Hi,
I am trying to convert a Character Blueprint to a Static Mesh, but the hair keeps disappearing on the State Mesh model. How do I stop this happening?
Hello there @Jcfalloon!
This is a quite tricky scenario you are encountering. The hair is not converting to static due Metahuman using a Groom asset to simulate it. Although, when the Metahuman is generated, it does create multiple LOD assets for the hair, that are static meshes themselves:
Now, you can use one of these as your static mesh, but it won’t have the same level of detail as the groom asset. We can use an experimental plugin to generate a better version of said static mesh, and then process the resulting mesh in Blender to ensure it works for your static metahuman model, if necessary. Please follow the steps below:
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Go to Edit > Plugins, search for “Hair Card Generator”, enable it, then restart the engine
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Now, open your groom asset in the Groom Asset Editor, access the cards panel, and click on “Add Card Asset” for a new entry
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Next, configure the card generation settings with the following values:
- Card Count: Start with 50-100 cards (adjust based on detail needed)
- Card Width: Usually 0.1-0.3 units
- Card Length: Typically 2-5 units depending on hair length
- Set a LOD Index (usually 0 for highest detail)
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Then, click on “Generate” to create the hair cards, which will result in a static mesh asset
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At this point, you can test if the asset is ok for your objective. If this is not the case, you can export it as an .fbx file, edit it in Blender for improvements, then import it back into UE:
- Fix normals (Mesh > Normals > Recalculate Outside)
- Check for duplicated faces
- Resolve any non-manifold geo
- Add a “Decimate” modifier if you need to reduce the poly count
For further details regarding this plugin, you can check UE’s documentation on the topic: