Hair cards

Hair cards are the textured strips games use for hair. In the studio they are made from your own hair: switch any hairstyle from Strand to Haircard in the Hair Manager and that hair is drawn as cards that follow your groom.

Wherethe Strand, Haircard switch on a hairstyle row in the Hair ManagerDetailCard detail, under hair on the Settings tab, while a hairstyle is on HaircardExportFile, Export, Hair: Hair cards (FBX)

The hairstyle row switched to Haircard: the same cut, drawn as cards.

Usage

Open Hair and put on a hairstyle: a cut from the library, a hairstyle, or long hair.
In the Hair Manager, flip the row's switch from Strand to Haircard. The hair is drawn as cards: strips that lie along your groom, with a strand texture in your hair colour.
Change the style, the length or the colour as usual: the cards follow.
Set Card detail, under hair on the Settings tab, for how closely the cards follow curls and long hair.
Flip the switch back to Strand at any time. The choice is saved with the character.

Control	What it does
Strand, Haircard	Strand: every hair drawn as a strand. Haircard: the same hair as textured cards made from it.
Card detail	On the Settings tab, under hair. More segments follow curls and long hair more closely. It changes long hair's cards; short hair keeps even segments. The readout says how many triangles the cards use against the head.

Card detail under hair on the Settings tab: the cards use 10,668 of the head's 35,324 triangles.

The triangle budget

The cards never have more triangles than the head they sit on: the GNM head's, or the MetaHuman's. When long hair would go over, its cards are made fewer and wider to stay within it, and the readout's tooltip says so. This keeps card hair light enough for a game.

What can be cards

Hairstyles: the hairstyle tool, the cuts in the library and every long hair object.
Not eyebrows, beards, mustaches, baby hair or eyelashes: they stay strands. Their rows have no switch.
Nothing switches to cards by itself: Strand is the default.

Export

In Export, Hair cards (FBX mesh + atlas PNG) writes every object set to Haircard as one mesh each, with the strand texture as a PNG beside it. It is greyed until a hairstyle is set to Haircard. The Alembic options still write those objects as strands.

Common problems

What you see	Why	What to do
There is no Haircard switch on a row	That kind of hair is not made as cards.	Only hairstyle rows have it.
Long hair cards look darker than the strands from behind	A known limit of this first version.	Check it from the front, or keep that hair as strands.
The cards look blocky on curls	Card detail is low, or the budget is reached.	Raise Card detail.