Hair Wrangler v2: Documentation

About Hair Wrangler

Hair Wrangler is a Blender addon designed to make working with realistic-looking hair easier and more intuitive. It focuses on giving artists the ability to use regular curves (and geometry) to style hair, which can feel much more natural and precise compared to Blender’s default grooming tools. It allows the 3D modeller to use their existing skillset, and avoids getting stuck figuring out complex geometry nodes and grooming tools.

The addon is aimed at simplifying the process of creating realistic hairstyles. It’s especially useful for those who want to spend less time setting up complex systems and more time focusing on the creative aspects of their work.

1. Key Features

Hair Wrangler has a growing number of features designed to simplify and enhance the hair creation process in Blender:

One-Click Setup

Getting started is straightforward. Choose a starting size, then create a fully configured hair system with a single click. It includes a guide to shape, generated hair and a set of styling modifiers, so you can begin styling without building the setup yourself.

Curve-Based Styling

At the heart of Hair Wrangler is its ability to let you control hair with regular Blender curves. Shape the curves, adjust their width and duplicate them to build up your hairstyle using tools you already know. The generated strands follow your changes, leaving you free to focus on the style rather than a complex grooming setup.

Hair and Poly Modes

Switch between generated strands and solid guide shapes with a single click. Poly mode gives you a clear view of the hair’s overall volume and flow, making it easier to see how the clumps fit together. Switch back to Hair mode to check the strands.

Convert Existing Geometry Hair

If you’ve already created a hairstyle using curves or suitable mesh strips, you can bring that work into Hair Wrangler. Convert the objects into guides and use them to generate strands while keeping their geometry editable. Mesh strips need their root edges marked first so the addon knows where the hair should begin.

Modifier Control

Hair Wrangler brings the hair modifiers into one panel, where you can add effects, change their order and adjust their settings. Use them to control density, clumping, frizz, strand length, thickness and more. Each section has its own modifier stack, so you can style different parts of the hair independently.

Viewport Display Options

Adjust how the strands appear in the viewport directly from the addon, including their display shape and smoothness. For dense hairstyles, Fast Preview uses fewer, thicker strands while you work to help keep editing responsive. Turn it off when you want to judge the full result.

Materials and Guide Colours

New hairstyles come with a hair material ready to use. Adjust its base colour, roughness, strand variation, and root and tip effects from the addon. You can also give individual guides their own colours while sharing one material, making it easy to add highlights or colour different parts of the hairstyle.

Customisable Starting Defaults

Set your preferred guide settings and starting modifiers once, then use them for new hairstyles and sections. You can choose which modifiers are included, arrange their order and adjust their starting values. This saves repeating the same setup each time you begin a project.

Static Groom Export

Export your finished strands as an Alembic groom for Unreal Engine. Export the whole hairstyle or just the active section, with a companion settings file providing guidance on import orientation and hair width. This exports a static groom; materials, animation and character binding are handled separately in Unreal.

2. Installation

Download and install

In Blender 4.2 and later, you can install the addon by dragging its ZIP file straight into Blender. See Blender’s 4.2 release notes.

1. Download the Hair Wrangler addon ZIP. Leave it zipped.
2. Drag the ZIP from your file browser into Blender’s 3D Viewport.
3. Follow the installation prompt.
4. If needed, open Edit → Preferences → Add-ons, search for Hair Wrangler and enable it.

You can also install it through Edit → Preferences → Add-ons: open the menu in the top-right corner, choose Install from Disk and select the ZIP.

If automatic saving of preferences is disabled, save your preferences so the addon remains enabled next time you open Blender.

When updating an existing installation, save your work and fully restart Blender after installing the new ZIP.

Find the addon

In the 3D Viewport, press N to open the sidebar, then select the Hair Wrangler Pro tab.

To create your first hairstyle, find the Add Hair panel. The next section explains how to choose a starting size and use New Hairstyle.

Return to Object Mode before using the creation controls.

You can begin with the supplied defaults. Experienced users can adjust personal defaults in the addon’s Preferences before creating hair; Personal defaults in chapter 9 explains these after introducing modifiers. This is optional setup.

3. Add Hair: choose a size and start your hairstyle

Start by choosing a suitable hair length for your character.

Size

What it does: sets the starting size of a new hairstyle.

Real-world uses a physical length and your scene units. Set Starter Guide Length to a useful starting length for your character. For example, use 40 cm for a guide approximately that long in a correctly scaled scene. The field accepts unit-based input such as 40 cm or 12 in.

