feat(hair): hair cards as their own skinned mesh, attached as a second component

Follows the character-artist skill on two points it is explicit about: hair for a
game character is a card system, and swappable parts stay separate meshes.

- Tools/character_hair_build.py builds SM_Char_Hair: a scalp cap plus 18 cards in
  three rings, quads only, every vertex weighted 1.0 to the head bone, UV-mapped for
  the strand sheet from Tools/generate_character_textures.py. 321 verts / 404 tris.
- Tools/ue_character_hair_import.py imports it as its own skeletal mesh, which is the
  point: joined into the body, Unreal collapses the second material slot and the hair
  renders with the skin material.
- The pawn carries it as a second USkeletalMeshComponent on SetLeaderPoseComponent, so
  it follows the head bone with no second rig and hides with the body in first person.

Still wrong and recorded: the cards point outward, so the silhouette reads as a spiked
crown rather than a short cut. The next pass orients them tangentially along the
skull with a second overlapping row. Tools/ue_character_materials.py also segfaults in
the headless commandlet when editing a material graph, so the generated textures are
not wired yet and the hair keeps its Blender base colour.
This commit is contained in:
zwitschi committed 2026-11-09 13:18:40 +01:00
1 parent 72d00bdfbd
commit 39f07b0f5f
46 files changed
+519 -47

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@@ -90,6 +90,22 @@ AGigLineCharacter::AGigLineCharacter()
GetMesh()->SetCollisionEnabled(ECollisionEnabled::NoCollision);
GetMesh()->SetHiddenInGame(true);
// Hair: a separate component that copies the body's pose, so it follows the head
// bone without a second rig or a second animation. Hidden with the body.
HairMesh = CreateDefaultSubobject<USkeletalMeshComponent>(TEXT("HairMesh"));
HairMesh->SetupAttachment(GetCapsuleComponent());
HairMesh->SetCollisionEnabled(ECollisionEnabled::NoCollision);
HairMesh->SetHiddenInGame(true);
static ConstructorHelpers::FObjectFinder<USkeletalMesh> HairFinder(
TEXT("/Game/Test/Character/CharacterHair.CharacterHair"));
if (HairFinder.Succeeded())
{
HairMesh->SetSkeletalMesh(HairFinder.Object);
HairMesh->SetRelativeLocation(FVector(0.0f, 0.0f, -87.5f));
HairMesh->SetRelativeRotation(FRotator(0.0f, -90.0f, 0.0f));
HairMesh->SetLeaderPoseComponent(GetMesh());
}
// Third-person boom. bDoCollisionTest is the camera-collision feature: the arm
// shortens when something is between the pivot and the desired camera position.
ThirdPersonArm = CreateDefaultSubobject<USpringArmComponent>(TEXT("ThirdPersonArm"));
@@ -795,6 +811,10 @@ void AGigLineCharacter::ToggleCamera()
FirstPersonCamera->SetActive(!bThirdPerson);
ThirdPersonCamera->SetActive(bThirdPerson);
GetMesh()->SetHiddenInGame(!bThirdPerson);
if (HairMesh)
{
HairMesh->SetHiddenInGame(!bThirdPerson);
}
if (bThirdPerson)
{
UpdateBodyAnimation();
@@ -155,6 +155,17 @@ protected:
UPROPERTY(EditAnywhere, BlueprintReadWrite, Category = "Camera")
float ThirdPersonBoomLength = 340.0f;
/**
* Hair, as its own skeletal mesh following the body's pose.
*
* A second component rather than geometry joined into the body: Unreal collapses
* the second material slot on a skeletal-mesh import, so joined hair rendered with
* the skin material. The character-artist skill calls for hair cards to be their
* own mesh for the same reason it calls for swappable parts to be separate.
*/
UPROPERTY(VisibleAnywhere, BlueprintReadOnly, Category = "Body")
TObjectPtr<USkeletalMeshComponent> HairMesh;
UPROPERTY()
TObjectPtr<UAnimSequence> IdleAnimation;