Hair Composer Documentation

Before start please make sure Build Tools is installed and running.

INSTALLATION

The overall process is straight forward:

In the Build Tools please click “BUILD” button
Provide your License Key
Select appropriate Hair Composer version
Select required HairWorks distributive
Define .unitypackage location
Hit “START” button

Behind the scene it will:

Download a blueprint package
Check HairWorks intergrity
Install Microsoft Visual Studio Build Tools
Compile x86 and x64 binaries
Pack everything into .unitypackage file

Depending on your internet connection and CPU speed whole process may take a while. VS Build Tools installation can’t be canceled as it runs a separate process. If at some point it fails please contact us for technical assistance at GitHub, we will help you as soon as possible.

HOW TO DOWNLOAD HAIRWORKS DISTRIBUTIVE

1. Get access to GameWorks GitHub

This step require your consent to GameWorks EULA. If you done this before, you may skip that part

Create account at: Developer Program registration page
Create GitHub account
Apply for access at GameWorks Source on Github page

2. Download HairWorks distributive

Login into GitHub
Open HairWorks downloads page and find appropriate version required by the Build Tools; or
Use these direct links:
HairWorks 1.3.1 (zip, tar.gz)
HairWorks 1.4 Beta (zip, tar.gz)

SCENE SETUP

Hair Composer consists of several important components:

Hair Manager is responsible for starting and stopping HairWorks SDK
Hair Asset represents a structure which describes HairWorks Asset (.apx files) in the Unity. Consider this as a single template or a storage which has all settings for Hair Instance. It can be used as may times as you need in your scene
Hair Instance is always based on the Hair Asset information and responsible for simulating a hairs
Camera component is responsible for culling and rendering
Light component is for lighting models. It’s essential to have it on every Light, which touches the hairs

In this tutorial we assume you have both HairWorks Asset and a 3D model.

1. Prepare your Asset

From the main menu select Hair Composer / Create Asset. This will create a new asset file which will store our HairWorks Asset (.apx) in the project
Select asset and click “Load from File” button. This will open a file dialog from where you should select an (.apx) file
Select (.apx) file and click Open

2. Enable Hair Manager

In order to start HairWorks working you should place Hair Manager component somewhere in the scene.

Create empty Game Object
Add HcManager component

3. Add Camera Component

To render hair objects:

Select your camera in the Scene
Add HcCamera component

4. [Optional] Add Light Component

Depending on your setup you may need a Light component on every Mixed or Realtime light in the Scene

Select your light
Add HcLight component

5. Setup Hair Instance

Instance Component can be placed anywhere in the Scene. For better clarity in this tutorial we will attach this to our 3D model.

Select 3D model and add HcInstance component
Click on HcInstance component and in General Options:
1. Select a proper Skinned Mesh Renderer which belongs to our 3D model
2. Select a proper Hair Asset which will be used for initialization
3. Click “Reset Settings” button

6. Finalize your scene

Congratulations. You should now see a hairs on your model and the Hair Instance is ready for fine tuning. As a final step I would highly recommend to Generate Lighting. In this case Hair Composer will catch a lighting details from a Light Probes and send these into Rendering Pipeline.

FAQ

Can I groom hairs in the editor?

Unfortunately not at the moment. HairWorks API does not support this option and all grooming should be finished BEFORE importing into Unity 3D. There is though workaround we may implement later.

What about collision? Does it use whole underlying mesh or do we have to add simple colliders like spheres?

HairWorks is using collision spheres, yet it ignores Unity 3D colliders. As with grooming, colliders should be present in the asset file before importing into Unity engine.

How does the hairs hold up on an object that is moving? Is it pre-animated?

It’s a true simulation. Technically plugin sends skinning matrices to HairWorks API for further processing. You may find more details at HairWorks Official Documentation.

If I use Character Assets like Morph3d which comes with own Hairs, is it possible to just replace their hair with yours? Will it work with every Character System out there? UMA / Morph3d etc?

The character systems like Morph3d and UMA are not supported. But since HairWorks 1.4 we included this option into our TODO list.

Can I create eyebrows too?

Yes you can. Though for short hairs we would recommended to use old school hair techniques.

Is this DX11/12 and NVIDIA GPU only?

It should run on any GPU which supports DirectX 11.

Will it run on XBOX ONE or PS4?

NVIDIA’s Binary EULA does not allow systems other than Windows. Hence XBOX ONE and PS4 are not in priority list. We are very sorry for that – nothing we can do at that moment.

Are there any plans for other GameWorks features to be transformed into plugins for Unity?

Not yet. But we may consider this in a future.

Please could you improve accuracy of self-shadows or support self-shadow blur?

This is a very complex request. But we are thinking to implement “Deep Shadows” which will give a way better results.

Can I hire you guys to make a custom work for me?

Absolutely! If you need a custom feature developed in one of our products please contact us with your requirements.