Original uses the addon’s original four-Blender-unit design size. Choose this when you want that original working scale instead of specifying a physical guide length.

When to use it: choose the size at the beginning of the project, before creating or bringing guides into the new hairstyle. Starter Guide Length is a starting point, not a maximum length. You can shorten, extend and reshape the guides afterwards, or adjust the overall size later using the Resize Hairstyle button.

Tip: Changing the size later

To resize an existing hairstyle, use Hair Options → Advanced → Resize Hairstyle. The Reference Length represents the original starter-guide size, not the longest strand in the finished groom. The hairstyle’s sections and guides resize together while modifier effects keep their proportions.

New Hairstyle

What it does: creates a hairstyle containing one section, a Guides collection with a starter guide, and a generated Hair output.

How to use it:

1. Return to Object Mode.
2. Open Add Hair in the Hair Wrangler Pro sidebar.
3. Choose the size and starter length as described above.
4. Click New Hairstyle.
5. Expand the new hairstyle in the Outliner and locate its Guide and Hair objects.

When to use it: start here for a new hairstyle. A character’s hair can usually be built within one hairstyle, using sections for its different parts. Multiple hairstyles are supported when the scene needs independent setups.

How the hairstyle is organised

Now that you have created the hairstyle, look at how Hair Wrangler organises its guides and generated hair in the Outliner.

Item	What it means
Hairstyle	The complete hairstyle, containing its sections.
Section	A part that you want to control separately, such as a fringe or ponytail.
Guides	The curves or meshes you edit to shape a section.
Hair	The strands generated from those guides. The section’s material and styling modifiers affect this output.

A guide represents a clump, not just one finished hair. You edit the guide and let the generated Hair output follow it. You can add sections to give different parts of the hairstyle their own settings, such as a fringe that needs different clumping or frizz from the rest of the hair.

Built-in profile shapes and sizing helpers are managed internally. You do not need to find or organise separate preset curves in the Outliner.

Identify the active section

At the top of Hair Options, a breadcrumb shows which part of the hairstyle you are working on. It reads from the overall hairstyle down to the active section and its generated hair object:

Hairstyle › Section › Hair output

The names match the items in Blender’s Outliner. Hairstyle is the collection containing the whole hairstyle, Section is the collection containing one part of it, and Hair is that section’s generated hair object.

For example, rename the Section collection (the folder in the Outliner) to Bangs by double-clicking its name and typing the new name.

With that section active, the breadcrumb updates from Hairstyle › Section › Hair to Hairstyle › Bangs › Hair:

This makes it easier to recognise which section you are editing as the hairstyle grows. Select a guide or Hair output to make its section active, then check the breadcrumb before changing its material or modifiers. The selected-guide table, introduced next, affects individual guides instead.

You’ll rarely need to enable the selection icon, since most styling is done through the guides. It controls whether you can select the generated hair in the viewport. Keep it off while editing guides to avoid selecting the hair by mistake. You can always select the Hair object in the Outliner, even when viewport selection is disabled.

4. Guide Options: shape the first clump

Now that the hairstyle exists, start with one guide. Establish a clear direction from the root towards the tip, and judge the overall silhouette before adding lots of detail.

Shape a guide

What it does: changing the curve changes the path and volume of the generated clump.

1. Select Guide in the viewport or Outliner.
2. Enter Edit Mode.
3. Move the control points to position the root and shape the flow.
4. Use Alt+S on selected points to adjust the width along the guide.
5. Use Ctrl+T on selected points to adjust their tilt, twisting the guide along its length.
6. Return to Object Mode when you are ready to duplicate the guide or use creation tools.

Point radius changes the width of the clump. It is different from the thickness of each individual strand, which is controlled later by Set Hair Curve Profile.

Hair and Poly

What they do: switch selected curve guides between strand generation and solid guide shapes. The buttons sit above the selected-guide table.

Hair is useful for checking the generated strands, density and detail. Poly is useful for judging the solid volume and how neighbouring clumps fit together. Poly keeps the guides editable as curves; it is not a hair-card export.

Select the guides you want to change, then click Hair or Poly. Switch between them as you work. Solid viewport shading can show guide geometry differently from Material Preview, so choose a shading mode that makes the comparison clear.

Resolution

What it does: controls how densely the guide’s cross-section is sampled for strand generation. Increasing it adds strands around the profile.

