Hair Tool is Blender addon for creating hair cards based on 3d curves.

For blender 2.8 use Hair Tool 2.x series.

This addon will help you generate hair card with uv’s and much more:

• generate and groom hair ribbons (based on blender particle hair)
• generate hair ribbons from guide grid mesh
• drawing curve hair (or particle hair) on mesh surfaces
• automated uv (random uv area is assigned for each spline)
• uv texture preview directly on curve ribbons
• easy and convenient switching back and forth between curve ribbons and mesh mesh, while preserving uv’s
• adjust ribbons looks (tapering radius, randomizing tilt, editing profile)
• convert Curves to Particle Hair, Particle Hair to curve ribbons, Curve ribbons to mesh ribbons and so on.
• Curve Resampling – increase, decrease curve/ribbon points count
• Generating vertex color/weights gradients for mesh ribbons.
• And More!

Videos about Hair Tool 2 for Blender 2.8 series:

• Introduction video
• Working with materials and uv in Hair Tool 2.1
• Example of making hair in Hair Tool 2.1

Info and videos for Blender 2.79 version:

• Detailed info, links to youtube tutorials can be fund on MY BLOG
• Discord server where you can report bugs: https://discord.gg/cxZDbqH
• I also recorded tutorial about using this addon, with some tips and tricks, problem solving and stuff: https://youtu.be/FLHbzCXOijg
• Old video: https://youtu.be/WE0aBe8SNls
• Video about hair shader: https://vimeo.com/229043427
• Video about creating texture: https://vimeo.com/228873075

What you get:

• Hair Tool addon for Blender 2.79 and 2.8
• Demo blend file (bit old now, for blender 2.79), with models that were used to render promo image for Hair Tool. It contains: female head, hair material, hair alpha texture, hair ribbons (4 styles), surface objects that were used to generate hair splines.

Update 1.1:

• works better with custom unit scale
• added radius param, to ‘Change radius profile’ operator
• source surfaces will take modifier into account (eg. mirror)

Update 1.2:

• Adjust generated curves tilt, so it is aligned to source mesh surface with new – ‘Align curve tilt’ button
• Added ability to generate hair spline ribbons from blender Particle Hair system.

Update 1.4:

• added ability to attach curves as particle hair system ‘Particle Hair from Curves‘ (this can be used to import zbrush fibermesh curves and use them as blender Particle Hair system)
• added ‘Generate ribbon weights’ – make vertex group with gradient from ribbon root to tip
• added ‘Generate ribbon vertex color‘ – make vertex color with gradient from ribbon root (black) to tip (white)

Update 1.5:

• added ability to draw multiple uv boxes when using ‘UV hair’ operator. Each ribbon will pick random uv box. It helps differ the texture look.
• Added ‘Curve Resample‘ – changes number of points the curve is made from.
• Added options ‘Select Tips’, ‘Select Roots‘ under Blender ‘Select’ menu (visible during curve edit mode, on bottom header bar)

Update 1.6:

• New option ‘Ribbons from particle hair with children’ – gives better result compared to child particles generated by build in blender child particles (more even distribution, better aligning of child ribbons to surface). Great for short Hair.
• Resample – more options, and keeps curve tilt and rotation.
• ‘Particle Hair From Grease Pencil’ strokes painted in grease pencil, can be converted to particle hair (with some options available under f6)
• ‘Flip UV’ option in preferences – if enabled random strands will have uv’s flipped in X-axis

Update 1.6.4:

• ability to add ‘random vertex color per ribbon’. Can be also used on non hair meshes, to add random ID vertex colors per loose mesh parts.
• ability to add presets for ‘Ribbons from particle hair with children’ operator

Update 1.6.5:

• added “Smooth scale” – similar to ‘Smooth Tilt’ but smooths the radius
• added ‘Edit curve profile’, ‘Close Curve Profile’ – if you want  to adjust curve bevel profile by hand
• ability to taper roots of curves ribbons (previously you could taper just tips)
• added ‘Placement jittering’  F6 option for ‘Ribbons from particle hair with children’ button – helps a bit to get more uniform child strands distribution.

Update 1.7

• ability to preview hair texture directly in curve ribbons stage. See video explaining new feature: https://youtu.be/gtbhmYEKGZE
• linear deformer tool – for curve modeling can be downloaded here: https://github.com/JoseConseco/mira_tools  (how this tool works is explained in video above)

Update 1.7.1

• hair resample and simplify operators preserve material order
• added options to remove, resize, reset – uv boxes when using “Draw uv area for Hair” operator in imaged editor window (found under spacebar).

Update 1.8:

• Particle Hair Combing with Interactive  Ribbons  see video –  https://youtu.be/r4da3J5omd8

Update 1.8.4:

• early support for texture baking. Baking panel is located in -> 3d View -> Tools -> Hair Baking panel. I will make short guide video soon. https://twitter.com/JoseConseco3/status/975484075841605633

Update 1.8.5 (11.04.2018):

• finished and polished hair baking in blender (ao, id, root mask, tangent map, normal, depth etc).
• added channel packing nodes (beta but should work 90% of time)
• video showing example worfklow and how baking works: https://youtu.be/0UAxl549pNA

Update 1.8.7 + 1.8.8  + 1.8.9(17.04.2018):

• added parameter – Output texture name – for hair baking
• changed ‘Randomize Curve Tilt’ operator – this change makes it now possible to make curly hair.

• added ‘Generate Braid’ Operator. See video below.

• In this video you will see who to create curly hair and Braid: https://youtu.be/iXjBCxesA_I