In this Blender 2.5 Video tutorial, I go over techniques for creating hair, and giving them textures and materials. The first is Mesh hair using Bezier Curves, and the second is Particle Hair.

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Discussion

57 Responses to “Creating Hair”
  1. swims
    Posts: 18

    Hi,

    I love your tutos here. Thank you again and again.

    One thing I don’t understand with UV editor is why the texture isn’t applied by default using UV mapping?
    The moment we do it in UV editor means we want it to be rendered. So that would simplify a bit more Blender, or?

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    1
    Mar 17, 2010 at 6:40 am
    • Coen
      Posts: 9

      UV implies mapping the texture to specific groups of vertices, it’s very specific for each model. There’s probably no easy/generic way apart from procedural textures…

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      1.1
      Mar 17, 2010 at 8:04 am
      • swims
        Posts: 18

        Sure Coen. I was just talking about next steps under Material and Texture tabs that could be automatically filled after UV editing step.

        About easy way to map a mesh, since 2.5a2 we can use Gimp to paint directly on current viewport! Excellent feature :)

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        1.1.1
        Mar 17, 2010 at 11:04 am
      • Posts: 50

        Mind sharing a link for that? :D

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        1.1.2
        Mar 17, 2010 at 8:20 pm
      • sid350
        Posts: 6
    • Posts: 261

      i agree, that would save a few steps in the process :)

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      1.2
      Mar 17, 2010 at 10:32 am
      • swims
        Posts: 18

        and would be easier for beginners.

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        1.2.1
        Mar 17, 2010 at 10:44 am
    • swims
      Posts: 18

      @Adin Davis: Hey guy! Don’t tell me you didn’t subscribe the Durian project RSS feed! :)
      OK, here is the “Image re-projection” link: http://durian.blender.org/development/image-re-projection/
      Enjoy!

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      1.3
      Mar 18, 2010 at 2:47 am
  2. Posts: 45

    You read my mind. I need to create hair for a current project, and I’ve never done it. Thanks for great timing!

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    2
    Mar 17, 2010 at 8:26 am
  3. Traa1703
    Posts: 4

    For some reason this tutorial really lags and ive checked with other tuts on the site and it seems yours are the only ones lagging.

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    3
    Mar 17, 2010 at 9:10 am
    • Posts: 2965

      When you say lag, do you mean they are not playing back smoothly? If this is the case have you tried watching in on Vimeo to see if it’s just the embedded version?

      -Jonathan

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      3.1
      Mar 17, 2010 at 10:51 am
      • Traa1703
        Posts: 4

        Thanks, runs much smoother on vimeo.

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        3.1.1
        Mar 20, 2010 at 10:31 am
  4. Posts: 59

    Thanks for being so quick on my request for a hair tutorial. You guys are by far the best Blender support site out there. If you have time soon, you should also do a quick tutorial on how to get force fields to affect the hair, particularly the curve guide force field.

    Thanks!!

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    4
    Mar 17, 2010 at 9:16 am
    • Posts: 261

      i do plan to do a follow-up on how to use the “dynamics” to get the particle hair to have motion. might go into soft-bodies to show the same thing for the mesh hair…

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      4.1
      Mar 17, 2010 at 10:30 am
      • Posts: 59

        that would be really cool. I’ll look forward to that!

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        4.1.1
        Mar 18, 2010 at 7:45 am
  5. Posts: 21

    Excellent tut, thnaks

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    5
    Mar 17, 2010 at 11:12 am
  6. Carrozza
    Posts: 1

    Thanks for this great tutorial!

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    6
    Mar 17, 2010 at 3:06 pm
  7. Posts: 225

    I already knew both of these techniques, yet you managed to keep me interested. Great tutorial David! =)

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    7
    Mar 17, 2010 at 5:20 pm
  8. Mayid
    Posts: 5

    Thanks a lot. I was reading about hair in 2.4x version, but this video made me feel secure. Just one requirement: in the “third” method, you used children. But how is Curl used in children? When i played around with it i got rebel hair, being manageable on screen but showing very different results in renders.

    http://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=100926&d=1268867649

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    8
    Mar 18, 2010 at 7:34 am
  9. Mayid
    Posts: 5

    I have another example of seeing something on scene, and a different result in render time. I’ve been playing around with fur once again and again, but i cannot render an image with fur in the whole body of this animal:
    http://blenderartists.org/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=101003&d=1268955317

    Any clue? (i’m not using vertex groups…)

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    9
    Mar 19, 2010 at 9:09 am
    • EstebanP
      Posts: 1

      Have you checked the normals on the surface?

