Use the Hair category in MetaHuman creator to customize your MetaHuman's hair, eyebrows, eyelashes, beard, and mustache.
Hair Grooms LOD Warning
Some hairstyles have a warning icon and a message to indicate that they are still in development. These hairstyles only have strand-based grooms to start, and no card- or mesh-based grooms.
When exporting these characters to Unreal Engine, these grooms will only be displayed at LODs 0 and 1. MetaHumans that use LODs 2 through 7 will have no hair. In other words, they will be bald when those LODs are enabled at further distances.
Click the warning message in the Viewport to dismiss it.
Hairstyle Controls
Hairstyle controls are grouped under the Head category. They are split into two tabs:
Style
Details
Select a style on the Style tab, then customize the style you selected on the Details tab.
Click the Color picker on either tab to select a primary hair color. In the same panel, click the Enable Hair Dye option to enable a secondary color picker where you can select a color to dye your MetaHuman’s hair.
Just like in real life, the same color hair dye looks different depending on your MetaHuman’s "natural" hair color.
Hair dye also looks different depending on the type of lighting that is currently enabled.
The hair color you select will also be applied to your MetaHuman’s other hair grooms, such as eyebrows and eyelashes. You can override the colors for these grooms individually.
On the Details tab, you can configure three additional properties that affect your MetaHuman’s hair color:
| Property | Description |
|---|---|
Roughness | Controls hair reflectiveness. |
Salt & Pepper | Controls how much gray there is in your MetaHuman’s hair. |
Salt & Pepper Lightness | Controls Salt & Pepper brightness. |
In addition, you can customize your chosen hairstyle with Ombre and Highlights. These customizations also support hair dye.
Use the following properties to further customize ombre and / or highlights:
| Customization | Property | Description |
|---|---|---|
Ombre | Shift | Controls how much of your MetaHuman’s hair is affected by ombre. Ombre starts at the tip of the hairs and spreads upwards. The lower this property is, the greater the area affected by ombre. |
- | Contrast | Controls transition smoothness between the ombre and the rest of the hair. |
- | Intensity | Controls ombre color saturation. |
Highlights | Balance | Controls the balance between dyed and natural hair strands. |
- | Intensity | Controls highlights color saturation. |
- | Variation | Choose from a range of different highlights variations. |
Hair Rendering in MetaHuman Creator
By default, MetaHuman Creator previews hairstyles using strand-based grooms. Strand-based grooms are used by MetaHumans at LOD 0 and 1, while other LODs use card- or mesh-based grooms.
You can force the preview to always use hair cards, regardless of LOD, from the Viewport Environment and Quality: click the LOD button, then enable the Always Use Hair Cards option.
The image below illustrates the visual difference between strand-based (left) and card-based (right) hair rendering at LOD 0.
To learn more about hair rendering in Unreal Engine, refer to the Hair Rendering page in the Unreal Engine documentation.
Eyebrows and Eyelashes
Use the Eyebrows and Eyelashes controls to configure eyebrow and eyelashes style and color. Both of these control groups support the Salt & Pepper described in the Hairstyle Controls section above.
Mustache and Beard
Use the Mustache and Beard controls to configure mustache and beard style and color. Both of these control groups support the Salt & Pepper described in the Hairstyle Controls section above. Beard controls also support highlights and ombre.