Pasma Engine: Neural Hair Dynamics
Next-Generation AI-Driven Hair Physics & Rendering for Unreal Engine
Transform your characters with Pasma Engine: Neural Hair Dynamics, a revolutionary plugin that replaces expensive traditional hair physics solvers with lightning-fast, AI-driven volumetric predictions. Built entirely inside Unreal Engine using the native NNE (Neural Network Engine), this tool allows you to paint, bake, and simulate gorgeous, dynamic hair in real-time without the massive performance drop of standard physics engines.
Whether you are building a stylized game, a realistic cinematic, or an optimized mobile project, Pasma Engine adapts to your needs with multiple rendering modes and full Blueprint control.
✨ Key Features at a Glance
AI-Powered Physics: Uses a trained Neural Network to predict hair movement in real-time based on character velocity, head rotation, gravity, and wind.
Custom In-Engine Hair Editor: No need for Blender or Maya. Paint roots, comb directions, and adjust hair layers directly inside Unreal Engine with our custom viewport.
Real-Time SDF Collisions: Hair naturally wraps around the head and avoids clipping using fast Signed Distance Field (SDF) calculations.
Smart Clumping & Multipliers: Turn 100 painted roots into 5,000 rendered strands using visual multipliers and spread parameters.
100% Blueprint Controllable: Change hair color, length, and even swap entire hairstyles at runtime.
🧠 How the Neural Network Works (The Magic)
Traditional physics engines calculate the math for every single strand of hair independently, which destroys CPU/GPU performance.
Pasma Engine takes a completely different approach. It uses a Volumetric Neural Network (3D U-Net). Instead of looking at individual hairs, the AI looks at the space around the head as a 3D grid (Voxels). It takes inputs like gravity, wind, and the character's movement, and instantly "predicts" the flow of the air and forces in that 3D space. The hair strands then simply follow this predicted flow.
The result? You get complex, fluid, and chaotic hair dynamics (including inertia and centrifugal forces) at a fraction of the computational cost of traditional solvers.
🛠️ The Workflow: From Editor to Gameplay
We designed the workflow to be as frictionless as possible.
1. The Pasma Hair Editor (Dedicated Window)
Open our custom editor tab to access the 3D Painter. Load your character's mesh, use your mouse to paint hair roots, comb the flow direction, and adjust thickness/length per layer. You can preview the AI simulation live in the editor viewport.
2. Smart Baking
Once your hair looks perfect, hit "Bake & Save Asset". The plugin compiles your painted roots, AI tensor data, and visual presets into a single, lightweight PasmaHairBakedAsset file in your Content Browser.
3. The Pasma Hair Dynamics Component
To put the hair on your character, simply add the Pasma Hair Dynamics Component to your Character Blueprint. Plug your baked asset into the component, and you are done. The component handles the AI inference, procedural mesh generation, and physics automatically.
🔵 Full Blueprint Integration
Make your game highly interactive! The Pasma Hair Dynamics Component exposes simple, powerful Blueprint nodes so you can alter the hair at runtime:
Rebuild From Asset: Instantly swap hairstyles or reset the simulation.
Set Baked Asset: Change a character's hairstyle mid-game by feeding it a new baked data asset.
Set Hair Color: Create dynamic character creators or magical power-up effects by changing hair color on the fly.
Set Hair Length Scale: Make a character's hair grow or shrink in real-time (perfect for transformations!).
🚀 Quick Start Guide
Get your character's hair flowing in under 5 minutes:
Enable Plugin: Open the Unreal Engine Plugin Browser (Edit -> Plugins), find "Pasma Engine — Neural Hair Dynamics", and enable it. Restart the editor.
Open Editor: Click on the Window tab at the top of the UE interface. Find "Pasma Hair Editor" in the dropdown list and click it to open the workspace.
Create & Bake: In the native editor, select your character's mesh and create your hairstyle by painting roots on the surface. When ready, click the "Bake & Save Asset" button. This generates a data asset in /Game/PasmaHair/Baked.
Add Component: Open your character's Blueprint, click Add Component, and search for Pasma Hair Dynamics. Attach it to your character's head socket or bone.
Assign Asset: In the component's Details panel, under the "Pasma Neural Hair | Asset" category, insert the baked asset you just created.
Play & Test: Inside the blueprint viewport, the hair is initially hidden to save editor performance. Click Play in Editor (PIE) to see the neural hair simulation react to your character's movement! (Note: Ensure your character is not spawned underground/clipping into objects).
Extra Physics (Checkbox)
⚠️ IMPORTANT: Extra Physics (Checkbox) This is NOT the AI simulation. Checking this box adds the standard Unreal Engine physics engine solver on top of the neural network. It is NOT recommended to turn this on during normal AI simulation, as it can cause extreme instability.
⚙️ Technical Details
Dependencies: Requires Unreal Engine's native Neural Network Engine (NNE) plugin to be enabled.
Network Replicated: No (Simulation runs client-side for zero server cost).
Supported Platforms: Windows (PC).
Code Type: C++ and Blueprints.