Hair at a Strand Level | Grooming your creations in Unreal Engine

[@3sgamestudio]

The LOD is amazing! Didn't know you have it optimized so much! It makes things easy to force cards based instead of strand based system based on quality settings : )

Thank you, this groom support is BIG! :)

[@TheRabidgoalie]

Thank you for taking the time to create this video. This is some of the information about this system that has been needed for quite some time. Could you expand on how you exported the alembic from Blender? Every time that I have tried to export a groom from Blender to UE4, the normal import window comes up. There are some hacky workarounds, like converting the Blender groom into curves if I remember correctly, but these ultimately fail once the character is animated. The groom reacts strangely, even without simulations running. So, if I had one complaint, it is that you glossed over how to export a useable groom from Blender to UE4.

[@TheRabidgoalie]

I have just discovered a video by Marvel Master that covers how to import grooms from Blender into Unreal. Here is the link: kzbin.info/www/bejne/pWbQo4B_jc2ribM I guess Mario Palmero must have assumed when making this video that the workflow was now common knowledge. I have tested the workflow in the linked video and it does indeed work. Thanks again to Mario for making this video. It is really helpful.

[@nicksullivan23]

Absolutely amazing! Looking forward to seeing the environmental forces, wind, etc... Acting on the fur.

[@Ponlets]

i honestly feel like i need a tutorial series on getting started with Unreal because (Pardon the pun) this is UNREAL .. like ... Blender can do hair sure but its not fast by any means and this is a literal game changer

[@Shinjitsu_84]

How do you properly make the root UV texture?

[@guillermo3dcode]

Very useful !! Thanks a lot for this videos :D

[@edgarkhachatryan5664]

Thank you for such a deep explanation of the groom system. The only thing which is not clear for me is a seed parameter at 11:51 What value did it provide? As I understand it is a Id of each strand. But how it numerically works in this expression? Thanks

[@gamedevstanislove]

Really useful! Thank you! Do it more often!

[@jamqdlaty]

My GTX 1080 doesn't seem to support much much less complex grooms than yours... it's like 30 spf instead of fps when it's in the view.

[@matheus-kirchesch]

Very nice, the Auto Generation is the best thing ever invented by men, you guys have to keep evolving it, make it so programmers can create movie quality hair that works in their indie games

[@yoni2266]

Amazing, but is there any possible to bind a mesh onto strand tips for some customized hair styles ? or make mesh to constraint by strands in order to put accessories on hair ?

[@TheBaerserka]

this is awesome :D Especialy since i alrdy know to make hair in blender. Thank u so much

[@OleksandrSe]

This is a masterpiece

[@BigChiken44]

The question is how to create groom in Maya/Max and then export to UE4?

[@AgentSmith911]

I saw something similar on EAs Frostbite engine youtube channel (unlisted video) about hair on FIFA 21 characters on PS5, to get detailed hair. Getting each hair strand to have movement is cool, but making them all move individually to make it look more realistic isn't as easy. One example is wind only hitting one part of the head.

[@mrjean9376]

woww this is too awesome! but i think in the future, pretty much games that crafted using unreal are mostly required a tons of the spec available in ur system, because of all this physics and graphics.. and i just confuse, why frostbite engine for example, could make amazing realistic environment games like star wars bf2, battlefield 4 and all of it are runs pretty well in core i3 nvidia gt840m and just 4 gigs of ram? (that was my laptop spec that i already tested on), and it even was from 5 years ago.. :\

[@魏凤熙]

When I change the body with metahamans, the groom binding has serious die penetration. When I look down and look up, the displacement of groom is always greater than that of the head. For example, when I look down, groom will run directly in front of my face. When I look up, groom will run behind my head. It may be because the height is different due to changing the body. Do you encounter this situation? How to solve it?

[@MrDeathnight28]

Hi ! I have a problem every time I import my alembic file my Unreal crashes , Does anyone knows how to fix that ?

[@aweidenhammer]

Me too!

[@jayantsarkar2900]

Explains at best 😍😍

[@swipeslogjack_tgaming9472]

Thank you Mario, very cool!

[@meistervoss4735]

is this workflow transferable to hair cards? would appreciate a tut :)

[@randallcromer66]

Unreal engine is AWESOME.

[@kacperrolewski3592]

Is there any documentation on Zbrush workflow? When I try to export the alembic file from Zbrush a different pop-up window appears and it imports the groom as Static Mesh which I can't use.

[@ShawnPaul86]

Don't think you can export hair from zbrush like that. This needs the particle system info.

[@karvalhos9168]

Great Video! Thank you!

[@Tenchinu]

a little late... but would you use maps from Substance as texture materials? is there any way for the fur to follow the base colors in the maps, like in blender? I'm trying to color the fur of my character... but I haven't been able to find a way for the material to respect UV coordinates once I link it to a new texture in UE5 :(

[@eatmylaz0r]

Finally someone who knows what is doing with this. My only question is: Can I start using those instead of hair cards for newgen games projects now?

