Groom Hair Cards

The first zone of the Groom panel brings your baked OBJ and its PBR textures into the scene and prepares them as a hair-card material, ready for every layer to use.

• OBJ Card FilePick the exported .OBJ. Its name drives texture auto-detection.
• TexturesChoose the Normal format and Browse PBR Textures. Auto-detection recognizes FiberBake's export naming: _COLOR, _Alpha, _Normal_GL/_DX and _Roughness.
• Import & SetupImports the OBJ, builds a flat Principled-BSDF PBR material from the detected textures, and makes the cards available to every layer's Haircard picker.
• Reimport CardsRe-reads the OBJ and texture paths and swaps the cards in place, so a fresh bake refreshes every layer that uses them without rebuilding the groom. Greyed out until a first import exists.

The emitter is the object your hair cards grow from. It must be a mesh with a UV map: the cards attach to its surface through that UV, so the groom follows the shape as you sculpt.

• Import a grooming surfaceThree real-scale surfaces are included: Female and Male full heads, plus a Scalp cap, just the area where hair grows, so you can sculpt without a whole head in the way. Use them when you do not have your own character mesh to groom on. The imported surface is set as the emitter automatically.
• Emitter pickerAlready have a head or scalp mesh? Pick it here instead and the layers will grow from it.
• Remove Base HeadDeletes the imported base head when you switch to your own mesh. If you have already grown layers on it, a confirmation popup warns you first: removing the head leaves those layers without a surface, so the grooming on it is lost.
• Render Display (Holdout / Shadow Catcher)Two presentation toggles on the emitter. Holdout punches the emitter out to transparent, and Shadow Catcher keeps only its shadows, so your groom reads cleanly over the silhouette without the emitter's shader getting in the way, the way hairstyles are usually shown in portfolios. They appear only while the render engine is Cycles (Shadow Catcher does not render in EEVEE) and switch off on their own when you leave Cycles, so a left-on Holdout never turns the emitter into a hole in EEVEE.

Each layer is a separate group of cards on the emitter that you sculpt on its own. Build the hairstyle by stacking layers, for example a base coat, then fly-aways, then a fringe.

• Add / RemoveCreate a new layer on the emitter, or delete the active one.
• DuplicateCopies the active layer with all its settings, ready to vary.
• JoinMerges several layers into one. Tick the checkbox of each layer you want to combine in the list, keep the layer to preserve as the active (highlighted) row, then Join folds the ticked layers' curves into it. The active layer keeps its own effects and material; the merged layers' effects and card bindings are dropped and those layers are removed. A confirmation popup spells this out first.
• Copy Settings From…Replicates the shape settings of another layer onto the active one, without changing which card it uses, so several layers share a consistent look.
• Copy Effects From…The same idea, but copies only the effect stack (the modifiers) from another layer onto the active one. Each copy is independent. Covered in detail under Effects.
• Sculpt LayerEnters Sculpt mode on the active layer so you can comb, grow and shape its cards with Blender's curve sculpt brushes. The same button reads Back to Object Mode while sculpting.
• Edit LayerA slimmer button sharing the row beside Sculpt Layer (Sculpt takes two-thirds, Edit one). Enters Edit mode on the active layer to position and reshape its hair curves directly by their points, ideal for precise tweaks that a brush can't make as cleanly. It reads Back to Object Mode while editing.
• Mirror X / Y / ZShown only while sculpting. Mirrors your brush strokes across the chosen axes of the layer, so a symmetrical hairstyle grooms both sides at once.
• CollisionShown only while sculpting. Stops the curves from pushing through the emitter surface, with a Dist value for how far off the surface they are kept. Handy for keeping cards from sinking into the head as you comb.

With a layer selected, choose which card it uses and set the card's base shape. These are the essentials; everything else (length, resolution, shrinkwrap…) is added from Effects below.

• HaircardPick which imported card this layer uses from the dropdown. Its material is applied automatically, so the card shows its baked textures right away.
• Pick (eyedropper)Prefer to point at it? Use the eyedropper and click a card directly in the viewport to assign it.
• Card WidthThe overall width of each card across the strand. The control you reach for most, so it sits right at the top, always visible. To taper the width along the strand (wider root, narrower tip), add the Width Profile effect.
• ResolutionHorizontal and vertical loops on the final card geometry. More loops bend more smoothly along the strand and let the cross-section Shape bow cleanly, at a higher polycount. To change the curve's own control-point count instead, use the Resample effect.
• ShapeThe card's cross-section. Plane (default) is a single flat card. Arch, V and Wave bow that single plane into a rounded bundle, each with an Amount for how strong the bow is. Cross (two perpendicular planes, a +), X (two planes at 25°) and H instead build several crossed planes on the same strand, giving the hair volume from every viewing angle. Only the sliders that apply to the chosen shape are shown.
• H · Size / SeparationShown only for the H shape (two parallel planes joined by a crossbar). H - Size sets the width of the two side planes, and H - Separation how far apart they sit: low brings them together (closer to an I), high spreads them out (a wide H).
• Random UV MirrorRandomly flips each card's texture on the horizontal axis to break up visible repetition across the hair. Probability sets how many cards flip (0 mirrors none, 1 mirrors all) and Seed varies which ones.
• TiltHow the cards rotate around the strand. Auto (default) faces each card outward from the surface for you; an Adjust slider then nudges that auto angle by up to ±45° (still surface-aligned, just offset — handy to orient the planes of the Cross / X / H shapes), plus an optional field to skip troublesome zones (see note below). Manual reveals an Angle slider to set one fixed tilt across the whole layer. Edit Mode applies none, so you set it by hand on the curve points (select points and press Ctrl+T).
• NormalsFlip Normals flips which way the card faces point. Use it if the cards look inside-out or shade wrong in your engine.