When to use it: increase it when a clump needs more strands around its outline. Start with enough to describe the shape, then use modifiers for further density. It does not smooth the guide along its length or set individual hair thickness.

Profile

What it does: sets the cross-section of the clump. This is the shape you would see if you cut across it.

Choose Circle, Square, Rectangle or Semi-circle for a built-in shape. These profiles are managed internally and do not add loose objects to your scene.

When to use it: choose a profile when the clump needs a different overall shape, such as a flatter section instead of a round bundle.

For a custom profile:

1. Create a curve object for the cross-section.
2. Select the hair guide and choose Custom in its Profile menu.
3. Pick the curve in the adjacent field or use the eyedropper.
4. Edit the profile’s points in Edit Mode to change the clump live.

If several guides use that custom curve, edits affect all of them. Change its geometry in Edit Mode; scaling the profile object in Object Mode is not equivalent.

Filler

What it does: adds strands inside the clump, helping fill a sparse centre.

When to use it: use Filler when the outline has enough strands but the interior feels hollow. Resolution and Filler complement each other: one samples around the profile, the other fills its interior. Use section modifiers for further density and variation.

Show only the settings you need

The Resolution, Profile, Filler and Colour buttons show or hide their table columns. A highlighted button means its column is visible. Hiding a column keeps its values and effects unchanged.

Select several guides to compare their settings in one place. Numeric fields line up vertically, allowing Blender’s multi-button drag gesture down a column.

The eye icon beside a guide’s name toggles its generation modifier in the viewport. Use it to inspect a guide’s contribution; it is separate from the Hair output’s selection lock.

Colour is introduced in chapter 6, after the shared hair material. You can keep that column hidden while shaping.

5. Build up the hairstyle

Once the first clump has a useful shape, duplicate guides and organise parts that need separate controls. You do not need to decide the entire section structure in advance.

Duplicate guides

In Object Mode, select a guide and use Shift+D. Enter Edit Mode and edit the copy’s points to build the next clump. Start with the main silhouette and flow, adding smaller clumps after the larger forms work together.

New Section

What it does: adds another section to the active hairstyle, with its own starter guide and generated Hair output.

When to use it: use a section for a part that needs independent styling controls, for example, a fringe, side, bun or ponytail.

Check the active hairstyle in Hair Options, then click Add Hair → New Section. The new section uses your preferred starting modifier stack and guide defaults. It keeps the hairstyle’s size and the active section’s material. It does not copy the current section’s edited modifier stack.

Duplicate Section

What it does: creates a copy of the section with its own guides and hair settings.

When to use it: choose this when an existing section is a useful starting point for another part of the hairstyle. Activate the source section, return to Object Mode and click Duplicate Section.

The copy still shares its material with the original. It may also share a custom profile curve stored outside the section. Give the copy a separate material or profile if you want to edit those independently.

Naming your work

Rename hairstyles, sections and guides in Blender’s Outliner. Hair Wrangler uses these names in its interface. Names such as Fringe, Sides and Ponytail make the active section easier to recognise.

New guides are named Guide, Guide.001 and so on. Converted curves keep their existing names.

6. Hair Options: materials and colour

Choose the section’s material

What it does: chooses the material used by the generated hair.

The material field shows the material assigned to the active hair output. Choose a different material here when a section needs its own appearance.

Several sections can use the same material. Editing a shared material changes its appearance everywhere that material is used. Assign a separate material when you want to change only one section.

Edit Material and pin

1. Open a Shader Editor in your Blender layout.
2. Click the Edit Material icon beside the material field.
3. Adjust the hair shader in that editor.

With the pin off, Edit Material selects the Hair object and shows its material in the Shader Editor. Use this in Object Mode.

With the pin on, you can edit the hair material without deselecting your guides. The Shader Editor keeps showing that material as you select other objects, including while working in Edit Mode.

Open a Shader Editor first; Edit Material does not open one for you.

Material Settings

New hairstyles start with Hair Wrangler Material. Open Hair Options → Material Settings to adjust its appearance without opening the shader graph. Changes here also appear in the Shader Editor.

Set Base Colour for the overall colour. Roughness controls shine: lower values give sharper reflections, while higher values soften them. Strand Variation varies the brightness of individual strands.

These controls are available for recognised Hair Wrangler materials. For other materials, use the Shader Editor. A field is disabled if another shader node controls its value; edit that node instead.

