Hair Designer - Dynamic hair & fur tool

Any news about the tools like mirror? base hair? braids?

 

i dont care about pay more 15 / 20 for upgrade but really need this tools =}

 

Hi, sorry about the delay
I had to work on other projects.
I'll try to add the mirror tool in the next version.

And the version 1.5.0 is still locked in the asset store submission queue...
I don't know why... the pro version is already released on the asset store
I'm waiting for support from the asset store team.

 

a mirror tool, nomater when, whould be a 100% speed increase, in like complicated hair, i am not in a rush at al, but looks very valuable for the more complicated . love the mirror idea

 

news?

 

I was on vacation
HairDesigner is now available on the asset store for unity 5.4, .5.5, 5.6, 2017
For the basic version, you'll have to download again the version if you need to upgrade your project to a different version of unity. The DLL names include the compatible unity version.

Now I'm working on a fix for the fur shader, the brush function need some improvment.
I'm also working on the long hair tool, I want to add some mesh templates (like braids), and some helpers (mirror, better curves...)

 

best new of the day

 

Here a new asset : Blend Shape Preset Tool
I've started working on this tool for creating better demos for HairDesigner, and I found it usefull, so now it's on the asset store

 

Hey kalagaan,

I bought your Asset pack today and it looks really good. I opened your HairCutDemo4 and when I unlock e.g. the beard layer and then lock them again the beard nearly disappear. I'm on Unity 2017.2.0f3. I attach 3 pictures - and I just klicked unlock and lock again. Could you please help me out? Or I miss something?

 

Hi,
thank you for your feedback,
you can easily fix it by switching to the material tab again

I'll fix this unwanted behavior of the lock button in the next version.

 

Thanks alot!! That was the solution and a super fast one too

 

Hey there! Can this be used for something like grass? If so, is there support to 'cut' a piece of hair and remove it from the scene if it came in contact with a collider?

I'm looking for a solution for clearing a field.

 

Hi,
there's a grass demo in the package,
you could create some quad models with a HairDesigner mesh on them, and instantiate them on the field (with random position/rotations).
Each grass quad could have a script that set the cut value of the shader (for all the grass blades of the quad) when the collision is detected.

Another solution could be to uses a fur layer and set the pixels of the mask texture in the area you need to cut.
The fur could be use for short grass only, not for long blades.

Here a sample :
- short hair layer with procedural hair shader (dark green)
- fur layer (light green)

 

I have alot of problems with this Asset packs, maybe I use it totaly wrong or there is a buck within unity, but i cant find a solution. Please can you check whats wrong here? I was trying to paint hair strands on the avatars head and now i ending up with thousands of strands all in one place far from my avatar and i cant erase them. Please see the pictures. There is also always an error when I'll save the mesh as a prefab - is this normal? Its says basicly its missing the root.

 

Could you send me your character by email?
I could check what's going on

 

Oh that would be wonderfull! What's your mail adress? I'll send it then tomorrow when I'm back at work. Thanks ✌

 

contact@kalagaan.com

 

Hey im currently testing HairDesigner. Im using the fur shell and im getting a lot of errors like this. Also its seems like the fur shell is added multiple times.


Seems like this is related to using the hair designer LOD. This error happen when i get close the shell and it switch the number of shells.



For some reason there is a total of 3 Hair designer scripts on my prefabs. Those scripts suddenly start to appear on my instantiated prefabs.

 

Hi,
sorry, this error will be fixed in the next version, I'll update it soon.
Please send me an email with your invoice number and your version of unity, and I'll send you a patch.
(contact@kalagaan.com)

 

@kalagaan Thanks for the quick response. Btw are there any plans for a DX11 and GPU solution for the hair/fur?

 

Yes, I'll add more layer types and shaders I'll work on DX11 hair.
But now I want to improve the design tools before adding more layers.

 

I've submit the version 1.5.2 to the asset store.
It should be available soon!

