@@GalaxyPedlar no sorry i fugured it out, because instead of check boxes they have the glowing blue rectangles next to each other. My bad. I love tutorial btw, now My blneder wont microwave my instant noodles because I did the curves > mesh fur way. thanks. now I am figuring out how to reduce the poly count a bit so I can export it with a character :)

[@Fairyyoshi]

Hi, I love your tutorial. I was wondering if I could ask a question? Is there a way to make the particles wider/clumpier? I want to try and make the fur a bit more cartoony and when I add it, there's just way too much.

[@GalaxyPedlar]

You can make the particles wider by tabbing into edit mode and scaling your hair particle object to be larger. You can control clumpiness by adding children to your hair particles and turning clumpiness on. Then make sure to also turn on children in the Particle Instance modifier.

[@Fairyyoshi]

@@GalaxyPedlar Thank you very much. :D I really appreciate it.

[@CheekyPandaCub]

Every time I try to move the monkey the fur starts to stretch, any idea what i might be doing wrong?

[@GalaxyPedlar]

I'm not sure. Maybe make sure that you've applied rotation and scale - that can affect things sometimes.

[@nyaatarara]

May I ask how many total polygons you got at the end?

[@GalaxyPedlar]

About 45000 faces, although you could use fewer hairs if you want to.

[@nyaatarara]

@@GalaxyPedlar Thank you very much!

[@workingZen]

Do you know if this effect can be taken into VRChat? Or would particle effects in general, be too much for VRChat to handle?

[@GalaxyPedlar]

It should work in VR chat. You're just exporting mesh geometry. Just keep the number of faces you generate with the fur to something reasonable.

[@RADkate]

is there any reason to model fin fur over this ?

[@GalaxyPedlar]

You can if you want. That might be useful in places where you want the fur to be extra long.

[@jennymarlv]

Hi! I don't know what went wrong, but when I did the last step, the fur I created was way to big for my character. Any suggestions on what went wrong? I did click "size". I'm a bit of a noob... thanks!

[@GalaxyPedlar]

Hard to say. You might want to try selecting your hair model and pressing ctrl-A and then applying Rotation and Scale. Sometimes that can fix things. If you're still having trouble, maybe try doing the tutorial in a separate file with the Suzanne model. It might help you catch the step where things went wrong.

[@jennymarlv]

@@GalaxyPedlar Great, thank you!

[@GameDevAraz]

Also, Could You Share Your Fur Image, Thanks

[@GalaxyPedlar]

I've uploaded the binaries I created. You can find them here: drive.google.com/file/d/1mgIc0H4WIc00AhaViH2K1MuFqvoGz0Xx/view?usp=sharing

[@bradleycurtis1498]

do you know if i can import this into unreal 4 or is it blender spesific

[@GalaxyPedlar]

Everything produced is a mesh, so you should be able to import it.

[@bradleycurtis1498]

@@GalaxyPedlar thank you for the quick response. Fantatic thank you

[@GameDevAraz]

WHERE WERE YOU

[@greencityorgization7372]

When i pressed 3, my whole project disapeared. the one i have been working on for over a week, just vanished...

[@GalaxyPedlar]

Don't know why that wold happen. Try restarting Blender. Also, make regular backups when working on large projects.

[@bunksoup8137]

If you have default settings, 3 above keyboard will enable visibility on only 3rd layer of outliner. Only 3 on numpad will enable side view. I would disable all the numbers above your keyboard, or assign them to something more useful.

[@BazafShaheen-bw8di]

😘

[@warkah7557]

91k tris isn't low poly... but great vid anyways. The easiest video on hair cards/hair particles I know of so far.

[@anticstudios]

I really needed this for my grass in my game

[@catehartman9974]

Such a great tutorial! I used this for a low poly old man model! You talked through everything wonderfully. Thank you for uploading

[@raymondable]

what

[@GhostRiderSpiritOfVengeance]

Subscribed. I struggle very hard with ADHD... and always find tutorials little to not helpful at all. This video has been such a tremendous help for me, and I cant thank you enough. Subscribed

[@GalaxyPedlar]

Thank you so much! I'm glad you found this helpful.

[@truptibajpai9806]

woooooooooooow

[@zackchong6252]

hi, i clean the plane already, but in layout mode the cleaned part show in black color instead of transparent

[@GalaxyPedlar]

Make sure to set up your materials the same way they are in the video. You need to make sure the material is transparent and set to the correct blend mode, and that you erase all the black first. You could also make your fur texture in a separate painting program.

[@boitahaki]

The same happened to me, followed the tutorial bit by bit. Erased the background and everything. It looks fine in paint mode but its not transparent in the other modes.

[@Ketlo12345]

@@boitahaki Ye same for me

[@boitahaki]

@@Ketlo12345 I had to use this for transparency kzbin.info/www/bejne/m2evZouBncalhLs It only works for the Eevee render though.

[@boitahaki]

My fur stopped being transparent as soon as I changed it to the layout tab 14:50 Also I don't have these options...

[@GalaxyPedlar]

Check your Vieport Shading menu to make sure your material is set to render textures (top right dropdown of the viewport window). Each viewport has its own settings, so you'll have to set them up again if you switch tabs. Not sure why you don't have those options. Double check to make sure that you created the right modifier.

[@WillLeamon]

He fixes this at around 17:40, the alpha channel needs to be connected in the shader editor

[@brumborn7433]

thank you