Hair For Days

Attaching hair to a character in Unreal Engine usually means staring down a binding pipeline, but this package takes the drag-and-drop route instead. You move a groom onto your character, scale it to fit, and parent it to the head bone. No binding setup is required for the hair to function correctly in scenes.

What ships in the Hair For Days package

The headline count is 16 unique hair style grooms covering a range of masculine and feminine looks. Five of those grooms are split into multiple parts, which gives artists separate pieces to toggle on or off rather than relying on a single rigid mesh.

Beyond the core hairstyles, the package includes separate facial hair assets: a mustache and a beard. These arrive as individual grooms, so they can be combined with appropriate head hair or used on their own depending on the character.

Modular hairstyles with multiple parts

The multi-part grooms break down as follows:

• Female Long Hair — two style variants: hair behind the shoulders and hair over the shoulders.

• Female Long Hair Middle Part — two style variants: hair behind the ears and hair over the ears.

• Female Pony Tail Hair — three separate grooms: a base head cap, back hair, and a smaller back hair piece.

• Male Short Hair — two separate grooms: side hair and top hair.

• Female Short Hair — two style variants: high clump and low clump.

The pony tail configuration is the most granular of the set, letting artists use the base head cap independently of the back hair pieces. That structure means a single ponytail groom can be reassembled in several configurations without editing the hair itself.

Cutting hair to derive new looks

The groom system supports cutting the hair, which opens up style options beyond what the package displays by default. Inside a project, an artist could take an existing groom, remove length or adjust shape through cutting, and produce a custom variant without building a new asset from scratch.

The single-part grooms in the package are: Female Short Hair Bangs, Male Long Hair, Male Short Sleek Hair, Male Mullet Hair, Female Wavy Hair, Female Curly Hair, Female Over Shoulder Hair, Mohawk, Dreadlocks, Mustache, and Beard.

How a binding workflow works for cases that need it

Dragging the hair to the head bone covers standard use, but certain character rigs may require true binding for animation fidelity. Enabling binding in Unreal Engine requires setting up any groom for that specific character using Maya Xgen. The developer can generate the relevant Xgen Maya files for a given character when needed, because every groom must be configured for its target character through Maya Xgen before binding can function.

Update history through May 2021

The package grew steadily over its first months on the market. The earliest tracked update, on January 5, 2021, added three new grooms and one new style. Two days later, a separate style was added. February brought three more grooms plus another style. March added three grooms. April introduced a new groom alongside a Low poly Version of most existing grooms, giving performance-conscious scenes a lighter option for many of the hairstyles.

The most recent tracked update, dated May 22, 2021, added the dreadlocks groom. A preview for dreadlocks was noted as coming soon before that release.

Low poly grooms and facial hair in production

The Low poly Versions introduced in April matter for scenes running many characters at once or targeting lower hardware ceilings. With those lighter grooms available for most of the package’s hairstyles, teams can populate crowds or NPCs without committing to full-density hair across every figure.

The package also includes separate facial hair assets — a mustache and a beard — delivered as their own grooms. These can be paired with appropriate head hair styles to build out a full character look, or used independently for supporting cast members where a hairstyle change alone is sufficient for variety.

Compatibility with LL Face Control

Editor testing notes confirm compatibility with LL Face Control. This means the grooms can be used alongside facial animation setups without requiring a separate binding pipeline for the hair to follow head movement during expressions or dialogue scenes.

Where Hair For Days fits in a real production

The package’s combination of drag-and-drop attachment, cutting-based customization, and modular parts makes it suitable for teams that need varied character looks without authoring every groom in Maya. A production could use the female long hair variants across multiple characters by toggling behind-shoulders and over-shoulders styles, cut a male long hair groom into a shorter custom look, and slot in the mustache or beard for supporting characters.

Practical takeaway when evaluating this asset

If your characters need quick, varied hairstyles and you want to avoid a binding pipeline for most cases, the drag-to-head-bone workflow here removes one of the usual hurdles. Reserve the Maya Xgen binding route for the ultra-specific rigs that genuinely require it, and lean on the cutting system and modular parts to stretch the 16 grooms into a wider range of looks.

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