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HairStudio - beautiful hair, now in Unity !

Discussion in 'Assets and Asset Store' started by methusalah999, Apr 2, 2020.

  1. methusalah999

    methusalah999

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    3 - Cover.jpg
    HairStudio - early access

    Beautiful hair, now in Unity.
    Asset store - Twitter - Demo (Windows only)

    Jun 2020
    • Added support for MacOS, iOS and Android
    • Tesselation: the renderer can now add vertices to smooth hair curves.
    • You can now add as many colliders as you want in the simulation, only those in range will be checked.

    CREATE YOUR OWN STYLE with a complete set of intuitive tools. You can author an infinity of styles directly into Unity, without any artistic or modeling skill. Start straight away by painting hair roots on any mesh !

    SIMULATE & RENDER tens of thousands of individual strands. Inspired by Pixar's and AMD most recent technologies, the built-in physically-based renderer draws and animates beautiful and realistic hair in no time.
    Realism is not your cup of tea? just override any of the automated values to get the very effect you desire.

    LEARN FAST thanks to a complete textual documentation, video tutorials and a showcase scene where each and every feature is demonstrated and explained individually.
    Tons of examples in motion included!

    PERFORMANCE! Hair simulation is a heavy load, but HairStudio is fast! Performant shaders, finely optimized code, automatic level of detail... You can now add hair to every corner of your game.

    Compatible with all DirectX11 platforms. HDRP is not yet supported. Compatible with Unity 2019 only. Backward compatibility will come soon.
    Code included!

    Please note that HairStudio is currently in early access stage and is not ready for production. We are working hard to provide the best experience but you may still find a hair on the soup:
    - several features are still in the ToDo list,
    - bugs can occur (please report !)
    - some features can end up being completely broken,
    - in the worst scenario, hair styles may become incompatible in future versions (we will do our best to avoid that one).

    Watch the full tutorial here to get your started.

    25 beard for twitter.JPG

    24 showroom 2.gif
    28 composition.jpg
     
    Last edited: Jun 12, 2020
    Mark_01, TeagansDad and corjn like this.
  2. methusalah999

    methusalah999

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  3. cajunpcguy

    cajunpcguy

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    Looks good. Keeping it on my watch list.
     
    methusalah999 likes this.
  4. jeromeWork

    jeromeWork

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    On the expensive side for early access but the excellent reviews for your other assets do make it very tempting. This really is some serious voodoo magic. Good work!
     
    wetcircuit and methusalah999 like this.
  5. wetcircuit

    wetcircuit

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    Can we select individual hair guides? In other words, can we limit the brush/scissors to selected guides? (if not, will that be a priority on the todo list?)

    You have a screenshot with blonde strands in front, are they a separate instance of the hair component on the same mesh?
     
  6. methusalah999

    methusalah999

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    You can indeed select only certain guides to comb and cut.

    indeed, the blond strand is on a separate hair instance. One limitation is that guides from an instance are only visible when this instance is selected. So working on a second instance is not easy as you don't see the first anymore. I will fix that soon (still figuring the best way).
     
    wetcircuit likes this.
  7. jeromeWork

    jeromeWork

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    @methusalah999 Is this what's going on when you're switching to the B channel? as in here:

    I couldn't quite work out what A AB B BC C CA are about in the interface

    ... Could you possibly speak through your tutorial videos? :) We don't mind if English isn't your first language (and I speak French if you really want to do it natively and let Google handle the subtitled translation!) It's just that it's hard to work out why you're doing some things sometimes
     
    wetcircuit likes this.
  8. methusalah999

    methusalah999

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    As seen in the documentation PDF available in the root of the project:
    If you have already read that doc, could you please point me to the unclear points?

    Indeed, speaking during the tutorial would certainly be valuable. I will try and include voice in my next tutorials. In the meantime, have you tried and visit the showcase scene? All features are explained one by one, including the parting of roots using root zones.
     
    Last edited: Apr 2, 2020
    jeromeWork likes this.
  9. jeromeWork

    jeromeWork

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    Thanks @methusalah999 but I haven't bought the asset yet, though think I will. Was watching the vids to find out more about it
     
  10. methusalah999

    methusalah999

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    Sorry, I should have understood. So yes, many more learning ressources are present inside the asset to help in using it, but please, ask me anything before you buy.
     
    look001 and jeromeWork like this.
  11. corjn

    corjn

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    Hey @methusalah999

    We talked on twitter the other day about custom shader for hair studio. I bought you asset and it's working great and looking really good !