New : Fur brush density parameter
New : Translucency for atlas shader
Fix : T-pose issue with some models
Fix : Fur LOD error
Fix : Fur orientation in tangent space
Fix : Hair strand not on surface
Fix : UI scroll, LOD display

There's a lot of fixes, it took more time than expected to finalise this version.
The T-pose function for painting is now more efficient with all kind of bone hierarchy.
The fur painting is more accurate and there's a density parameter (very usefull)
I've also added translucency to the atlas shader

Here a sample :

 

Nice dreads man... SHABBA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

This would be ideal for a large field. I have the mesh brush asset and use the exact function for adding grass...

 

This looks impressive. I would love to give this a go and see what I can do with this. I like the subtle softness of the hair at the tips... hopefully on the roots, I can soften the hairs too

 

So, upon looking at the tools, my only issue atm is with the hair generated textures... I would love to add some variation to the texture so that some of the planes have a different texture as well as hair softness at the roots. Rendering soft hair is not easy, but I am going to enjoy using this asset. Creating hair cards is boring as hell...

 

You can create an atlas with different hair settings,
the shader will get a random hair texture in the atlas for each hair cards.

 

Sweet. I am waiting for this to go on sale before I buy it ... and I will create a custom shader for it

 

Will this work with UWP in Windows Mixed Reality.? Bought a horse with no mane and tail hair in the fbx (seems to work only in max3d and will not import into unity) Horse looks kinda silly with no mane and a rat tail

 

Also got a couple of GIM animals. GIM is ready for NeoFur but the Neo guys are out me thinks?? GIM looks great as is, but guess adding some of this stuff might piff them up even more??

 

It works in VR (tested with HTC VIVE), I don't have a mixed reality Headset.
It should work easily with GIM animals, because the base textures are really good, you'll only have to paint the fur length on the model

 

Just bought the asset. First of all: It looks great!

Second of all: Please use namespaces in your code when releasing products. the "Slider" class actually conflicted with a "Slider" class I had already created in my project. I ended up including my slider-tree system thing in my personal namespace, since I meant to do that soon anyways, so no conflict anymore, but yeah

Edit: Oh jeez, I'm an idiot lol.
Thanks for the kind response though

 

Thank you for the feedback, the fur demo script is not in the namespace, I will add it in the next version. But in your case this is not a conflict with one of the HairDesigner class.
All the main code is in the namespace Kalagaan.HairDesignerExtension
I use the slider class from UnityEngine.UI in the demo script, so you would have conflicts with any script using the UnityEngine.UI.Slider .

 

I have been trying a painter that would do curl but got damn it it's hard, no wonder you hasn't made one yet too lol, smooth flow map for anything that is a modified straight line is super hard! I think the solution might be to generate hirez mesh and capture them from a camera ... I'll keep anyone interested in tightly curl afro hair informed of the progress.

Great job on the translucency, this asset just keep getting better.

 

Hi
I have this notorious horse that I'm trying to grow a ponytail on.
It uses a skinned mesh renderer. I add a new component Hair Designer (Script).
(To the child object of my horse that has the skinned mesh renderer component.)
When adding the Hair Designer - New layer and pressing the Polygons button, in unity's scene window,
my horse suddenly looks like it's trying to stick it's head up it's bum,
much like the average ostrich when frightened.
(The deranged descendent of the dinosaurs, thingie).

Any suggestions in how to prevent my horse from taking to this slightly nasty behavior, would be most appreciated.
I could send you the FBX file if interested?
Regards,
Harald
Norw thing

Otherwise, Great asset, and the examples coming with the hair tool works perfect.

 

BTW Managed easily to grow a ponytail on a GIM Reddeer. No issues there.
Could it be an fbx version issue?? and where the Ostrich went, I've no idea...

 

Satisfactory work around. Copied the Mesh Filter component from a 3D Cube object onto the bone I wanted to grow hair from. Attaching the Hair Designer component then directly onto the bone seems to be doing the trick...
(PS! The ostrich is back...)