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      9.1
      Mar 22, 2010 at 5:44 pm
      • Mayid
        Posts: 5

        It was because of the curl option. :\

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        9.1.1
        Mar 24, 2010 at 11:51 am
  10. Posts: 14

    Many thanks David. Excellent tutorial as always.

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    10
    Mar 19, 2010 at 2:26 pm
  11. Posts: 136

    Thanks for this tutorial :D

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    11
    Mar 19, 2010 at 8:07 pm
  12. Mayid
    Posts: 5

    Hey, what about animating meshes with fur? I’ve just made a skeleton to a squirrel, moved the arms in pose mode, and now i have four arms: two of them made out of hair! Check it: http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=182817

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    12
    Mar 24, 2010 at 11:55 am
    • Mayid
      Posts: 5

      Solved. It was causes because of the hierarchy of the modifiers. The armature must go before the particles. ;)

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      12.1
      Mar 25, 2010 at 8:26 am
  13. Posts: 1

    i would like you to send me the tutorials on my email address so that i can download.
    thank you.

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    13
    Mar 25, 2010 at 12:06 pm
    • Posts: 2965

      Hi ernest,

      The ability to download the original, high-res video files is a advantage of being a Citizen member. This membership also includes all source files for the tutorials.

      Cheers,

      Jonathan

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      13.1
      Mar 25, 2010 at 12:53 pm
  14. wich one is better for animating?…I guess those with the particle systems are better for hd wallpapers and stuff like that because you take 1 render wait 1-2hours maybe more so blender finish the render and its done…but when you animate that way you can get lots of “crushes” and for shots of over 100 frames, each frame 30-min-1hour for Hd means a lot of time to finish even a small animation with a usual pc.. still if you use the first way for animation dont really looks soo real like using particles…What do you sugest…And do you know wich method is used for Sintel in Durian project?

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    14
    Mar 25, 2010 at 12:59 pm
  15. Atahri
    Posts: 2

    AWESOME VIDEO. I find it very hard to find videos on the new versions of blender. You have won my love! lol

    As i was following this tutorial I hit a bump in the road. When I turn on particles i see nothing, even at an Emission of 1000. When I scale the Emission down, I get one long hair going up lol. When i try to start adding hairs it adds them to that central “dot” thing. I’m pretty new to blender and can’t figure out why it keeps adding it to that dot and not the mesh itself for the head. Any ideas why it is doing this?

    I can post the blender file on my blog if someone wants to take a look at it and can’t make sense of what I’m saying. thanks!

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    15
    Mar 29, 2010 at 11:39 pm
  16. Atahri
    Posts: 2

    UM…I figured out my issue. It’s because i had a mirror modifier hehe. All good now.

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    16
    Mar 31, 2010 at 8:50 pm
  17. Nate
    Posts: 1

    Look. Could someone PLEASE give me some help? I CAN’T GET ON SCULPT MODE!!!!!!!!!!!!! Every time I click on the access, a dialouge box appears and says “Sorry, Blender has stopped working. Send, or don’t send Error Report?” I always do send, but nothing’s happened yet!!!!!!!

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    17
    Jul 14, 2010 at 8:38 pm
  18. Posts: 4

    I am wondering how you got the particle hair to collide with the head as my particle hair when combed straight down, hangs through the head. it for the most part is colliding with the shoulders of the character that I am using but the top is bald because the hair is hanging on the inside

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    18
    Nov 5, 2010 at 10:28 pm
    • Posts: 4

      I think I solved my problem, hair was to much and to long so I must have been running out of memory. I made it shorter with less hair count and the interaction seems to work.

      Thanks for the tut, it was helpful

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      18.1
      Nov 6, 2010 at 12:38 pm
      • Posts: 11

        is that just for animation Eddie Keen? or did you find something for just rendering images too?

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        18.1.1
        Jan 19, 2012 at 2:19 pm
  19. Kyle
    Posts: 1

    Could someone help me? When I go into sculpt mode to inflate th hair strands, it only lets me inflate/grab one strand. I’ve tried selecting all, deselcting all. Thanks for your help.

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    19
    Dec 19, 2010 at 7:51 am
  20. Powerclam
    Posts: 2

    Absolutely incredible tutorial, thanx 1e6!

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    20
    Jan 9, 2011 at 9:44 pm
  21. Maia
    Posts: 10

    Is there a way to make hair particles cling to a mesh? I played around with making a braid mesh and then adding hair particles to it’s surface to make the end result more realistic, but I can get the hair to follow the contours of the mesh without spending way more time than I want to combing and smoothing.

