Real-time 3D hair art for games
Hair, beards, brows and fur built for real-time performance. Grooms that move cleanly, render efficiently and hold up to the closest cinematic camera your engine can throw at them.
- NDA before any files are shared
- Engine-tested before delivery
- Two revision rounds per milestone
A 3D hair team built around real-time constraints
Hair is one of the hardest things to get right in real time. It has to read as soft and natural up close, keep its silhouette at gameplay distance and stay inside a strict performance budget.
Hexar Studios has a dedicated real-time hair team. We build card-based, strand-based and hybrid grooms, set up the hair shader in your engine and test everything on your character rig before delivery.
Real-time hair portfolio
Realistic and stylized grooms rendered in real time.
What our 3D hair artists deliver
Hair that matches your engine, your art direction and your performance ceiling.
Hair cards for real-time characters
Textured card grooms with clean topology, hand-placed clumps and materials that read in close-ups and hold their silhouette in gameplay.
Strand-based grooms
Full XGen and Blender strand grooms for hero characters, delivered as Alembic caches or converted to cards for engines without strand rendering.
Beards, brows and facial hair
Complete facial groom sets: beards, mustaches, brows, lashes and stubble sharing texture atlases and shader setups.
Creature fur and feathers
Fur for quadrupeds, feathered wings and stylized mounts, with anatomy-first flow and clump density tuned to the silhouette.
Hairstyle rosters for customization
Modular hairstyle sets with consistent scalp attachment and a shared texture library to keep memory footprint low.
Stylized and cap hair
Sculpted stylized hair caps with painterly textures and topology that behaves with the head rig underneath.
Need real-time hair that holds up in close-ups?
Send the brief today. You get a written scope, timeline and fixed quote within one business day, under NDA.
Our 3D hair pipeline
Shape is locked in a fast blockout before strand placement hours are committed.
Reference and brief lock
Length, texture, styling, gameplay context and engine target are agreed, with reference boards and color direction approved.
Silhouette blockout
A low-resolution silhouette, two options by default, so you lock the shape quickly and cheaply.
Base groom
Strands placed for flow, root direction and clump structure, reviewed with turnaround renders before texturing.
Card conversion and baking
For real-time targets the groom becomes hair cards, with textures baked from the source groom and atlases packed for efficiency.
Shader and material setup
Root-to-tip color, anisotropic highlights, tinted shadows and translucency, delivered as a working material graph.
In-engine testing and delivery
Tested on your character rig with head turns, physics where supported and your gameplay lighting, then delivered.
Deliverables and technical specs
Every asset ships with a clear technical spec. Nothing left ambiguous after handoff.
File formats
FBX with baked geometry, plus Alembic strand caches on request.
Card counts
From lightweight mobile grooms up to hero character density.
Texture sets
Albedo, Alpha, Root, ID, Depth and optional Ambient Occlusion.
Texture resolution
512 px up to 4K, packed atlases per your engine spec.
Groom types
Hair cards, strand-based, hybrid or stylized cap.
Rig readiness
Attached to your head rig, weight painted and physics-ready when needed.
Shader setup
Hair shader graph delivered in Unreal Engine or Unity.
Engine testing
Verified in your target engine before delivery.
Revisions
Two rounds per milestone, transparent scope beyond that.
Maya XGen
Blender hair
ZBrush
Substance 3D Painter
Unreal Engine 5 Groom
Unity HDRP hair
Related character projects
Skull and Bones
Character models, heads and ship assets for Ubisoft
Back 4 Blood
NPC heads, civilians and infected for Turtle Rock Studios
Predator: Hunting Grounds
30+ playable characters and weapon sets for IllFonic
Real-time 3D hair questions, answered
Still weighing it up? A 20-minute call with a lead artist usually answers the rest, and we can review your references together.
Do you work in hair cards, strand-based grooms or both?
Both. Hair cards remain the standard for real-time gameplay because they render cheaply and hold their silhouette across LODs. Strand grooms suit cinematic characters, hero close-ups and engines with real-time strand rendering. Hybrid setups, strands for heroes and cards for NPCs, are fully supported.
Which engines do you deliver hair for?
Unreal Engine (including its native Groom system) and Unity are the most common. Proprietary engines are supported when you provide pipeline documentation. Every groom is tested on the actual character rig before delivery.
Can you match our existing character art style?
Yes. Share your character art bible, existing grooms or screenshots and we match hair density, card treatment, shader response and level of detail.
Do you deliver the hair shader as well as the groom?
Yes, when the project includes shader work. We build the hair material graph in Unreal or Unity, or integrate the groom into your existing hair shader.
How long does one groom take?
A stylized mobile groom takes about one to two weeks, a realistic mid-detail hero groom three to four weeks, and a full AAA hero groom with strands, cards, facial hair and physics six to eight weeks.
Can you do creature fur and feathers?
Yes. We have built fur for quadrupeds, feathered wings and stylized mounts using the same pipeline, adapted to the creature’s anatomy and flow.
What producers say about working with us
Characters arrived optimized for our pipeline, and every milestone landed on time.
Placeholder testimonialArt Director, PC and console studio
The assets dropped into Unreal Engine with almost no fixes on our side.
Placeholder testimonialLead 3D Artist, indie studio
Consistent quality across a large batch, and they understood our technical limits.
Placeholder testimonialOutsourcing Producer, live-service game
Ready to add the hair your characters deserve?
Share your brief and get a written scope, timeline and quote within one business day.