Creating Polygon Hair for Game Characters 

Lol, 11 years later and still one of the best Hair Tutorials out there! Thank You!!

Man this is one of the few tutorials that still holds true after 10 years. Perfectly presented and to the point.

It has been 8 years... Still best tut on the subject at the youtube, thanks!

That character looks like that statue guy from this very old art show called "Art Attack!" lol

Great tutorial Wes. I am so glad you talk fast or at a good speed! I hate the tutorials where people talk so slow and waste time. Thanks for the great tutorial!

A part from the fact that you are very talented, this is a really nice tutorial and you are quite good at teaching, very articulated and exceptionally well explained. Congrats.

This video helped me a lot in figuring out how to make hair using blender and is still just as relevant toady as it was in 2013. Thanks!

*Thank you so much for this awesome tutorial i’ve been looking for long time for a simple creation of hair card without complexity*

Thank you so much.. I am self learning graphic and I was so much looking for some really good game ready hair tutorial. Good job. Thank you...

Excellent video, my friend. Can I have a little question though. Say if you want to create a long curly hair for a character, do you just prolong the form of the "leaf" model, and then in Photoshop use curly strokes, or is there a specific method for long hairs in general?

thank you so much for the tut, Ive been stucking at my job for making the damn beard!

Probably the best tutorial I've seen

The two parts I wasn't sure are at 21:25 and 34:00. Very useful to know, thanks.

Very nice tutorial! I remember when this kind of stuff was inaccessible to game developers. The graphics cards of the day weren't able to handle it. It's really cool seeing these techniques being done in real time with modern hardware. Thanks for a great illustration on how to do it!

Just saw your tutorial on Substance painter and saw this model. wanted to point it out. Good job on both tutorials keep it up!

FINALLY! I've spent so long trying to find a tutorial for hair! Thankyou man :)

This is some of the best maya/photoshop workflow I’ve seen. Thank you!

Very nice workflow explanation. Will help me a lot in my (hairy) Gnoll game character model creation. Thank you. Bernie-Ojeda 2020.

around 10:30 when distributing the hair strands across the scalp: if you use Blender (and probably other applications as well) you can use a particle system to do this for you.

you are a really good teacher! you explained all the steps quickly and clearly, good job! thanks! I finally understand how to Do this.

I have a little problem, once i apply the png to the blinn colour/transparency, it doesnt show the transparency part on the viewport :s Is there an option to display transparency on viewport or something?

Very nice tutorial. One question though, at 31:40 I cannot get the menu with the "local scaling" option. Was that scaling done using a plugin?

how were you able to install the sppaint3d? i followed the necessary procedures and i couldn't seem to get it to work.

Are you saying that zbrush can do this technique as well??? thanks

Thank you, CG Cookie. I also love how this technique can be used with pretty much any 3D app...and since I use Blender, this ought to help. :)

So, I'm assuming that you can't animate those polygons in anyway, shape, or form to get the hair to move, because it's only a texture. Is that correct? I'm sorta disappointed because I want to find an easier way to make hair without taking up so much processing power, and maya hair is just a pain in the butt to do. Was thinking maybe of doing just polygon cylinders and shaping it into hair. This looks a hell of a lot better and is easy, but I'm nervous that animating the hair would not be a possibility.

Nevertheless, I had no idea you could paint geometry across the topology, so this was extremely helpful, regardless that I won't be able to use the method... thanks!!!! Keep up the awesome work, I really enjoyed learning from your tutorial!

I didn't understand any of it, but I enjoyed every second of it

oh god lol this is a technique that is gonna save my god damn life, I was having so much trouble creating decent looking hair for my character on Blender

i have 2 questions. 1. I looking for techniques for recovering tracks of the Normal maps edges. In your "Mr. Grumples" Normal map bugs is not be seen. How you clean buggy edges, man? Can you explain some methods about this. For me it is not so big problem this Normal Map edges to be seeing, but i was hear for some method / technique they can be remove / hidden. 2. questions - I cannot understand where exactly ( in what directory) i must instal spPaint3d ? Some of Maya-s directory? p.s. Very good video, man! Excellent job !