Roots and tips

Expand Roots or Tips to change the appearance along each strand. Both contain Custom Colour, Colour, Strength and Length (%).

With Custom Colour off, the chosen colour tints the existing hair colour, including any guide colour. The root tint darkens the roots, while the tip tint lightens the ends. White leaves the root colour unchanged; black leaves the tip colour unchanged.

With Custom Colour on, the roots or tips blend towards your chosen colour. Use this for dyed ends or coloured roots. Strength controls how much colour is applied, with the fade and strand variation still affecting the result.

Length (%) controls how far the effect extends along the strand, including the fade. For example, a tip length of 30% places the effect in the last 30% of the strand. Set Length or Strength to zero to remove that end effect.

For a first adjustment, change one end at a time. Choose the colour, set its length, then raise Strength until the transition suits the hairstyle.

Advanced material settings

Inside Material Settings → Advanced, Blend Softness controls how much of each root or tip region is used for the fade. At zero the boundary is hard; at one it fades across the whole region. If the root and tip effects overlap, the tip colour is blended on top according to its Strength setting.

Hue Variation varies the colour between strands. Start with a low value for a subtle effect.

Hair Model selects the Cycles hair shading model. Chiang is the default; Huang is also available. Compare them in the lighting you plan to render with. Eevee and Material Preview use an approximation, so their highlights and appearance may differ from Cycles.

Give a guide its own colour

1. Select the curve guides you want to colour.
2. In Guide Options, turn on the Colour filter.
3. Enable the override checkbox in the relevant guide’s row.
4. Click its colour swatch and choose a colour.

The initial swatch is white, but it has no effect until the override is enabled. With the override off, that guide uses the material’s base colour. With it on, the guide’s colour becomes the base for its strands. Root/tip effects and strand variation still apply.

Several guides can share one material while each has its own colour. The colour applies to the guide’s generated strands.

Hair Wrangler Material supports guide colours immediately. For an older or different material, use Set Up Guide Colours if the button appears. It creates a copy with guide-colour support and keeps the original material unchanged.

This requires a Principled BSDF or Principled Hair shader connected directly to the material’s Surface output. A Principled Hair shader must use Direct Coloring. More complex materials may need changes in the Shader Editor.

Shared materials

When multiple hair outputs in the scene use the same material, Material Settings shows a shared-material notice. Changing the material’s base colour, roots, tips or roughness affects those outputs. Per-guide overrides provide colour differences without creating a separate material for every guide.

With another material assigned, a small information icon beside the material field opens a recommendation. Switch to Hair Wrangler Material reuses a compatible material already in the file where possible, or creates one if needed. If it reuses a material, changes will also affect other sections using that material.

Don't show again in this project hides that recommendation in the current blend file. Save the file to retain the choice. You can still choose an existing material from the material field, but there is no button to restore the notice.

7. Viewport Display: judge the working result

Strand and Strip

Open Hair Options → Viewport Display to adjust Blender’s hair display settings for Eevee and Material Preview.

Strand / Strip changes how strands are drawn. This is separate from the Hair / Poly buttons in Guide Options: those switch between generated hair and solid guide shapes.

These settings affect the scene’s hair display. To change the number of strands, use guide Resolution or hair modifiers.

These examples compare the viewport display settings. The result also depends on strand radius, material, lighting and Blender version.

Additional Subdivisions

What it does: increases smoothness along the displayed strands in Eevee and Material Preview.

When to use it: raise it when curves look angular in a close view. Higher values can slow the viewport, so increase them only as needed. This is separate from adding more hairs with Resolution or Duplicate Hair Curves.

Advanced: the Guides collection

Hair Options → Advanced → Guides shows which collection provides the section’s guides. Hair Wrangler sets this up for you. You only need to change it if you want the section to use a different guide collection.

Advanced also contains Resize Hairstyle for changing the overall size.

8. Modifiers: refine the strands

Modifiers shape the strands generated by the active section. Open a modifier with its arrow to adjust its settings.

What the modifiers do

Common examples:

Modifier	Purpose
Duplicate Hair Curves	Add strands to build density.
Clump Hair Curves	Gather strands into clumps.
Frizz Hair Curves	Add irregular variation.
Trim Hair Curves	Shorten strands.
Set Hair Curve Profile	Control individual strand thickness and taper.

The guide’s Profile controls the cross-section of a whole clump. Set Hair Curve Profile controls the thickness of the individual hairs inside it.

