Hair Strands not visible in UE 5.7/5.6

Development Platform & Builds Debugging, Optimization, & Profiling
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1

Hi.

I’m stuck with an issue that’s completely blocking my MetaHuman workflow on Mac (iMac M1, macOS Tahoe).

In Unreal Engine 5.4 and 5.5, Groom Strands (Alembic Groom) displayed perfectly. Everything was visible and working fine, aside from the usual simulation limitations on Mac.

But starting with UE 5.6, 5.6.1, and now 5.7.0, the groom simply does not show up.

It imports correctly, no errors, everything loads… but the strands are not visible.

Only Hair Cards work, but that’s not what I need, I need Groom Strands, just like before.

Here’s what I’ve already tried:

– Groom plugin enabled (obviously).

– Disabled Virtual Shadow Maps.

– Previous macOS version and the current one (Tahoe).

– Multiple Xcode versions (16 up to the latest).

– Clean project and migrated project.

Nothing. In 5.4 and 5.5 the strands show with zero issues. In 5.6+ they vanish.

I don’t think it’s a hardware limitation because they were visible before. It feels like a clear downgrade.

What’s frustrating is that I barely see anyone in the community mentioning this issue, as if no one with an M1 Mac is experiencing it.

Is this a confirmed bug? A change in the groom system? A new Apple Silicon incompatibility?

If anyone has successfully displayed Groom Strands in UE 5.6+ on an M1 Mac, I’d really appreciate knowing what configuration, workaround, or specific setting made it work. My MetaHuman ends up “bald” and I can’t move forward.

Thanks.

2

I’m having a serious issue with Groom rendering in Unreal Engine 5.6 and 5.7.
This happens in a completely clean project, using a default Metahuman with no modifications.

The problem:
When I enable Depth of Field in a CineCameraActor, the Groom becomes fully blurred or reads the wrong focal distance.
The character’s body and the rest of the scene are perfectly sharp.
Only the hair/groom gets pushed out of focus, even when the camera focal distance is correct.

Important details:

  • Clean project

  • Default Metahuman

  • No custom Groom settings

  • Default camera

  • No post-process overrides

  • Happens on UE 5.6 and 5.7

  • Anti-Aliasing (TAA/TSR) does not change anything

  • Stable Rasterization does not change anything

  • Creating a new camera does not change anything

  • Everything else renders correctly, so it doesn’t seem like a hardware issue

It looks like DOF is calculating the Groom depth incorrectly in these versions, but I can’t find any up-to-date information about this.
If anyone from Epic or anyone who has dealt with this can confirm whether this is a known issue or if there’s a new setting related to Groom + DOF that I’m missing, I would really appreciate it.

Thanks in advance.

3

Same Problem. never found a solution. have M2

4

This seems to be occuring for me too, and I’m on Windows, Unreal 5.6.1.

EDIT: Ok, it was just viewport settings which also affected the editor. I had to change it from low to high.