Thank you so much wes. you helped me quite a lot with maya, substance painter and designer and a lot more stuff. you are great!

I always use that script. Such a life saver.

Thanks a lot ! I've learned a lot from you, i'll suscribe to your citizen tutorials as soon as I can. I am spanish and i am still looking your english tutorials, that proves that you are really good :D Good job

When i try to add a target surface it says it cannot compute, hierachy too complex. any fix for this?

Hi! I love your tutorial! Thank you so much! And.. I have a question. Will this work for characters with long hair? And I would like to introduce some physics to it.. Will it work? Or.. how should I make it work? My idea is to create multiple polygons, combine some of them, and add joints... Is it a good idea?

Hi, I was wondering where the brushes for the hair could be downloaded. (Mentioned around 24 min in) Thanks!

Thank you for the tutorial, I will translate what I learned into 3ds max with no problems

That was completely awesome

Hi. Would you include the uvs with the rest of the model (or some of it) or give the hair cards separate UV set

You are a hero, man. I was looking for this so long!

excellent tut, right on point with each of the steps. 30 min well spent.

Thank you so much, dude! One question. How did you get that scale tool's "local" option to scale all hair-cards scale locally? What shortcut did you press and click?

Thank you for sharing Thats awesome and helpful~

Do we have to be pros at using maya to do this tutorial????

can you tell me how to activate the plugin after I get it from creativecrash? I cant seem to see it or put it on my shelf

My brush with black dot does not work like in the video, it does not make thin line when I start drawing. Can someone explain to me?

Is this a good method for animals for videogame use aswell?

Hi, I hope someone can help me with this problem I have with the spPaint3d script. I can't seem to paint on the skin. The hair mesh instances INSIDE of the skin, on the inverse of my character's mesh normals. I know this because inverting my normals causes the script to paint outside properly, but it's rather hard to see what I'm doing. What settings should I tweak so that it paints on the right side of my normals?

how can this creation method be used to make low-poly geometric style grass and then animate these grass style with collide tool and wind effect?

Just out of curiosity - why would you delete the history of a mesh? Does it take much memory?

Very nice tutorial! Also, thanks for sharing the spPaint tool with us. Looks like a gem!

Alright, i'll take a look at cghub for certain. One other question if you don't mind. I've mostly started with blender. The only program from Autodesk i've really gotten used to atm is Mudbox. Speaking from a professional point of view do you think I'm wasting my time with blender then or is that something you really can't say? I have 3ds max and maya but I found more tutorials for Blender to learn from so thats kinda why I went that route at the moment. I plan to learn the other 2 also though.

is this good for mental ray? and do you have a tutorial for the texturing?

What does 'Lock Transparency' do? Lock the alpha map so you cannot mess with it?

this is great video on how to easily make hair in maya. will this method render in mental ray?

Great tutorial! exactly what I was looking for, its even on maya!

How do you rig/skin game ready characters covered in fur like gorrilas, wolves etc. how do you paint weights on hair/fur cards?

This is amazing! Very detailed. Referenced Links are provided!

Cool and very useful tutorial! I used 3d s max to follow along and get some nice results, altough I had to do the hair placement manualy, it took a little time but no big deal. Thanks for sharing! I also paint the hair in photoshop with a mouse, it worked out fine!

You're a good teacher mate. thank you.

Where can I download the blank head model? Thanks in advance.

when it comes to moving the individual hairs, a shortcut I use is make the head model "live" (modify>make live) and the object moves along the surface without having to snap.

Thank you for your awesomeness Wes.

This is EXACTLY what I was looking for, thank you!

nice job and very good explanation

Wes I love your videos. I used to be a Maya guy and now I use Modo. is there a simple snapping solution in Modo like there is in Maya, for example holding V for vertex?