    Making a custom shader with amplify seems indeed a bit complicated. I suppose it can be possible with a custom template. But first I will have to learn with some shader tutorials because it's beyond my knowledge for now.

    Also, do you think it could be possible to support more platforms than only DX11 ones ? I often see vulkan is a good choice for that. (I'm level potatoe on that so I really don't have a clue if it's doable with your hair shader)
    That way it could also be compatible for mac users, nintendo switch, etc.
     
  12. methusalah999

    methusalah999

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    I'm afraid that backward compatibility below DX11 won't be possible with HairStudio. There are some pretty recent technologies at hand here.

    Note that a lot of platform are already (or are becoming) DX11 compatible. This compatibility is generally less a matter of technology, than a matter of standard. As sad as it is, DX11 is quite a standard these days, at least in the Unity ecosystem (please don't hurt me).

    Have fun with HairStudio and please, DM me if you need more info for your amplify project.
     
  13. chrisabranch

    chrisabranch

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    The second HDRP is supported.
    ill buy it.
    I paid for hair tool and the publisher gave up on the asset.
    and HAIR COMPOSER for unity does not support HDRP.
    If you get HDRP to work yours will be the best hair solution for unity on the market.
    No pressure :)
     
    methusalah999 likes this.
  14. khos

    khos

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    This is looking very nice. The price is keeping me from instant buying! Can the hair be controlled to be less CPU/GPU intensive, e.g. make less (but perhaps thicker) strands, give it a cartoon like look?
     
  15. methusalah999

    methusalah999

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    HairStudio already include an automatic Level Of Detail system that will make the hair more sparse and thicker when the camera moves away. You control the distance for min and max LOD.

    In addition to that, you can control the density and thickness of hair. Note that the thickness can be change during runtime, but the density can't. Once the hair is generated, it can't be changed. LOD system only hide some random hair strands to save rendreing time.

    Finaly, the heaviest part of the computation is the physics. There are many optimization yet to add on this part, but you can already block the hair at a certain rate from the root to the tip. The more strand nodes are locked this way, the faster the physic step is. This is not automatic, though. You must change the value yourself (for example, when the haired character is far away, or behind the camera, depending on your game). This way, you can save perf while still have some part of the hair moving.

    Hope it helps ^^
     
    Mark_01 likes this.
  16. methusalah999

    methusalah999

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    I'm working on the HDRP right now ^^ but it's not a easy thing. May take some time. I'll inform you.

    This is HDRP ^^
    upload_2020-4-4_14-49-37.png
     
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  17. Zante

    Zante

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    How does this early access stuff work? Is what we produce now likely to become redundant in a future release? : ]

    Looks fantastic and, if performance is as good as hinted, I'll definitely be grabbing a license. Any particular kind of hardware reliance?
     
  18. methusalah999

    methusalah999

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    Early access is due to two things :
    - some "nice to have" features are still in the todo list,
    - the tool is young and requires a beta testing phase to ensure it works in real-life situations (for bugs and GUI mainly).

    The most critical issue you can encounter at this stage is that the hair styles you create today may become unusable in the next versions. But it is identified as a major issue and I'll do my very best to avoid such situation.

    More details about the "nice to have" features :
    - Tesselation of the hair geometry will allow to smooth strands with less physics.
    - A simulation based on springs could allow for curly hair.
    - An importer for hair asset from 3d modeling tools.
    - The ability to style the hair during play time, and in VR.
    - Undo/redo support.
    - Support for skinned meshes to make fur possible.

    Nice to have rendering features that are currently impossible to implement in HDRP.
    - A proper anti-aliasing is required as hair strands are often less than a pixel wide.
    - Self-shadowing will add the feeling of volume for non-black hair.
    - Hair/hair scattering of the light will produce more beleivable results for blond and white colors.

    None of this is actually mandatory.

    HairStudio requires Unity 2019.1 at least, because of the rework of the job system. HDRP is not supported yet but this is imminent.

    For the target platform, HairStudio requires DirectX11 and a graphic card. Performance will be dependant on the quality you decide : density of the hair, number of iterations in the physics simulation, LOD distances... HairStudio provides several solutions to obtain good performances in all situations.
     
  19. khos

    khos

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    Thanks for your info, if I may ask, do you have long term plans to support/update this asset? E.g. 3/4 years, if there is plan?
     
