Hair Designer - Dynamic hair & fur tool

The procedural shader is pixelated, but I keep it for the compatibility with older versions.
And the advantage of the procedural shader is that it doesn't pixelate when you zoom on it, it could be usefull for some projects.
I always recommand to use the atlas shader, and this is the default shader when a new layer is created.
But you're right, it could be confusing, I'll probably create some new demos using only the latest versions of the shaders.

 

Wow, nice hair!
Thanks you.

 

I decided to buy Hair Designer but turned out it is not working as expected.
Exactly what I worried about. The same with the "Hair Tool" : (



Look, there is one point light in the scene with soft shadows. No other light sources. Ambient light is 100% black.
Character is fully blocked by the cube and shadows everywhere on the character and hair.

But as you can see, specular reflections still visible despite the shadows. If I will disable point light - reflections will gone, so they are definitely from this point light. They just ignores the shadows.

I need a character in quite a dark environments with zero ambient light and dark rooms which are fully in shadows from the point lights which can be located in another room.
So hair of character should not be detectable while he is in the shadow.

Can you do something with that?


Update

Well, I figured out that I can disable this reflection if I will disable Translucency parameter. But I am still not sure how much it may impact on overall quality of hair.
Theoretically I can check direct line of sight to the point lights using a raycast and disable translucency if needed. Not too clean solution but at least it may solve this issue.

Anyway, I should say that male hair is amazing!

But I noticed there is not too much example scenes. Can you add example scene with the female long hair like in web demo above?
Also I saw very nice web demo with the horse. It is also would be nice to see in the package.

 

The problem here is that transparency doesn't receive shadows in unity, I did a trick for that, you can enable it by setting the 'Transparency shadows' to 1 when you have an extreme lighting like that


I know that I should create a demo with some female haircuts
I've just too much work for doing all I want to do...

 

Nice. Thanks.

About long hair. I can't figure out how to correctly design a hair.
Seems like I need to bend each spline manually? There is no useful brush tools as for short hair?

For example, how much splines in this demo?
http://www.kalagaan.com/HairDesigner/Demos/DemoLongHair/
And approximately how much time it took you to setup all of these splines?

Video tutorial about long hair would be really useful.

 

you can set up one spline then duplicate it (alt+shift) and move it (alt).
All the shortcuts are displayed in the tool.
I'll improve the tool with some layers, for hiding some part of the hair cut.
The mirror tool will have an option for selecting the layers to duplicate.

I've done this for the demo in 15/20 min, but the result could be better with more time.
There's 25 splines for this character.

 

Glad you are going to improve it. But currently I should say that tool is extremely hard to use if I need to create a long hair.
However it is still very nice for short hire, but I expected to create some long hair with that.

Main problems:
1. It is very hard to move nodes of splines in desired position.
2. In edit mode, Unity editor have low FPS. 30 FPS if one spline is displayed and 15 FPS if several splines displayed.



3. Need mirror tool. It is very hard to place splines even on the one side of the head. Necessary to repeat everything on the other side is not good.
4. Need a brush tools like for short hair in order to quickly edit several splines at once.
5. If I want to add a new spline I can click on the head and it will be added right on the head. But once I moved it, it will be located off the head surface. It would be nice to have a possibility to move the base node but snap it to the head surface.
6. Need a possibility to quickly select the new spline and deselect the current one.

Overall, workflow with the spline is quite confusing. It would be much better it nodes of splines will be represented by standard Unity game objects (small cube or sphere), So we can move it using standard Unity gizmos and selection.
Look like some spline editors made on the Asset Store.

 

Thank you for the feedback,
you're right, the long hair editor require an update.
I'll try to include all of these features asap.

 

Hello.
Is there a way to create a hair spline using a code? Some kind of API?
I got an idea to try to use it in order to create hair using algorithms + implement own mirror tool.

 

You can access to the layer (there's a sample in the doc),
and cast it into the HairDesignerGeneratorLongHairBase class.
Then you can access to the Hairgroups data (HairDesignerGeneratorLongHairBase.m_groups)
the HairGroup class contains all the settings of the splines.

For the next version, I've created a layer system, so you can hide some part of the haircut, and the edition is much easier.
It works with short hair & long hair.
I've also added a 'snap to surface' checkbox
I'm working on the mirror tool now, it will work with the layer system, so you'll be able to apply the mirror only on the haircut parts that you need.

