Hair Tool

Hair tool is a plugin for creating animated human hair.

Physics are implemented with a custom engine based on Verlet integration, and executed on GPU (Compute Shader). You can configure elasticy, gravity, drag, and curveness in editor. Sphere Colliders can be added to bones so it interacts with body a realistically. Unity WindZone component is supported.

Lighting is based on Kajiya-Kay reflection model. You can configure color and specular facor in editor.

Shadows are implemented as a Unity shadow caster pass.

Editor is integrated in Unity. Also you can create hair geometry with Blender and 3dmax.

Asset Store
Web Page
Documentation

 

Glad to see this asset got an official forum thread.

 

Damm it!!! so goood this asset, I'm having a nerdgasm with the new videos....

 

@andrii-shpak
Hey mate, after our long bugfixing with long hair, I occured some AO problems together with your hair tool.
I don't know if this is already solved with 1.1.0 and I will try it out the next days.
Just wanted to give you a heads up. I will try to provide you some screenshots, maybe you can find out if this is a problem on the AO solution side or some bug with the hair shader.

 

Manes and tails ...

 

This looks promising but...

Getting the error:

Assertion failed on expression: (!transfer.IsRemapPptrTransfer() && transfer.IsReadingPPtr())

On the latest version.

Also, when HairSettings script is applied and the GeometryProvider is not present, the GUI spams NullReferenceExceptions.

I wish for the love all things holy, developers would CHECK FOR NULLS and deal with them.

For gods sake, it's not difficult. Page 1 of programming book for newbies.

This was a relatively expensive asset to purchase and I really wish that appropriate QC is applied before it is submitted to the asset store.

 

You know me so wel

 

Now I am really waiting for some showcase of your Horse Animset Pro together with Hair Tools!
I own both and damn, that would be awesome if you would provide seperate working hair models for those neat horses

 

Can I go back to 1.0? This version is full of bugs and there is ZERO documentation!

 

I will make some videos soon I really want to play with this tool

 

When can we expect an update on this?

 

There is already LOD. Can't say anything about the rest as I am using the scalp way with 3DS Max

 

Edit: Never mind. I was using my laptop today that apparently still had Unity 5.4 installed. User error.

 

I'll finish documentation tomorrow. Sorry for delay.
You should use unity 5.5.0
Previous versions had much more bugs.

 

Yes it support skinned mesh renderer

 

This assertions is unity but. You cant instantiate compute shader without getting this message.

Thanks, I missed it. I'll fix it in new update.

 

Will this work with the Daz3d Models? What about the Daz3d Hair assets for those models?

 

This is completely different hair, so you can use it with any model you have, but you must either use the hair style samples that come with this or make your own.

 

HI,andrii-shpak.
I use hair tool v1.1.0 in unity5.5.
But,when i assign collider to my model, it's hair will be aflo.
(My model file scale is 0.999)
Please tell me how to fix it.

 

Try to degrease HairSettings/PhysicsSettings/StandRadius
Here is tutorials: http://www.shpakivnia.com/hair-tool-documentation

 

Can't wait for the point-light update. Is it still coming this month?

 

It is not ready yet. But I hope to finish it this week

 

Thank you for replying. problem solved!

 

Just tried the 1.1.0 inbuild geometry creator and somehow it works really awful for me. The tools sometimes never stop to be activated even after I am not holding the "M" key anymore. It is like a temporary freeze and when I move my mouse over the hair geometry it even gets messed up without holding any key.

Hadn't those problems with 1.0.6

 

Just found another bad problem...



it doesnt matter if I choose 3DS Max hair geometry or inbuild geometry creator. The back of my scalp doesn't get any hair.

 

I'm workingon that. Will be fixed in next build.

 

It looks like stand radius is too big

 

I raised the stand radius to show, that the back of the head doesn't get any hair while rendering. But it had the hair in debug mesh shown.

 

Is it runtime physics debug? Could you show screenshots with physics debug enabled?

 

With Physics Debug


Without


As you can see, it has the geometry but doesn't render it. I used "Hair Geometry Creator" and the inbuild brush for it.

 

Here I tried another approach. Three Geometry Groups created inside of "Hair Geometry Creator". And still no matter what I do, that back of the head doesn't get any hair.

All hair out of 1 Geometry Group: Failed
Three geometry groups for each side and the back: Failed

Physics Debug:


Geometry Creator Debug:


Playmode Render:

 

Maybe this is something that could be packaged up and sent to the dev for debugging?

It seems like it should be something simple that's wrong, but it would be good to get it figured out.

 

Yeah just sent it per mail. I wonder why there aren't many more reports about bugs I already found and send to the dev. Is everyone just using short hair?

 

Probably not everyone is using it heavily yet, maybe waiting for features like point lights. (Shadows were just added.)

 

That is really bad, as if we don't use it and try it out, some stuff would never get the chance to be fixed like the bug I had with long hair.

 

I agree, and I'm happy to see that you are testing and finding bugs, as right now I don't have the time.

 

It works good for me http://prntscr.com/dolrvh
Which unity version do you use?
Or I've opened wrong scene

 

Nope the test scene is the right one. Set the gravity higher so the hair flies then you can see the problems of both scalps (3DS Max and the inbuild creator). You can already see on the right picture that there is hair missing, as the hair end have cut out parts. Those are the missing parts of the back of the head.

 

I've found the problem. It because your scalp consist of 2 submeshes. Hair renders only for first sub mesh(
I can't add multiple submeshes support now. It needs a lot of work. And will be not good for performance. Sorry.
Just use single mesh.

 

Okay this is rather strange as with 1.0.7 the same models used those scalps and they had now problems.
I reduced them now to one single mesh and it works.

Maybe you can put this in a F.A.Q. inside the docs?

 

Yes, I plan to make F.A.Q page in documntation. And will add this issue

 

Great!
Here the result after I reduced the mesh.



I will try out some beards now. Lets see how it works with longer facial hair

Btw here is a screen about the ambient occlusion see-through I talked about



As you can see, the AO of the ear is going through the hair (using the post processing stack)

 

IIRC, AO can have problems working with transparencies. This may be something like that.

(Also, the Unity AO is still under development and is presenting bugs. This could be one of those.)

 

Has to be the first, as HBAO does the same. This doesn't happen when you use the HairNoShadow Shader. But I can't figure out why... still have to learn some shader stuff.

 

Unfortunately, as I use geometry shader I can't use surface shader. Because of that working with lighting so hard.
Hair shader (with shadows) uses additional pass to write to depth texture (positions, normals). AO and some other post effects use this texture. Maybe It writing something wrong. I'll check it.

 

Well AO isn't that bad, as using hair without shadow works good enough. If you can work something out it would still be nice.
But if you could find out how to set up hair with less gloss for beard etc that would be nice. As with 0 specular settings it is still very shiny

 

That's going to be an issue for fur as well, as it wouldn't typically be shiny or glossy (with some exceptions).

 

I wonder if that's common (to have sub-meshes)...I'm thinking of animals one might find on the asset store that we'd want to add tufts of hair to various parts (head, tail, backs of legs, mane, etc.). Maybe we need to ask the makers about that before we buy things?

 

Is there any technical reason we couldn't use this for fur or tufts of hair on animals, like manes and tails, for when they're close to the camera? Obviously we'd turn it off when the subject was away.

 

Maybe a way to get around this would be to use a texture mask for the hair?

I don't know ... it's been a few weeks since I last looked at how this plugin works, and I realize I'm already forgetting some of it.