  20. methusalah999

    methusalah999

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    HairStudio will be in early acces for the next six month I think. During this time, I will mostly focus on the stability of the tool, and implementing the features that are requested by users the most.

    After that point, it's hard to predict anything. It will depend on requests, sales, new technologies... Unity mid-term roadmap is quite heavy and I think I will have a lot to do only to follow their own updates. SplineMesh, my oldest asset on the store have been here for two years, has received major updates every 8 month or so.

    I don't plan any interruption in the support provided here and debug updates in the foreseeable future.
     
    Mark_01 likes this.
  21. chrisabranch

    chrisabranch

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    If I buy it now and try to use it on my HDRP project. will it not work at all? or just be buggy?
     
  22. methusalah999

    methusalah999

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    It won't work at all. Surface shader are not supported anymore in HDRP.

    I'm working on that right now and I have a working shader but with some bugs. I hope to publish it next week but the asset store team seems to be overwhelmed at the moment. I wouldn't expect a release in less than a month.
     
  23. Piahouka

    Piahouka

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    Can HairStudo attach ribbon to hair like ponytail?
     
  24. methusalah999

    methusalah999

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    To make a ponytail, you will proceed like this:
    - create a first hairstyle for the tightend part of the hair,
    - create a second hairstyle for the tail.

    The first part will be completly locked in the physic simulation, while the second part on the contrary will be locked only at the root, and free afterward.

    Please note: HairStudio does not allow to attach hair at the tip yet. There is no way to have a hair strand hanging between the root and a knot at the moment. It is a planned feature, but not very high in the priority list for the moment.
     
    Piahouka likes this.
  25. r3ndesigner

    r3ndesigner

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    wow big surprise that you already working on it ^^
     
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  26. chrisabranch

    chrisabranch

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    Are you making this from scratch or reverse engineering hair tool.
     
  27. methusalah999

    methusalah999

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    I've never used Hair tool at all. HairStudio is made from scratch. The physic simulation is inspired by TressFX, the rendering is decribed by Marschner et al. and the tooling is a mix of many features from the major 3D softwares (mainly Maya plugins).
     
    chrisabranch likes this.
  28. local306

    local306

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    I'm glad I came across this asset as it looks very promising!

    Is there plans to release a run-time demo for evaluation? Like the demo scene in the one gif in the first post and maybe some sort of stress test scene to check performance on hardware?
     
  29. methusalah999

    methusalah999

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    I can do a playable demo to check performances, but please note that performance will vary a lot depending on what you need.

    A style with long hair colliding precisely with the upper body, will have a much bigger impact on performance than one with short hair and/or beard without motion nor collision.

    Also, it is easy to scale things up or down, by changing the density of the hair (lesser density should come with thicker hair, of course). You can even to give hair with physics to the main characters and locked styles for the others. These optimizations can by provided to the player in the shape of quality parameters, allowing them to adapt to their hardware.
     
    Last edited: Apr 15, 2020
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  30. local306

    local306

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    Excellent! I am curious whether it could get a handful of avatars with hair in a scene of the few test machines I use.

    Are you able to comment on what the load split is like on for work done on CPU versus GPU? Like which one is more likely to bottleneck first?
     
  31. methusalah999

    methusalah999

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    HairStudio is designed to rely 100% on the GPU. Running the demo scene, you will notice that there is CPU time used as well but it's only idle time, waiting for the GPU data being process between frames. Your CPU game logic will come inside that waiting time, not in addition to it.

    I beleive there are further optimisations on that part to avoid that idle CPU time but it depends a lot on how Unity manages the shaders and GPU memory.

    About the loading time (the time needed by HairStudio to build the hair on scene startup), it is currently 100% CPU. This loading is already multithreaded using Unity jobs system, but I plan to replace that by a full GPU loading (which would also allow to change the hair style during run-time with decent perf, which is not possible at the moment).
     
    local306 likes this.
  32. zim22

    zim22

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    Great project and instant purchase if it supports HDRP.
     
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  33. chrisabranch

    chrisabranch

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    :D:D My $70 is just waiting in the bank for HDRP also. it seems like a must-have feature for all high-end unity assets. I'm willing to buy it now and test the HDRP beta/ alpha progress. Let me know if that's something your willing to do and ill buy it now. One more suggestion, I can test with the 3 most common unity controllers: Invector, Opsive, and Ootie TPS. I Own all three and can test on it
     
    Last edited: Apr 16, 2020
  34. methusalah999

    methusalah999

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    I'm working on HDRP compatibility now. HDRP is definitly not designed to support such specific rendering but I will find something. The HDRP material won't give as much control over the rendering as the legacy one, though.
     
