Hey Unreal Users!!
I’ve been dying to create and animate hair like in this video in UE4
1:25 - 1:27 (It moves so realistically!)
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What would be the best option?
Nvidia Hairworks
VS
Maya nHair
VS
Maya xGen
VS
(If any other suggestions)
The best option is to use hair cards, basically hair textures that you have on planes.
Check out this video:Paragon Features Examples: Character Creation Techniques | Feature Highlight | Unreal Engine - YouTube
Also check out this guy’s project:
He is making something with a similar aesthetic to FFXV so maybe he can give you some tips on how he did the hair.
Thanks! Thats looking good, Im gonna go ask him, the only thing Im concerned about is how static his hair is…
I can see he focuses on gameplay more so its alright,
in a cinematic in UE4 would it be possible for it to move and collide a better?
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In regards to the hair cards, would you be using xGen and nHair to make them then import into UE4?
When I saw the video of Paragon Tech it seems they use a green card to take pictures of patch of hair.
So would the workflow be…
Take high res pictures of different patches of hair>then through a program make hair cards/planes> use the high res pics as textures on the hair cards through a program>Then import to UE4>and UE4 should be able to animate the hair cards automatically as colliding planes?
Doing hair simulation is very difficult, there’s stuff like TressFX, but you can get better looking results with hair cards (looking at FFXV and Uncharted 4 which both use hair cards)
The workflow they usually do–make swatches of hair in your 3D program, render these to a texture and then apply them to planes. There’s no automatic way to layout the hair cards that will look good, you have to go through and place them by hand and bend them around and stuff like that. If you check out the Epic video they do some extra stuff that makes it look better like some modeled hair included with the hair cards, and a more complex hair material (which they’ve made available for people to use in UE4)
Colliding hair planes is not going to work, it’s probably best to make some of the small parts into waving parts that will react to the character movement and wind, that’s probably something that would be set up in a complex material. For larger pieces you could rig it with bones.
Do you have any ideas on where I could go about finding a way to learn this workflow?
Would there by any tutorials, videos, gumroad links you could recommend that show individual parts or whole parts of the process?
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Once a hair style for a particular model is set up with hair cards and finished once, is it safe to assume that the automatic simulation/animation of the hair in UE4 will work in many different scenarios?
(Like, in Maya if I was to do different scenes I would have to animate the hair differently every time)
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What does a more complex hair material mean? Didn’t they already achieve the complex material through the 4k pictures they took with the green cards?
And do you know where this material can be found?
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Do you mean in UE4 it isnt going to work? Or with hair planes its not a feasible option?
Just throwing this out there Neofur it could work for you depending on what you need but it’s situational.
http://www.neoglyphic.com/neofur
Also epic has a livestream on what they did for paragon of you’re intrested in that I can dig through and find it.
And to also throw it out there, HairWorks is available for UE4 4.12.5 and 4.13 p1. However not as simple setup as NeoFur. Requires compiling a custom version of the engine (There is a sample map showing some of NVIDIAs assets)
Just watch the Epic video, they go into a lot of stuff
Okay Ill check out Neofur!
Just wanted to ask, Tress FX was mentioned what about Nvidia Hairworks?
It was used in Witcher 3 as well, what are your thoughts on that in comparison to Tress and Hair cards
in regards to hair simulation and aesthetics of the hair model.
I’ve seen better results with hair cards–like Uncharted 4 and FFXV, some of the physics can work better with TressFX or Hairworks, but I think you can get things looking better with higher performance with hair cards.
Got it =D
Just finished the video on the UE4 hair livestream
What did you mean by this?
I saw the modeled hair included with the hair cards and some hair splines on the top of the hair to give that frizzy natural effect.
Im just not sure what you mean by the more complex hair material…Do you think you could link me to where it is available?
Would the small waving parts be similar to the little mass of splines the Paragon guys used in the character?
(That mass of frizz on top of the hair)
And by complex material…Im still not sure what you mean, could you explain?
The hair material is already in the editor, you have to change the shader in the material settings to the hair preset. I don’t think they have an example that uses the hair material. It’s specifically designed for hair so that it has the translucent effect that hair has. They also did some stuff in that video like using a depth render of the hair swatches which they use in the material to offset the pixel depth of the hair material so that it makes the hair look like it has depth and that the hairs aren’t on a plane.
you seem very experienced with the core fundamentals of UE4
Have you used the hair material in your own work to get that translucent effect in the hair before?