[@tehf00n]

Yes but you would use this alongside hair cards with the LOD system.

[@alekjwrgnwekfgn]

It would be awesome to have access to this project (particularly for the materials, if we can have the characters or environment- that's ok)

[@buffaloSoldier519]

What about to a lesser degree (nowhere near as thick) using the tech for grass?

[@estemanariza]

Can you atually use strands in videogames?

[@charlytutors]

Great info. thank you =)

[@Redemtor62]

I tried to make the material as in video. But no matter what texture I put in, the param2D "Base Color" came up with an error? Is there something I'm not aware of?

[@timsonss]

Is this project available to download?

[@goldennboy1989]

Are there cvars to turn Voxelization and Simulation off during gameplay?

[@mvegum]

i think i have a problem with my skinning. when i use the command "r.HairStrands.MeshProjection.Sim.Deformed.Triangles 1" i can see that there are gaps im the mesh and i can see a duplicate of it slighty above where it's supposed to be. does anyone know how i can improve the skinning

[@xinlittle1447]

Thanks nice share, where can I download this UE project ?

[@eddiej.l.christian6754]

How do I turn off the simulation solver in blueprints ?

[@BigChiken44]

Seems like the normal map on the floor is broken. Probably green channel is flipped or something

[@dodoo86]

Hi. thank You for the tutorial.. its really helpfull. I only have one problem... my hair just wont collide with my mesh. i setted up the physic asset, but its still wont work. Could that be the problem that i made the groom with maya xgen using only the sculp part of the character mesh ?

[@QuiteDan]

In blender, I've had trouble exporting the groom_root_uv attribute into alembic. Ultimately, I switched to houdini for grooms. But I am curious if anyone has been successful with blender and root UVs Keep in mind when root UVs are NOT present, unreal will spherically project them, which leads many to believe they are imported and correct

[@TheWarlordBob]

Thank you for commenting about this. I think I've run into the same issue. I have the hair painted in Blender just right, but in Unreal it was appearing very strangely. I thought my UV map was rotated or scaled when I imported the hair curves, so I thought I could just adjust the texture to compensate, but it being a spherical projection issue makes so much more sense.

[@TheWarlordBob]

I've discovered that someone else has found a workaround to this issue. It looks like Unreal actually uses some kind of octahedron projection when a UV map cannot be found, so if you're exporting hair from Blender with color variation, you'll need to use the hack shown in this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bYLYc6ZmgtV8ra8

[@ThatTechGuy123]

can you show how to make hair in blender with guides?

[@0805slawek]

That will be good idea make moss this techique?

[@harshitpenamata2682]

When i have two assets with hair and fur , there are weird artifacts on the fur. Anyone with a similar issue ?

[@vfxforge]

the master hair shader should have all these settings build in by default instead of users having to build their own, or at least have one prebuilt and one base.

[@kids7561]

How to export hair from Blender in Alembic format?

[@dodoo86]

Ok i find it out that you actually have to create a binding asset in order to collide.. i mean in the editor its colliding but as soon i package my project the collision is gone ... since i highly doubt that i will get an answer from op i wonder does anybody else have the same issue??

[@tehf00n]

You should always be binding yes.

[@CodingWorm]

unreal is the goat of alll engines.

[@surtvalheim]

Is importing Alambic required ? Can't it be used directly on meshes ?

[@LumberingTroll]

Alembic is a totally different file type.

[@bernhard.rieder]

Cool. How to bind the groom to an animated alembic.abc file?

[@rataman098]

right click on groom > create binding. If u want to add it to a BP, you need to put the groom under the skeletal mesh

[@goldennboy1989]

No matter what I do I can't get my cards to use the assigned material properly. It totally ignores anything plugged to the tangent or normal node. What am I doing wrong?

[@chenjason8601]

I have the same question to the hair card material. Did you manage to do it?

[@goldennboy1989]

@@chenjason8601 unfortunately not :( I put the hair topic aside for a while and use classic poly hair atm.

[@mr.guzwee7695]

Does this mean that Nefro hair can be depicted in games?

[@ChaojianZhang]

4:24 I have no idea how he can so casually talk about export/import when it's one of the greatest obstacle for many such advanced features in UE4.

[@ChaojianZhang]

Even if I enabled "Alembic Groom Importer" plugin, I can nowhere figure out how to export hair and import it as groom object in UE4.

[@ChaojianZhang]

Some tips: 1. During export, under Particle Settings-Hair-Render-(Disable)Show Emitter; Export scale should be 100. 2. Skeletal mesh/Skeletons should be exported separately from grooms - for the former, select both the object and the armature during export; For the later, select only the object during export. In either cases, you might want to export only the first frame.

[@ChaojianZhang]

That result is really amazing! Shading is wonderful!

[@rataman098]

@@ChaojianZhang do u know how to export the root uv's from Blender? or how even create them? I'm struggling with that, and they don't even mention it :(

[@ChaojianZhang]

@@rataman098 I dont even know what is a root UV😅

[@PautaGamerOficial]

Anyone knows if groom works with ray traced mirrors in 4.26?