 

Hi! What is status for Unity Wind Zone usage? I am a potential buyer, and I read in the reviews you responded to, and searched this thread that there is a react-to-Wind Zone component in the works, but last I found mention of it is like near half a year ago... Is that something upcoming? Thanks!

 

the windzone integration is still work in progress, the wind algorithm is not documented in unity, and I want to have the same kind of reaction than the particle system (frequency, turbulence...). I've delayed the feature, but this is important for HairDesigner. Maybe i could add a temporary algorithm and update it later with a more accurate version. I'll think about it.

 

I'll include the windzone (directionnal) in the next version.
Here some samples :

 

It works with fur

 

I've improved the long hair motion, now the bone motion is compatible with wind zones.

 

wait the fur is shell base? are you close to emulate neofur solution?

 

Yes, the fur is shell based
I do my best for creating a nice fur solution, I don't know if neo Fur is better or not .
With HairDesigner you can create the fur within unity without external tools, the workflow is very clean.

I'm finalizing the version 1.5.4 with the wind, it's really fun to play with it

 

I've finished the wind integration, now with turbulence.

 

The version 1.5.4 with the wind zone integration has been submitted to the asset store,
it should be available next week
Here a demo

 

I have made some conceptual breakthrough with complex curly hair shape, I need to make a prototype for it, I hope I can share it once it's done, but it's beyond other unrelated 30 todo tasks lol

 

Neofur is a discontinued asset store that got popular really quick, speculation is that they has been brought by a bigger company. It was a shell base system with reactive fur and in unity (and unreal) edition.

Maybe it can be of some inspiration to look at what they did!

https://www.youtube.com/user/neoglyphic/videos

 

wow, that is super impressive

 

The version 1.5.4 includes :

- an edition layer system, now you can work on different part of the haircut without modifing the other edition layers. The layer can be hidden, so the editor is faster and the sceneview more clear. Hidden layers are not exported to the final mesh.


- a mirror modifier for the long hair curves. That works with the edition layers.
The modifier can be applied for generating editable curves.


- a handle for rotating the start and the end of the curve (instead of doing it in the UI)


- now the shape modifier work with multiple curve selected.
- I've updated the curve selection, now it's easier to pick the good strand.

 

Sorry if this is a bit off-topic, but I just wanted to say again how great Kalagaan is. There are not many asset developers who work so hard to give us wonderful tools. Thank you!

 

@kalagaan May I ask for a suggestion?

How would you personally do the fur? Would you try to get away with faking the fur with the Standard Shader and some transparency, or would you engage the Hair and Fur Tool?

 

Thank you so much

You can use the standard shader, and use a HairDesigner fur with LOD.
So the fur will appear only when the camera is near the animal.

I'm updating the fur layer for version 1.5 :
- new tool : per vertex height ( improve the shell distribution )
- Better wind reaction (better mix between gravity/wind/motion)

 

Thank you for the suggestion! There aren't any fur examples in Hair & Fur Designer yet, are there?
If not, do you think you could add sheep wool, fox or dog hair and cow hair? That would be great to learn from, I think.

 

Have a look to the FurDemo2
Here the tutorial

There's some texture samples in the package, if you have a realistic animal, it will be easy to create the fur based on the main texture color. You'll only have to find the good density texture and paint the mask on the model

 

it took me many reads of the newfur mesage but ones which bought got special email, you to i think, but its somwhere says the new plan includes sourcecode, but expected 3 months like site sugest, but its looks dinscontinued now. but stil have hopes. just wish they whould tel us more, but i like kalgaan more, the asset is pricey compares with other assets, but think kalagaan should incude when buy you dont actualy but the version now , but long long updates. i just bought becuase what i saw on store page, but turns out kalagaan is one of the les then 1% publisers who dedicated to his asset, the asset it is when you buy is the shadow of what it is a year later, but gues its hard to sel promise of log updates becuase i lost fait in publisers who do, kalagaan is my faforite. and he should get ours hearts kind regards
Daniel

 

There's a problem with the hair brushes if you have a high DPI (retina) display. As you move from the top left origin of the display there's an increasing discrepancy between the hair brush position and the actual cursor:



A workaround is to launch Unity in low-res mode while working on hair, but it is a bit awkward. A fix would be much appreciated.

