How to make Hair in Blender!
Important Information
This tutorial assumes that you have a basic understanding of blender and how curves work. For this tutorial, we will be using curves, converting those to meshes, and UV unwrapping. Below I will provide you with the Roblox character to use as a reference. Remember this does add to the tris count.
What we will be using
Curves - We will be using these as the main function for the hair. It allows us to manipulate the shape of the meshes.
Mirror - It allows us to mirror the object, reducing our workload.
Decimate - Reduces the tris count, causing less lag.
Getting started
Step 1
Open the scene, it should contain just the Roblox character and nothing else. Go ahead and add a curve circle. Shift-A > Curve > Circle. This is what you will use for the shape of the hair. As you will see below, there are a few ways to make the shape, but this is the way we will be covering in this tutorial.Step 2
While selecting the circle, press tab which will bring you into the editor for this object. At first, it may seem quite complicated, but once you learn how to manipulate it, it's easy. Your circle should look similar to what is below. Another method we can use is using regular curves and shaping them in a triangle, which can help to reduce the tris count.
Then you are going to have to enable the free handle type. This is located at the top of the screen under Control Points > Set Handle Type > Free.
Next, you are going to shape the circle to be your desired shape. You can do this by selecting the vertices and moving them. Below is the shape I will be using, however you can use any shape you want. The less complex the shape is, the less tris you have.
Step 3
We are going to need another curve for the hair. Shift A > Curve > Path. This is very important as it will allow you to shape your hair. Next, we have to apply the shape to the path. We can do this by going through the Object Data Properties > Geometry > Bevel > and select the circle we made earlier.
It should look something like this.
Step 4
Next, we have to make the edges pointy. We can do that by selecting the vertices and pressing alt s. It should look something similar to what I have below. I moved the curve up a little, to give it more shape. Make sure you scaled both sides.
Step 5
Steps 1-4 were pretty easy and didn't require much messing around. The next few steps will. You are going to want to shape your first path as hair would flow. If you need some references you can look at the final product. Mess around with it for a few, and see what you can get. Try to get the hair facing different ways. The way you apply the hair comes down to the style you are going for. Don't worry much about it looking like banana peels right now.
The back of the hair is the most work. You just have to try to get it to flow, which takes a bit of time.
After some messing around you can get to something like this. I used the same curve to add some ears to the mesh.
Step 6
Before we can go ahead and convert the curves to meshes we need to start limiting the amount of tris we have. The first thing we can do is turn down the resolution of the mesh. I find that 4 works fine for me, but if you need to reduce it further mess around with the count.Step 7
Next, we can convert all the hairpieces over to mesh. I assume you did all of the curves as separate curves, so we will cover on how to group them. While in object mode and selecting all of the hairpieces, press Object > Convert to > Curve From Mesh/Text. This converts it from a curve, to a mesh allowing us to edit the topology.
Next, you will get a prompt for the target. Select Mesh from Curve/Meta/Surf/Text.
If you go into edit mode, you can see that there are a billion faces. Don’t worry about this right now. While you have all the objects selected group them with ctrl J. You can also do this step for other objects you have added such as ears, or bow ties.
Step 8
Next, we can apply a decimate modifier. This brings down the tris count even more. If it is still too high, you can apply another decimate modifier. You can also select all while in edit mode, and go to mesh > clean up > limited dissolve if you need to further reduce your tris.Step 9
UV Unwrapping is very important for any UGC creation. I will be using simple gradients as it's late at night. But feel free to use whatever you want. I expect you to be able to unwrap the UV map. You can also shade out smooth if needed.Final Product
This was the final triangle count of the hair above.