 

Please send me your fbx file (contact@kalagaan.com), I'll have a look
It looks like there's a bug on the T-pose function with some bone hierarchy.

 

Just sent the ostrich wannabe by email (attached zip file)...

Btw. Had no issues with running hair from tool in UWP windows program in Mixed Reality. Works just great


(Haven't seen the ostrich for quite a while now...Probably near Wallawalla somewhere on a walkabout. Nice weather there this time of the year I've heard)

 

Thank you @Chillfire, I've fixed the bug, (no more ostrich, I hope)
the fix will be available in the version 1.5.3

If you have this bug, the console will print : "HairDesigner : Fail to generate collider position"
Anyone who has this issue can send me an email (contact@kalagaan.com)
with the invoice number and the unity version.
I'll send a patch.

 

@kalagaan Hey, man, I just got a swell idea for your hair designer tools. What if we could generate hairs from a scalp proxy mesh on a character like in CG movies to create more natural looking hair styles? And even groom tools like clump, blow, toss.

The current implementation is awesome but it doesn't look natural and it's limited to straight hairs.

 

I want to add a fibers tool later, it will use geometry shader for generating the mesh
I'll also improve the current short hair tool, I'll work on a way to brush the tip of the strand, instead of the root only.

 

Sweet

 

Thank you for the update.
Some hair styles look smoother than others.
For example the one on the right side look very "pixelated".



Why is that so (this would be my most important question) and can that be improved?
I tried using an AA effect, but it wouldn't help.

 

You should use the atlas shader, the procedural shader is better when you zoom in, but the zoom out increase aliasing because the procedural shader doesn't have mipmaping.
You can drag & drop the HD_TextureAtlas in the slot of the material tab.
If there's no transparency, drag & drop the HD_TextureAtlas_transparent in the 'Transparent material' slot.
You'll have to open the Texture generator and setup the hair textures.
If you are using the characters from the HairCutDemo 1, you'll have to unlock and lock the layer in the polygon tab, because the hair mesh was generated with an older version of HairDesigner.

I've change some parameters of the ponytail

 

Are the procedural shader gonna have mipmaps, or is that not possible?
May I also ask when we'll have these "strand templates"?
I just don't feel I'm able to set up procedural shaders myself.
I think the templates would help me much.
When it comes to templates, do you think you could also include bushy eye brows?

 

Hello!

Your tool looks interesting. I am have a few question about it:

1. Can I create a female long hairs using this tool? 50 cm long or something lika that. I saw a nice female hair on your VR demo above, bat can we have a closer look? Also a video tutorial about female hair could be nice. How stable long hairs on real moving character?

2. So this is not GPU based like "Hair Tool" from the Asset Store? It is more classic technology which is based on "Cloth"?

3. What about shadows from point light and spot light? Also, ambient lights, reflection probes etc. Everything works fine in sense of PBR rendering?

 

There's no textures in the procedural shader, so no mipmap. :/
The strand templates are a part of the current version I'm working on, it will replace the current strand mesh (plane) with a predifined mesh from a collection. I don't have a release date now, it will be a part of the 1.6 version of HairDesigner.

 

1. yes, you can, here a demo (HairDesigner & Blend Shape Preset Tool)
2. there's different layers with different technologies.
short hair & long hair generates polygons, the fur shader use GPU instancing.
The motion system uses bones for long hair, and/or a secondary motion driven by GPU (motion zones).
3. The shaders are based on unity standard shader for PBR compatibility.

 

Your hair demo is exactely what it should look like.
Please, nobody needs this edgy, pixelated stuff (sorry for being too honest).
Can't you just remove it if it can't be improved?
I mean you're spending time with it, right? I think nobody who has a bit of style will use pixelated, edgy hair.
Everybody will just use the great smooth shading shown here: http://www.kalagaan.com/HairDesigner/Demos/DemoLongHair/