 

I'll try to fix it in the next update.
I don't have a retina display, could you send me an email (contact@kalagaan.com) with your invoice number, and I'll send you a fix for testing.

 

Thank you. I've sent an email with my order number.

 

Thanks for the bug fix. All seems good so far.

 

Can we make a character, apply hair using your tools, and sell it as a prefab or something.

Being the the person buying the character, would only get the hair and not the tools, I do not see a problem with it.
Or you can create your own store, and we can sell hair, or models with hair or fur, and you would get a percentage of the sales.

I just really need some money right now, and this was one of the things i was thinking of doing.

 

I think that you can sale the hair models generated, but not the content of the HairDesigner package (scripts or shaders)...
So it's really limited, because the hair motion is done by the scripts & shaders
And you won't have the same lighting with the sandard shader.
I'm working on a strand library, the idea is to create some hair strands with a 3D software and use them it into HairDesigner, so maybe it could be something that could be sell as a compatible addon for HairDesigner.
I'll think about it.

 

Hello! Thank you for create a nice product.

I using Unity 2017.3.1f and HairDesigner 1.5.5
Many 「NullReferenceException」 exceptions are displayed. and HairDesigner not work.
any ideas? Thank you.

Exception contents.

NullReferenceException
UnityEngine.Transform.TransformPoint (Vector3 position) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/artifacts/generated/common/runtime/TransformBindings.gen.cs:392)
Kalagaan.HairDesignerExtension.HairDesignerGeneratorFurShellBase.UpdateInstance ()
Kalagaan.HairDesignerExtension.HairDesignerGeneratorFurShellBase.UpdateShells ()
Kalagaan.HairDesignerExtension.HairDesignerGeneratorFurShellBase.Init ()
Kalagaan.HairDesignerExtension.HairDesignerGeneratorFurShellBase.Start ()

NullReferenceException
UnityEngine.Transform.TransformPoint (Vector3 position) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/artifacts/generated/common/runtime/TransformBindings.gen.cs:392)
Kalagaan.HairDesignerExtension.HairDesignerGeneratorFurShellBase.UpdateInstance ()
Kalagaan.HairDesignerExtension.HairDesignerBase.Update ()

NullReferenceException
UnityEngine.Transform.TransformPoint (Vector3 position) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/artifacts/generated/common/runtime/TransformBindings.gen.cs:392)
Kalagaan.HairDesignerExtension.HairDesignerGeneratorFurShellBase.UpdateInstance ()
Kalagaan.HairDesignerExtension.HairDesignerGeneratorFurShellBase.UpdateShells ()
Kalagaan.HairDesignerExtension.HairDesignerGeneratorFurShellBaseEditor.OnDestroy ()

NullReferenceException
UnityEngine.Transform.TransformPoint (Vector3 position) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/artifacts/generated/common/runtime/TransformBindings.gen.cs:392)
Kalagaan.HairDesignerExtension.HairDesignerGeneratorFurShellBase.UpdateInstance ()
Kalagaan.HairDesignerExtension.HairDesignerGeneratorFurShellBase.UpdateShells ()
Kalagaan.HairDesignerExtension.HairDesignerGeneratorFurShellBaseEditor.OnInspectorGUI ()
Kalagaan.HairDesignerExtension.HairDesignerEditor.OnInspectorGUI ()
UnityEditor.InspectorWindow.DrawEditor (UnityEditor.Editor[] editors, Int32 editorIndex, Boolean rebuildOptimizedGUIBlock, System.Boolean& showImportedObjectBarNext, UnityEngine.Rect& importedObjectBarRect) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/Inspector/InspectorWindow.cs:1253)
UnityEngine.GUIUtilityrocessEvent(Int32, IntPtr)

 

Thank you for the feedback,
I did some tests and I can't reproduce it
Could you try to remove the fur layer and add a new one?
You could also try to paint fur on the demo character (Demo/Fur/FurDemo2)
If it works with the demo and not with your character, could you send me an email (contact@kalagaan.com) with the fbx file?
I'll help you to fix it

 

Hello! Thank you for reply.

I remove "Hair Designer" component, and added "Hair Designer" component again.
The error disappeared. and it works without problems.

I do not know the cause of the error.
I will contact you when problem again.

 

Is there a One draw call for Hair and fur?

