Blender hair particles getting update?

Lukas tonne working on grooming and hair guides

I really hope hair particle physics gets updated, they do work right now, but only for extremely simple objects that only use one particle system. Once you try using particle physics on a character with around 6 particle systems it breaks and gets confused, this is no good if you’re trying to setup realistic hair.

From my recent tests and playing around with the hair system, where I think it breaks down most is in animation, one just has no real control or options to adjust or interact with any dynamic simulation.

Having said that, I currently get the feeling that it’s not going change, till maybe after official 2.8 release.

I’m pretty sure I’ve heard it is getting a total re-write from the ground up in 2.8. I think this must have been on one of the podcasts.

I don’t know if this is coming with the first release but they are making an open movie alongside 2.8 which looks like it uses hair so I would have though that would be a part of the initial 2. 8 release.

I’ve had my own trials with the hair system in the past and how to use it in an animation piepeline. I wrote a lot of it up here a while back.
I’ll post the link in case it’s still any help or even relevant.

All the best.

Thanks for the link Toka, I will have a good read over it later and see how I can apply it to my human character.

A total re-write would be great and I just had another look at the 2017 conference report for 2.8 and particles, hair, physics caches was listed as “Additional goals, need to be fleshed out”, so I guess that puts it into the maybe?

Particles and hair do get listed again as being postponed for ‘Object nodes’, so I assume that while the system maybe updated, at first it will still be all panels, etc and not like the node tree setup one uses for Cycles shaders.