Great tutorial! Is there any way to make this hair dynamic and move with the character? If so, mind laying out a simplified workflow? (I've just modeled my first character, trying to add realistic hair to it that can move as the character moves)

Excellent video! Although.. him not having eyes was pretty creepy! ;-) lol

This is easily done in max. Try to forget what software he is using and focus more on the theory. A low poly mesh that's being painted onto an object. If you need tutorials making art for games using max just PM me. And always remember its not the tool that makes great art, its the Artist. Practice everyday and never give up.

Is it best to leave them combined for animation? Or seperate them again later on? ☺

would be nice to see it running in the game engine, and how to make the hair shader from the maps - both roughness/metallic and spec workflow - am just learning this it is very confusing!

for mouse users I'd reccomend using Illustrator instead of photoshop in order to get smooth curves

I'm using a 2013 maya, followed your instruction. I noticed that you have 2014, yet mine isn't same as your. I did put up on photoshop and brushed the hair. After i done, I updated it on Maya then appeared to be nice, but background still there, however it shouldn't supposed to be there on polyon. I did turned off the background.

I like it and I also have one question...I am not good at texturing and I like the texture on your model and I was wondering if you have a tuts about that?

I fallow all steps and made wonderful hairs for my character, But I cant attach these hair to my rigged head. When I move my head, these hair don't fallow exactly. I try to skin and adjust weight paint....But its not working. Plz can u help me how to rig these hair so they will fallow the head...

from where did you got the brush? i want brush preset

@unitycookie is there a way you can possibly put the brushes up?

How could I make these flow with the deformation of a character rig?

Thanks you! I use Blender but this helped me understand this better.

Thanks for the nice video! That voice is familiar... are you the guy who is doing also the Allegorithmic Tutorials ?

Hello. I've learned alot from this video. But one problem, I could not execute the spPaint3d script in my Maya 2014. I don't know why. Would you mind if you can show me the step by step installation of the script into Maya 2014? Glad if you could help. Thanks a lot! :D

great video, love the mel script. Even if i kinda was looking for a maya 2014 "nhair" tutorial i like this way mutch more, and i kinda did way to mutch work on my old hair with 3 diffrent maps. So thanks, my bio-robot (yeah real badass robots have a mohawk) will thank you too, if my time lets me.

nice easy to follow tutorial, brilliant work, thank you so much :)

Hi I couldn’t find scale local in Maya 2017 Can you help thank you.

Fantastic!! Really good tutorial. And now I´m a fan of spPainit3d plugin :) One question, I can´t change to Coord Space Local in Maya 2016 with keep spacing. This isn´t a problem because I can separate and then scale and then combine again, but I would like how to do it. Thanks :)

Hey. again great tutorial Would you recommend this method for maybe making surface grass rather than using the paint tools?

Unless I missed something, I can't seem to find anything resembling "how to paint on low polygons onto, well...whatever". If you happen to have tuts on this, or if you could direct me to finding the application in 3ds Max, please let me know.

wow awsome very easy ot understand thanks bunches for taking your time to make it for us

thanks, Ima try this out asap

Wow what a tutorial! So helpful. Thanks for uploading! ^_^

Great tutorial, do you have a video made on how you modeled and textured the head?

any ideas on how to remove the hard edges where the hair polys meet the model?

Nice tutorial.Thank you!

Cool! Tecknick! , i will Download your Video for my Tutorials Files! Nice work ! emn

Could you use this technique for curly hair? I can't get tight looking curls, Jewish or Italian style thickness, to work. Anyone else find a way of doing poly hair that's curly?

At 11:22 you do the geometry paint using an add on, does anyone have any idea if there is something similar for blender?

how did you create the eyebrows

You really deserve much more views!!!

Good work! Thanks for sharing.

hi! how can i create a bun hairstyle like this for female can you help me plzzzz! thnx