 

The fur shader use surface shader is made in one pass.
The hair shader is based on 2 material pass : one for the cutout and one for the alpha.
The draw calls will depend of the lighting of the scene.

 

Are there any plans to allow procedural texture support from the likes of Substance Designer and Painter?

I would like to allow players to customize their furry character in my game, given they can tweak procedural textures and feed it into this asset.

I haven't seen any adaptations nor integrations to UMA 2, are there any plans for that?
As I am going for character customization, it'd be a big selling point for me.

Do you plan to support in-game modification?
Is there collision support for fur say if a furry character shakes another furry character's hand?

 

Looking a buying this maybe old question if I import human model from daz3d will I be able to use this for long and short hair for school kids

 

Hi,
the package includes a texture generator, it's an editor tool, but I think that I could create a runtime version
I'll do some tests asap.
I have a version of substance designer, but I didn't try to create a hair substance yet. This would be a great feature.
You can modify some parameters at runtime in the hair shader : root & tips colors, length, lighting parameters...

There's no UMA 2 support, I have to work on this part. I don't know if I can include HairDesigner in the UMA workflow (slot system), because the HairDesigner script is required for hair motion and for the fur rendering. I've seen some tutorials, but it's still a bit confusing

The fur is dynamic, it will move according to the motion zone (here the tutorial), but it won't react to collisions.

 

Yes, you can paint the hair on the model

 

Damm.....I was hoping not to run into Problems with this buy, but I got alot of that.

Unity Version 5.6.5f1 Personal

1. Unity Editor gets noticeably slower. Even without any Hair Component in the Scene.
2. In Playmode this get worse, again without any Hair Designer Components in the Scene.

Are there some realy expensive globale updates running ? Is there a way to deactivate them ?

Also i always get this errors, then i work with an Hair Designer Component:

3. NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
Kalagaan.HairDesignerExtension.HairDesignerEditor.OnEnable ()
3x Times

4. UnassignedReferenceException: The variable m_furMaterial of HairDesignerGeneratorFurShell has not been assigned.
You probably need to assign the m_furMaterial variable of the HairDesignerGeneratorFurShell script in the inspector.
UnityEngine.Material.SetTexture (Int32 nameID, UnityEngine.Texture value) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Runtime/Export/Graphics.cs:707)
UnityEngine.Material.SetTexture (System.String name, UnityEngine.Texture value) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Runtime/Export/Graphics.cs:706)
Kalagaan.HairDesignerExtension.HairDesignerShaderFurShell.UpdateMaterialProperty (UnityEngine.Material& mat, eLayerType lt) (at Assets/HairDesigner/Scripts/HairDesignerShaderFurShell.cs:93)
Kalagaan.HairDesignerExtension.HairDesignerGeneratorFurShellBase.UpdateShells ()
Kalagaan.HairDesignerExtension.HairDesignerGeneratorFurShellBase.Init ()
Kalagaan.HairDesignerExtension.HairDesignerGeneratorFurShellBase.Start ()

5. NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object
UnityEngine.GUILayoutEntry.ApplyStyleSettings (UnityEngine.GUIStyle style) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Runtime/IMGUI/Managed/LayoutEntry.cs:66)
UnityEngine.GUILayoutGroup.ApplyStyleSettings (UnityEngine.GUIStyle style) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Runtime/IMGUI/Managed/LayoutGroup.cs:85)
UnityEngine.GUILayoutEntry.set_style (UnityEngine.GUIStyle value) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Runtime/IMGUI/Managed/LayoutEntry.cs:30)
UnityEngine.GUILayoutUtility.BeginLayoutGroup (UnityEngine.GUIStyle style, UnityEngine.GUILayoutOption[] options, System.Type layoutType) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Runtime/IMGUI/Managed/GUILayoutUtility.cs:293)
UnityEngine.GUILayout.BeginHorizontal (UnityEngine.GUIContent content, UnityEngine.GUIStyle style, UnityEngine.GUILayoutOption[] options) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Runtime/IMGUI/Managed/GUILayout.cs:286)
UnityEngine.GUILayout.BeginHorizontal (UnityEngine.GUIStyle style, UnityEngine.GUILayoutOption[] options) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Runtime/IMGUI/Managed/GUILayout.cs:276)
Kalagaan.HairDesignerExtension.HairGeneratorEditor.OnInspectorGUI ()
Kalagaan.HairDesignerExtension.HairDesignerGeneratorFurShellBaseEditor.OnInspectorGUI ()
UnityEditor.InspectorWindow.DrawEditor (UnityEditor.Editor editor, Int32 editorIndex, Boolean rebuildOptimizedGUIBlock, System.Boolean& showImportedObjectBarNext, UnityEngine.Rect& importedObjectBarRect) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/Inspector/InspectorWindow.cs:1240)
UnityEditor.DockArea:OnGUI()