Add and arrange modifiers

When to use them: use modifiers to refine the hair after shaping the guides. Check the breadcrumb to make sure you are editing the right section.

Use Add Hair Modifier to add another effect. Drag a modifier by its grip to change its position; release to place it, or press Esc to cancel. Modifiers run from top to bottom, so changing the order can change the result.

The base modifier that generates the hair stays at the start of Blender’s stack and is not listed among these styling modifiers.

The monitor icon switches an effect on or off in the viewport. The camera icon does the same for renders. Use X to remove a modifier.

For detailed settings, see Blender’s hair node documentation.

The supplied starting stack contains Duplicate Hair Curves, Clump Hair Curves, Frizz Hair Curves, Trim Hair Curves and Set Hair Curve Profile. Your personal defaults can change that starting list.

Each modifier works on the result of the modifiers above it. Check the hair after changing their order.

Fast Preview

When a dense hairstyle becomes slower to groom, enable Guide Options → Fast Preview, on the separate row below Hair / Poly. It uses fewer, thicker strands while you edit, giving an approximation of the hairstyle’s volume.

Preview Settings opens beneath the toggle:

Control	Starting value	What it changes
Hair Amount (%)	25%	Reduces the viewport amount in Duplicate Hair Curves. At 25%, that modifier uses a quarter of its normal viewport amount; the final strand count depends on the rest of the setup.
Thickness Multiplier	2	Multiplies the viewport strand radius in Set Hair Curve Profile. A value of 2 makes the remaining strands twice as thick.

Fast Preview affects all local Hair Wrangler systems in the scene, not just the active section. Your normal modifier settings stay unchanged and can still be edited. Turn Fast Preview off to see the full result.

Use the arrow to collapse Preview Settings. Turning Fast Preview off hides the settings; turning it on again reopens them.

Fast Preview is an approximation, so turn it off to judge the final shape and shine. Renders and Hair Wrangler’s groom export ignore its reduced density and increased thickness. The groom export still uses your normal viewport density and enabled modifiers. Turn Fast Preview off before using other exporters unless you know they handle it correctly.

9. Personal defaults

You can set a preferred starting point in Edit → Preferences → Add-ons → Hair Wrangler. These settings are optional; they are most useful once you know which guide and modifier settings you repeat often.

Sizing, new guides and filters

Choose the preferred Scale mode and Guide Length (m). Unlike the scene’s unit-aware Add Hair field, the Preferences length is explicitly in metres: 0.4 means 40 cm.

Under New Curve Guides, choose the starting Resolution, Profile and Filler. Under Initial Guide Filters, choose which of Resolution, Profile, Filler and Colour should initially be visible. These filters change table visibility, not the effects themselves.

Sizing and filter choices already saved in a project take priority over these defaults. Changing preferences does not change existing guides or hairstyles.

Starting Modifiers

Starting Modifiers sets which modifiers new hairstyles and sections begin with, and their order.

1. Use Add Modifier beside the heading to add an entry.
2. Click its arrow to edit the available starting values.
3. Drag its grip to change the order, or use X to remove it.
4. Create a new hairstyle or section to use the revised starting setup.

The menu offers 21 modifiers. You can add the same modifier more than once with different settings, or leave the list empty. Hair Wrangler still includes the base modifier needed to generate hair.

You can save the available numeric values, switches, vector and colour settings, and menu choices. References to specific objects, collections or materials are not saved as defaults. Choose those in each project.

Each entry keeps its values when reordered. Expanded controls temporarily collapse while dragging and return afterwards. With the pointer over Preferences, Ctrl+Z and Ctrl+Shift+Z undo and redo starting-stack additions, removals, reorders and value changes. This undo history resets when you restart Blender.

Save your preferences if automatic saving is off. New sections use these defaults; Duplicate Section keeps the original section’s settings. You can save one starting setup, rather than several named presets.

10. Use existing curves and meshes

Guide Tools

When to use them: bring modelling work you have already made into a section, or correct a guide’s direction.

Open Guide Options → Guide Tools to access these tools. You can skip them if you are building from the starter guides.

Curve to Guide

1. Activate the section you want to add curves to. Check the path in Hair Options.
2. In Object Mode, select the existing curve objects.
3. Click Curve to Guide.

Hair Wrangler prepares the curves for hair generation and moves them into the current section’s Guides collection. Their names are preserved.

Existing guides are skipped and stay in their current sections. After conversion, a message shows how many curves were converted or skipped.