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    21
    Oct 21, 2011 at 4:06 pm
  22. Oma Crummell
    Posts: 1

    I was very pleased to find this web-site. I wanted to thanks for your time for this wonderful read!! I definitely enjoying every little bit of it and I have you bookmarked to check out new stuff you blog post .

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    22
    Nov 20, 2011 at 3:22 pm
  23. Marius
    Posts: 4

    Thanks for the tutorial!
    I have a serious bug:
    whenever I click somewhere to add hair with my brush, they appear somewhere else (some cm away from the spot I wanted to place them).
    Another problem: I have 8Gb Ram memory (64 bit system) and blender starts to freak out when I even want to place only one hair.
    Do you know a solution?

    regards Mr S.

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    23
    Dec 11, 2011 at 7:00 pm
  24. Posts: 11

    I don’t understand the collision my hair keeps going through the scalp on my mesh…how do I get it to stop on the scalp?

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    24
    Jan 19, 2012 at 12:19 am
    • Posts: 2965

      Have you set the scalp to be a collision mesh? If so you may just need to increase the quality of the collision.

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      24.1
      Jan 19, 2012 at 10:18 am
      • Posts: 11

        I think I did :S I added a collision modifier but I’m not completely sure how to alter these in the physics tab…is there a tutorial on this? I am meshing my head and my hair is down past my shoulders, when I comb it down it goes THROUGH the scalp. I don’t know if length effects anything I was playing with the deflector option under particles and it made parts like bristle wire. so I don’t know if I just need more sections? or what setting to play with.

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        24.1.1
        Jan 19, 2012 at 10:29 am
      • Posts: 2965

        You will need to comb it above the scalp because the collision modifier only takes affect during a simulation; it doesn’t have any effect on combing.

        #
        Jan 19, 2012 at 11:29 am
  25. Posts: 11

    darn it… any recomendations for longer hair then? to keep it from penatrating the scalp with out having it stick out to much? I was playing with the deflecting one I mentioned, any thoughts on that?

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    25
    Jan 19, 2012 at 2:17 pm
    • Posts: 11

      hmmm heres the question then during this tutorial when he combs down the hair, it interacts with the mesh, how does he do that? like when he is doing the particle hair seciton and combs it down, it doesn’t go through the scalp and even inter acts with the ears.

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      25.1
      Jan 19, 2012 at 3:05 pm
  26. Rin
    Posts: 1

    Thank you for the great tutorial, but I am having trouble with one thing; whenever I make hair on my character and start to comb it down it starts to go through the character instead of “interacting” with it as it did in your tutorial. I’m wondering if you have an option selected that I don’t or…???

    Any suggestions for how I could fix this would be great!

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    26
    Feb 15, 2012 at 2:14 pm
  27. Dwayne Ramage
    Posts: 1

    Excellent post. I am constantly hanging out on this place and I’m inspired! Very helpful info especially the ultimate section

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    27
    Mar 4, 2012 at 6:40 am
  28. couples counselling
    Posts: 1
  29. adam
    Posts: 1

    Thanks !

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    29
    May 22, 2012 at 11:11 am
  30. Posts: 2

    Guys maybe its too late to ask this but im on blender 2.63 and i dont know where to find the bezier curve once pressing enter .Only thing i get is bezier circle

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    30
    Jun 1, 2012 at 5:20 am
  31. Posts: 3

    With the mesh hair, how do i attach it to the head so that it moves with the armature?

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    31
    Jul 25, 2012 at 4:13 am
  32. Posts: 6

    Has a problem with the particle hair. When i add hair it are added inside of the head i am trying to add it to. I made the head in edit mode.

    Is it any way to fix this?

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    32
    Dec 7, 2012 at 3:17 pm
    • Posts: 454

      Hi, you need to select everything in edit mode and press recalculate normals on the toolbar, the hairs go in the direction of the normals.
      -Alex

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      32.1
      Dec 7, 2012 at 3:31 pm
      • Posts: 6

        Thanks

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        32.1.1
        Dec 7, 2012 at 5:35 pm
  33. Posts: 5

    Hi, I just started using Blender a couple of days ago and I love it! Thanks for the great tutorials!
    I just uploaded my first attempt at the hair. See pink hair in user submitted images. I had some holes open up on the sides where I had been fiddling with it. The more I fiddled, the worse they got. I’m sure there is an easy way to fix. Please advise.

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    33
    Dec 13, 2012 at 4:34 pm
  34. Posts: 6

    The children of the particle hair I create just floats in the air. What happened to make it do that?

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    34
    Apr 19, 2013 at 1:45 am

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