6. ArgumentException: Getting control 3's position in a group with only 3 controls when doing Repaint
Aborting
UnityEngine.GUILayoutGroup.GetNext () (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Runtime/IMGUI/Managed/LayoutGroup.cs:115)
UnityEngine.GUILayoutUtility.BeginLayoutGroup (UnityEngine.GUIStyle style, UnityEngine.GUILayoutOption[] options, System.Type layoutType) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Runtime/IMGUI/Managed/GUILayoutUtility.cs:299)
UnityEngine.GUILayout.BeginHorizontal (UnityEngine.GUIContent content, UnityEngine.GUIStyle style, UnityEngine.GUILayoutOption[] options) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Runtime/IMGUI/Managed/GUILayout.cs:286)
UnityEngine.GUILayout.BeginHorizontal (UnityEngine.GUIStyle style, UnityEngine.GUILayoutOption[] options) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Runtime/IMGUI/Managed/GUILayout.cs:276)
Kalagaan.HairDesignerExtension.HairGeneratorEditor.OnInspectorGUI ()
Kalagaan.HairDesignerExtension.HairDesignerGeneratorFurShellBaseEditor.OnInspectorGUI ()
UnityEditor.InspectorWindow.DrawEditor (UnityEditor.Editor editor, Int32 editorIndex, Boolean rebuildOptimizedGUIBlock, System.Boolean& showImportedObjectBarNext, UnityEngine.Rect& importedObjectBarRect) (at C:/buildslave/unity/build/Editor/Mono/Inspector/InspectorWindow.cs:1240)
UnityEditor.DockArea:OnGUI()

7. Then I instantiate an Character with this Component the main texture and Density texture gets reseted.

8. Also then i use an Transparent Mask Texture from Photoshop and enable read/write on it and try to paint on it unity stops and bomb's me with 999+ wrong Texture format errors.


I would like to have used it for some Character with fur in an VR envorement, but it seems i have to rescure my entire Project from this Extension now.

 

Wow!
very weird
I'll do some tests with unity 5.6.5f1
There's no global update, only a custom editor script for the hairDesigner component.

 

I did some test with unity 5.6.5f1, and HairDesigner works as expected.
Could you check the DLL name, it should be 'HairDesigner/Scripts/HairDesigner_Runtime_5.6'
If you don't have the compatible one, you have to download it from your current unity version.
You can also try to reinstall the package, or test it in a new project.
If it still doesn't work with your project, please send me an email with your invoice number,
maybe there's an incompatibility with a script in your project. I'll help you to fix it.

 

Ok have tested it again. After deleting the Extension and restart of the Projekt. My VR Controller ingame moved with normal speed. I reinstalled Hair designer. Setup it again on an Character and first used the Hair/fur Technic, but that look ugly and pops out lot of Serialization Errors. Ok deleted the Layer used furshell and saved the layer for prefab. Then the nullpointer error keeps cummming with the errors of the old layer what was already deleted.

Ok the results that i get (then i ignore the errors for now) is that its very very heavy. Even only on one Model, on one metarial Slot, with 40 shell count. The entirey game get slowes down. And i see that the script seems to recalculate and reposition the fur. Then i move the model, the fur moves dalayed with. And instancing always resets the main and density texture to the ones in the first material from 9 that the meshes has.

So i can say: !stay away! then you use it in VR or on Meshes, that are more complex than ball or cube !!

Frusstrated right now. At First happy with testing it on an ball, but in the end, it pops out errors in masses. And for me this Extension was expensive and i trusted the good reviews.

 

It's possible to hook up scripts on the fly. If you need assistance, let me know and I (or one of the other developers) can help out.

 

The fur shell technic duplicates the mesh, so if your character has a high poly count, it will be slow.
To fix that :
- you can disable the shadows (Shell->casting mode->off)
- set up a the LOD system
- use a low poly version of your character as a base for the fur layer.