Below the layer settings, each layer carries its own stack of effects, the same idea as the bake scene's strand modifiers, but applied per layer. Add the ones you want, reorder them, and tune each in place. They reshape the layer's curves before the cards are built, so you can taper the card width along its length, multiply cards, set their resolution, trim their length, pin them to the emitter, and style them with curl, clump, roll, frizz and noise.

• Add (+)Opens the effect menu and appends one to the active layer. The menu is read live from the bundled library, so it always reflects the effects shipped with the addon.
• Remove / MoveDelete the selected effect, or move it up and down. Order matters: a Resample before a Trim behaves differently than the reverse.
• Visibility (checkbox)Toggle an effect on or off without removing it, to compare looks.
• Copy Effects From…Replaces the active layer's whole effect stack with an independent copy of another layer's, so you can spread a consistent style across layers. Each copy is its own, so editing one layer's effects never touches the other.
• ApplyBakes the selected effect into the layer's curve control points and removes it from the stack. An 8-point curve with a Resample set to 16 becomes a real 16-point curve, and a Trim bakes its shortened length into the points. The card generator stays untouched; only the underlying curve changes.

The effects available out of the box:

• Width ProfileA curve that tapers each card's width along its length, on top of Card Width: wider at the root, narrower at the tip, or any silhouette you draw (a bulge in the middle, a pinched end…). Independent per layer, and its Reset button returns the curve to a flat, uniform width. Disable the effect (or leave it off) and every card keeps its plain Card Width. Use just one per layer: if you stack more than one Width Profile, only the last one takes effect.
• Duplicate HairCardsMultiplies each card into several side-by-side copies, so a single curve fills a wider band of hair. Exact and predictable, great for thickening a specific clump.
• Interpolate HairCardsGrows new cards blended between your sculpted guides, scattered across the emitter surface by density. The organic way to fill coverage from just a few guide strands, where Duplicate makes exact copies instead.
• Delete HairCardsRandomly thins the layer, deleting a fraction of the cards to break up density or lighten a region. 0 keeps every card, 1 removes them all.
• ResampleSets the curve's control-point count, the resolution that every other effect and the card geometry build from.
• TrimShortens the strand, with randomness for varied lengths across the cards.
• ShrinkwrapPulls the cards onto the emitter surface so they hug the head instead of floating.
• Root SinkBuries the roots into the emitter so the cards grow out of the scalp rather than sitting on top of it.
• CurlCoils the cards into curls, with controls for radius, frequency and how strongly nearby cards group into a shared curl, so you can go from loose waves to tight ringlets.
• ClumpGathers cards into clumps, pulling neighbouring cards toward shared guides for a grouped, styled look rather than an even spread.
• RollRolls the cards up from the tips for curled-under ends, with radius, length and taper controls.
• FrizzAdds fine random offset along each card for a frizzy, lived-in look that breaks up a too-perfect groom.
• NoiseDisplaces the cards with a noise texture for organic waviness and variation across the layer.

One-click presentation lighting, so you can show the groom without setting up lights, the way hairstyles are usually presented in portfolios. It is non-destructive: turning it on stashes your scene's current world and restores it when you turn it off. Designed for Cycles, the engine the final result is judged on.

• ActivateDrops the bundled AXIS studio HDRI into the world. Press again to deactivate and get your own world back.
• RotationSpin the HDRI around the vertical axis to place highlights and reflections. You can also Shift+Alt + drag the right mouse button in the viewport to rotate it interactively. That combination is the common one for environment rotation, so another add-on may already claim it: if so, FiberBake detects it and names the add-on in this panel instead of showing the shortcut, and you can either use the Rotation slider or rebind the shortcut in Preferences → Keymap → 3D View (search for fiberbake.hdri_rotate_modal).
• Intensity / SaturationBrightness and colour saturation of the HDRI, handy to tame a map that ships over-bright or over-saturated.
• BackgroundHow the HDRI appears in the render: Visible as the backdrop, Lit Only hidden from the camera (black background) but still lighting the scene (Cycles), or Transparent for an alpha background to composite over, with the HDRI still lighting.
• Load HDRI / ResetPick your own HDRI image from disk, or reset back to the bundled AXIS one.

When the groom is ready, turn the layers into a single, game-ready mesh and export it.

• Convert to MeshBakes every layer of the emitter into one combined hair mesh, with the card materials and UVs applied. It lands in its own FiberBake Hair (Mesh) collection. This is non-destructive: your sculptable layers stay intact, so you can keep editing and convert again whenever you like.
• Export FBXWrites the finalized hair mesh to an .FBX file, ready for your engine. Enabled once you have converted to mesh. An optional Copy Textures setting drops the material's images next to the FBX so the import finds them.