[@james9999]

how about cost/performance compare to hair mesh guys

[@tehf00n]

5million strands in realtime is perfectly fine. Above that, you probably have other materials and draw calls that are building up for realism and it will exponentially slow down. But finding that renderpoint where everything runs sweet is what we do.

[@perfectionist724]

I wish they'd fix groom. If my player walks out of level 000 in wc. Ue freezes. Please make the groom and ue more stable World composition and groom need to be seriously looked at!

[@tehf00n]

Interesting im gonna test this now.

[@ZoomerMirek]

The first Strand type engine

[@heibaigui]

4:03 it reminds me that fox meme on the bench

[@TorQueMoD]

My groom seems slightly out of sync with my character's animation. Do you have any idea how to fix this? kzbin.info/www/bejne/a5rVp6Oobdl5i6M you can see the tail mesh is sticking through the hair sometimes and the shoulders and face also look like they're moving at a different rate.

[@QueenDoot]

I wish I could get Unreal to recognize its a groom and not just Alembic cache. Using the same process, sometimes it works, most times it doesn't. Finally getting one recognized as a groom and it crashes Unreal every time. *sigh*

[@tehf00n]

I think your workflow might be doing something that causes this. I have done several grooms and never had an issue with anything.

[@rataman098]

uncheck "show emitter" from particle settings, and check "selected only" and "visible only" in exporter

[@TheWillvoss]

uh.. you can just EXPORT hair from blender? you don't have to convert it to curves THEN export?

[@tehf00n]

If you add a particle system, set to hair and start modelling from there, it's a straight up export as Alembic with a scaled value. BUT... you can do a curve based setup, then use HairNet (free blender plugin) to convert the curves to the particle system. I used this method to do a braid. It was cool.

[@c.ssturmer6794]

Use this to compete with the real fur technology from the movie Cats

[@LEGENDoa]

Good

[@70d3x]

Man that character is so deep in the uncanny valley for me! X/

[@bombum1487]

Uncanny valley for a toon char like that? do you know what uncanny valley is???

[@Scatty666]

@@bombum1487 maybe he is a furry :D

[@ShawnPaul86]

Why does it look like it's still using hair cards?

[@KendelEx]

finally

[@mingyenwu9621]

11:40

[@brianmercerjr2282]

ok

[@Boraboar]

uhm.. nvidia hairworks?

[@tehf00n]

thats old news.

[@sanilalkuttimon1755]

😍😍😍😍

[@СчастливыйЧеловек-х9с]

Glory to Tim Sweeney!

[@codingmemo9954]

😱😱😱😱😱

[@RecklessJames]

Now if only hair didnt rely on TemporalAA in order to actually look good, which results in many other graphic issues... pick your poison, I guess.

[@madlad3017]

THIS SHOULD BE TITLED GROOMING IN BLENDER!!!!!!!

[@Narblo]

This is not a game engine anymore, it takes for ever to open a project, to build the shaders with only one material in scene, to cook a game no words... What happend to editor performance of UDK??

[@tehf00n]

You sound like you know everything about UE4.

[@stoneapollyon8313]

the word "Grooming" will forever have a negative meaning in my eyes sadly.

[@IllyasArt]

Thought the same thing. That word is ruined for me now :T

[@tehf00n]

Take it back then. From this point, it has no other meaning but Unreal Hair Rendering. (been there, stay strong)

[@YRTBGAMES4YOU]

please make a Best Game like GTA 5 graphics and Missions for Mobile 🔥

[@sanjaireena9948]

Yes🙏 please

[@perfectionist724]

I know epic won't care if a user writes this. Because it seems to me there not interested in performance too much. They keep making new features but the ue core imo is terrible! It crashes. It freezes. It uses way too many resources! While i run new graphic intensive games and they all run very smoothly. Ue is a dream in its current state. It is not reality! Ue user for a year

[@LumberingTroll]

sadly it sounds like you may need a couple hardware upgrades, I'm using an and 3800x, 64GB Ram, and an RTX 3090, and UE4 never crashes for me. Then again you could be doing different things than I am. UE is indeed resource-intensive so your machine needs to be able to provide those resources. Further like any company Epic is large hundreds of people, the ones responsible for bug fixing and performance are not the same that develop new features and systems.

[@perfectionist724]

@@LumberingTroll ue doesn't crash on me to much. And yes I have a very nice pc. It runs very new games very well. I really have 1 issue and that is groom. If i put 1 groom on my players head and walk out of level 000. Ue freezes

[@LumberingTroll]

@@perfectionist724 well world compose is deprecating soon, and will be replaced by a new system in UE5, so not sure that will ever be resolved.

[@perfectionist724]

@@LumberingTroll maybe...groom can't be used with wc?? I know they said the water can't.

[@perfectionist724]

@@abra4662 you walked around with a groom into different levels in wc? No crash or freeze? There's 1 thing I know im not doing With my groom. Im not binding it to a skeletal mesh. I know they recommended that. Wonder if that's important