The button is unavailable when no suitable curve is selected. If you want to keep the original curves, duplicate them before converting the copies.

Switch Direction

In Object Mode, select the curves and click Switch Direction to swap their root and tip direction. This is useful when imported curves clump or taper towards the wrong end.

The tool reverses the direction along the curve; it does not mirror the curve’s shape.

Mesh to Guide

A mesh needs creased root edges so Hair Wrangler knows where the hairs start. Use mesh strips with edges running from the roots towards the tips.

1. Activate the destination section.
2. Select your mesh and enter Edit Mode.
3. Select the edges at the roots of the hair.
4. Click Crease Edges in Guide Tools.
5. Return to Object Mode and click Mesh to Guide.

The mesh moves into the current section’s Guides collection and becomes a source for hair generation.

If a selected mesh has no creased edges, Hair Wrangler reports it and stops the conversion. With multiple meshes selected, prepare all of them before trying again.

Use mesh strips with a clear root edge and connected edges leading towards the tips. Crease only the root edges. Closed or irregular meshes may not produce useful hair; try a small strip first to check the direction.

When converting an existing bevelled curve, compare its width and profile afterwards. The addon prepares its guide setup and can reuse a curve profile, but a complicated pre-existing setup still needs a visual check.

11. Export a static groom for Unreal Engine

Hair Wrangler exports the finished strands as a static Alembic groom (.abc). The export uses the current frame and viewport modifier result, while bypassing Fast Preview’s density and thickness multipliers.

Export from Blender

1. Return to Object Mode and activate the hairstyle you want to export.
2. Put the guides you want as strands into Hair mode. Set the viewport density and enable the modifiers you want included. Render-only differences are not exported.
3. Open Export → Export Unreal Groom (.abc).
4. Leave Entire Hairstyle selected to include the hairstyle’s visible systems in the current view layer. Choose Active System for only the active hair output.
5. Start with 32 Points per Strand. Increase this for tight curls or detailed curves that need more points to hold their shape.
6. Save the file.

The exporter samples each strand without changing the source guide. Points per Strand ranges from 2 to 255.

The export also creates a companion .unreal.json file with strand counts, recommended import settings and suggested hair widths.

The export stores strand positions in centimetres and accounts for Blender’s scene units. Keep the hair aligned with the character in the scene.

Scale must be equal on all axes. The exporter rejects unequal scale or shear because it cannot preserve strand width reliably. Use Resize Hairstyle for overall size changes.

Import into Unreal

1. Enable Unreal’s Groom and Alembic Groom Importer plugins, then restart Unreal. See Epic’s groom import guide for the editor’s import workflow.
2. Import the Alembic as a Groom, using Rotation (90, 0, 0) and Scale (1, -1, 1) in the conversion settings.
3. Check the groom’s orientation and alignment with your character. The exported file is already in centimetres; do not scale it by 100 again.
4. Assign an Unreal material using the Hair shading model.
5. Set the Groom component’s Hair Width override using the suggested width in the companion JSON. The JSON’s suggested_hair_width_cm, suggested_root_scale and suggested_tip_scale provide starting values. They are based on median root and tip diameters; adjust by eye for varied profiles. A zero suggested width needs a manual value.

Unreal may ignore the strand widths stored in the Alembic, so check the width override even when the shape imports correctly.

What the export includes

It includes the evaluated strand shapes for the current frame. It does not include Blender materials, the character mesh, rigs, animation, simulation caches or a Groom Binding asset. Hair cards are not generated by this exporter.

Treat a combined hairstyle export as one Groom group. Export sections separately if you need separate Groom assets. Binding and animation require a separate setup in Unreal.

The export does not include per-guide colours, custom Groom group IDs, root UVs or simulation-guide attributes. Recreate the desired material appearance in Unreal. Dense exports can use substantial memory and disk space.

12. Troubleshooting

The guide table is missing

Select one or more hair guides. The table lists selected guides; it does not list every guide in the hairstyle.

A guide setting is missing

Check the four column buttons above the table: Resolution, Profile, Filler and Colour. Turn the relevant button on to show that setting.

A button is greyed out

Check your mode and selection. Creation and curve conversion tools need Object Mode. Curve to Guide needs a curve selected; Crease Edges needs a mesh in Edit Mode.

Hair flows or tapers towards the wrong end

Select the affected curves and use Guide Tools → Switch Direction.

