Using MetaHuman Grooms with non-MHC Meshes

Development Character & Animation
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1

The MHC models are absolutely great, but don’t fit my needs for a character creator, due to the severe lack of clothing options. I want to try to get the hair grooms to work, but I’m having… issues.

So, is this even plausible? I’m using Daz3D-based skeletal meshes and things just aren’t lining up right with the groom bindings. Trying the bindings with a source mesh in the options either fails to bind or explodes the groom.

I feel like I’m missing something basic here, but I’m not seeing what.

2

It is probably easier to build custom clothes for a MetaHuman head and body, than to use the grooms on a new head, given the way hair binding works to the specific topology and UV layout of the MH head.

3

I too was disappointed by this, I was hoping to use them for my other FBX imports as well as DAZ figures, I have a couple Grooms made by StyleMarshal (an iClone and C4D user), that work on any head but more styles always welcome.
Nothing I do in Blender works, the abc files import but turn into wiry messes.

4

That’s unfortunate, as creating custom clothing for MHC models just isn’t going to be possible for me. I’ll have to stick with what I can get working I guess.

5

Alright, I’m writing this down mostly so that I don’t forget it, as getting the movement of the transplanted hair groom to match the mesh AND have morph targets working took a lot of trial and error.

  • Using a Daz Genesis 8 male base with a tall male MHC base
  • Add a socket to the skeleton head of the Daz mesh that you want to attach hair to
  • Move the new socket close to where the root is in the skeleton
  • Parent a new duplicate skeletal mesh to the existing one
  • Attach the new mesh to the added head socket
  • Enable skin cache usage on the new mesh
  • Turn on both “Owner No See” and “Only Owner See” options (just hiding the mesh or turning visibility off causes any morph target changes to be ignored; still looking at better options for this)
  • Parent the hair groom to the duplicate mesh (do not attach to a socket)
  • Create and use a groom binding asset for the mesh being used, with a blank source mesh (not sure if the source mesh even works for MHC models)
  • Adjust the position/rotation of the groom and the socket as needed

Doing all of this keeps the head of the duplicate mesh moving in lockstep with the original parent, but prevents the skeleton from being affected by animations. Otherwise, the hair starts moving in all kinds of uncontrolled ways, due to the skeleton mismatch.

1 Like
6

Thanks for this roadmap. This is SO important. I’m seeing the same physics issues. Collisions too.

When you say: “Parent a new duplicate skeletal mesh to the existing one” Can you give a quick step by step on this step. I’m a bit confused.

7

Just add the duplicated skeletal mesh as a child of the “real” one:

image

“Mesh” is the default mesh in a BP derived from the basic Character class and is the one that receives animation data. “HairBinder” (my naming) is the “fake” one that you have to attach your hair to, and does not get animated. Morph target changes need to affect both.

8

Import a MH character.
In the character BP remove all of the MH components except the Groom component.
Add your Genesis components and parent the Groom hair to the head joint
the result

9

This didn’t work in 4.26/4.27 for me, especially once you start adding in morph targets. I could get some basic pairing to work, but getting it to work with both animation and morph targets required the painful workaround above.

10

This works like a charm. Thank you so much! :pray:

11

Hi I got a “bad blueprint” error that came up after this now im stuck with it :(’ would love to get my MH hair onto my Character creator body

12

This method definitely works well if you can nail it down. What a blessing.

13

Got it working eventuly had to mess around alot with size and alignment and also the physics