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  35. liverolA

    liverolA

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    nice work,will buy this for supportting the good job,keep it up
     
    methusalah999 likes this.
  36. chrisabranch

    chrisabranch

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    ill buy it right now, even though it won't work in my HDRP project. To support your work. If you never get HDRP working will I be able to get a refund?
     
  37. methusalah999

    methusalah999

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    Hi and thank you for your anthousiasm and trust !

    HDRP will work soon I beleive. There is only one bug remaining to get a first working version. You can follow the discussion on that topic here (some debug visuals are also available). Note that I can't guarantee any delay, especially if the bug is on Unity side.

    Of course, as you warned me, if I fail to implement HDRP support for any reason, I will accept your refund request.
     
  38. chrisabranch

    chrisabranch

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    Thank you, I just bought it :). I'll be telling other devs about your hair studio.
     
    Last edited: Apr 25, 2020
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  39. methusalah999

    methusalah999

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    Have fun with HairStudio ! and if you like it, please write a short review on the store ^^
     
  40. huxley

    huxley

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    As this requires DirectX 11, it's not possible to export to WebGL platform? Correct? Just want to make sure there is not a workaround for this limitation. Thanks, looks great!
     
  41. methusalah999

    methusalah999

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    It won't work at all and I'm afraid that webGL is not a targeted platform either, as such a hair simulation requires a lot of performances.
     
  42. chrisabranch

    chrisabranch

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    any progression in HDRP or URP support?
     
  43. methusalah999

    methusalah999

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    I've created a shader for HDRP already, but what seems to be a bug in HDRP hair master node causes a issue. I've asked Unity team and they only told me that the bug wasn't present on their working branch, but nothing more.

    You can follow the discussion (monologue?) On this thread.

    URP is straightforward and support will come as soon as HDRP is ready.
     
    westryder907 and chrisabranch like this.
  44. r3ndesigner

    r3ndesigner

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    probably dont have any relation, but did you take a look into hair designer? maybe some clue in his asset? i have it if you want to take a look.
     
  45. methusalah999

    methusalah999

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    For what I've seen Hair Designer is not making any specific shading. They are shading hair like any hard surface and the light scattering of the hair is not in the scope of the asset at all. I suppose you can use a material running any shader for your "hair" in Hair Designer.
     
  46. methusalah999

    methusalah999

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    After a deep discussion with the creators of Amplify Shader Editor, which I consider experts in Unity shading, it appears that HDRP, as it is today, is not able to acheive what is required for HairStudio rendering.

    It is possible to create a non-realistic shading but I won't go down this road. It would be a non-sense if the HDRP result was worse that the built-in one. So HDRP support is now delayed to further developpement, hopefully in the near future.

    I will now focus on creating a shader for URP and other HairStudio features.

    While I'm at it, I would like to remind all HairStudio users that I desperatly need your feedback to know what part of the asset should be enhanced. Reviews on the store are also really appreciated.
     
    corjn likes this.
  47. methusalah999

    methusalah999

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    Here is a new feature: tessellation !

    Currently, the hair strands graphic resolution depends on the physic resolution. With the new tessellation parameter, you can add vertices between physic nodes!

    As a result, you can choose between faster simulation and smoother rendering. Or you can just tessellate on your current simulation, if you can manage the millions of additional vertices. The difference between the two hair styles below on a NVidia RTX2070 is only 0.1ms.

    upload_2020-5-19_0-28-13.png
     

    Attached Files:

  48. khos

    khos

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    I really like the look of this but the price is quite high. Would you consider making a lite version (still paid but less money e.g. 20 USD or so), that I believe would attract more people, then if they need the "pro" features they get your full one?
     
  49. methusalah999

    methusalah999

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    I can't think of any feature that could become optional for the moment, sorry. What I can say is that HairStudio's price will not raise when it is ready to leave the early access stage.
     
    Last edited: May 20, 2020
    westryder907 likes this.
  50. DankP3

    DankP3

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    The asset looks good, sadly I would have to wait for an HDRP solution.

    Do you have plans to make this compatible with UMA (essentially designing hair in editor and saving the information so it can be loaded at runtime into a dynamically generated skinned mesh)?
     
    xzesstence and tredpro like this.