Mesh conversion reports missing creases

Enter Edit Mode, select the root edges and use Crease Edges. Return to Object Mode and try Mesh to Guide again.

Edit Material seems to do nothing

Open a Shader Editor first, then click Edit Material again. If you are in Edit Mode, enable the pin. For a material without a node shader, enable Use Nodes.

My custom profile does not change

Confirm that the guide uses Custom and references the curve you are editing. Change that profile’s control points in Edit Mode. If the hair still does not update, save a copy of the file and report the Blender version and steps that reproduce it.

The viewport is slow

Try Fast Preview for fewer, thicker working strands, or Poly mode while shaping. You can also lower Additional Subdivisions or disable expensive modifiers in the viewport. Before exporting, restore the density and viewport modifiers you want included.

The addon does not load after an update

Save your work, close Blender completely and reopen it. If the problem remains, record the exact error, Blender version and addon version.

My guide colour has no effect

Show the Colour column and enable the row’s override checkbox; choosing or viewing a swatch alone is not enough. Use Material Preview or a rendered view to judge the shader. Confirm that the material supports guide colours, and use Set Up Guide Colours if offered for a supported older shader.

Material Settings is missing or a field is greyed out

The panel requires a recognised Hair Wrangler material. An input connected to another shader node cannot be edited directly here. Linked or otherwise read-only material data can also prevent editing. Check the material in the Shader Editor.

Fast Preview does not change part of my hair

It affects Duplicate Hair Curves and Set Hair Curve Profile, so a different stack may show little change. Linked and library-overridden systems are skipped. Thickness is intended for the usual Set Hair Curve Profile workflow with Replace Radius. If you share the same objects between scenes, compare with Fast Preview off; differing preview settings across such scenes have not been verified.

Export reports a scale problem or the groom looks wrong

Check for nonuniform scale or shear on the output or its parents. Confirm scene units and character alignment. In Unreal, use the orientation settings supplied with the export and avoid a second centimetre conversion. If alignment is correct but strands look too thick or thin, check the Hair Width override against the companion JSON.

13. Frequently asked questions

Do I need a separate hairstyle for every part of the hair?

No. Use sections within one hairstyle when you need different settings for parts such as a fringe or ponytail. Create another hairstyle when you want an independent setup.

Does Starter Guide Length fix the final hair length?

No. It sets the size of the initial setup. You can reshape and extend guides afterwards.

Where have the built-in profile objects gone?

They are managed internally in version 2. Choose a built-in shape from the guide’s Profile menu. You only need a visible profile object when using a custom shape.

Can I keep my original curves when converting them?

Yes. Duplicate them first, then use Curve to Guide on the copies. Conversion moves the selected ordinary curves into the active section’s Guides collection.

Why does changing a material affect another section?

Those sections may share the same material. Assign a separate material if you want their shaders to differ.

Is a groom export also a hair-card export?

No. The exporter writes strands for Unreal’s Groom workflow. It does not generate hair cards or texture atlases.

Does Fast Preview change my saved modifier values?

No. It applies viewport multipliers while the ordinary modifier values remain editable. Turn it off to inspect the normal result; render evaluation and Hair Wrangler groom export bypass those multipliers.

Can I paint hair colours directly?

The current colour workflow uses a shared material and optional per-guide colours. Direct hair painting is not implemented.

Does Hair Wrangler create a rig or animated groom?

No. The current exporter creates static strands. Rigging, simulation and character binding require a separate workflow.

14. Moving from version 1

Previously	In version 2
Segment	Section
Curve Options	Guide Options
Duplicate System	Duplicate Section, with its own copied guides
Move Curves to Hair Collection	Curve to Guide
Copy Curves to Hair Collection	Duplicate curves in Blender, then use Curve to Guide
Mesh Options panel	Tools inside Guide Options → Guide Tools
Checkbox filters	Blue/grey column buttons above the guide table
Rename buttons	Rename items in the Outliner
Visible built-in profile objects and size helper	Managed internally

Keep a backup of an older project before opening and saving it with a new addon version.

You can keep working with existing materials. Try the new material controls and guide colours on a copy of your project first.

For the historical v1 release notes, see the unchanged original v1.2 documentation. Its version support and activation wording describe the older product, not the v2 release.

15. Support

When reporting a problem, include your Blender version, Hair Wrangler version, the exact error if there is one, and the steps needed to reproduce it. A screenshot or short recording can help show a selection or display issue. Save a copy of your project before attempting changes to diagnose it.