Hello!
I need to create long, flowing hair that has a reasonable amount of detail.
I have understood that I have to go the hair cards route.
What is the best, fastest way to create hair cards for game characters?
Blender version is 3.3 lts.
Example picture:
How many game characters are you aware of that have hair this long (down, not in an updo or braids)? Can you name any? I canāt. I think if you ponder why that might be, youāll gain some interesting insights about the task youāve set yourself 
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Itās waist long,- is that a big problem?
The hair on the picture is not riggable, and Iād appreciate a proper reply thank you.
Very general question, very general answer: ā¦ search for tutorialsā¦ do not repeat them step by step but try to understand how it is doneā¦ practice for you ownā¦ and adapt for you use caseā¦ because you know your use case bestā¦
Learn hair cardsā¦ adapt them to you needed amount of the lengthā¦ 
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I gave you a proper reply, but if youād prefer a more explicit one, here you go:
Hair this length doesnāt exist in the game world. Itās impossible to rig in a performant way that works in real time with a game engine and doesnāt have massive clipping problems. What you want to do canāt be done.
It doesnāt exist in animation either- have you ever noticed that every single Dreamworks character has short hair or braids? The only people who have ever come close to what youāre describing is Disney/Pixar; and theyāve written custom engines exclusively for animating hair, and they have teams of hundreds of people working on hair for each movie. Even then, itās still entirely dependent on camera trickery, actually animating it correctly is impossible even for them:
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Here you go:
Will it work well with long flowing hair in whatever game engine itās destined for? No idea. Itās a similar problem to a long flowing robe, or a cape. As already noted, these types of character designs are regularly avoided due to the problems in dealing with them realtime.
My own working with hair is relatively new, but Iāve already realized thereās no magic button that covers all situations. Sometimes itās a matter of going frame by frame and doing corrections, which requires time and patience.
When video is the final output, youāve a lot of options in how you hide the problems and have complete control over everything - so even some random thing, like a misbehaving vertex, can always be at least manually adjusted. In a game engine, not so much.
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Youāre basically going to be dealing with some combination of a ton of tentacles or a skirt from the head. So something like these approaches from Pierrick Picaut might workāitās just going to have a lot more cleanup necessary after whatever semi-softbody simulation you get from a wiggle bone-ish add on because itās happening above the arms and shoulders. (So youāll probably need to figure out some more creative constraints for making the hair interact with the shoulders before becoming a āskirtā below, that works for your intended animations.)
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Sure, if you want the hair to look like thick blocky tentacles, these methods will work. Actual hair? Canāt be done in Blender or any existing game engines
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I donāt think itās a question of making āactual hairā, but rather a ābest hair possible with current limitationsā As has always been in CG, real-time or not, no? Same thing still goes for cloth, after all, and a ton of other things.
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Right, my point is that hair this long isnāt possible with the current limitations, even for AAA games or animated movies unless itās in an updo or braids. The only example I can think of that goes against this point is Tangled, which falls into the category of ācustom tech with hundreds of hair artistsā and doesnāt apply to a single person working in a game engine
If Iām wrong, it should be quite easy to show examples of waist length hair animated in game engines in real time, but I canāt personally find any
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Maybe the OP just tell for which purpose this is actaully neededā¦ maybe itās even an XY problemā¦
because:
ā¦and this:
seems to be not for a gameā¦
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Hmm, maybe not āwaist lengthā (not for hair card at least), but things are certainly improved in recent years.
Check out Mia from Resident Evil 7. Notice how her hair goes over her shoulders. Whatever noticeable clipping happens, seem to be mostly restricted to hair itself.
And there is a lot of intense close-ups with this character - swaying, falling, fighting - sheās not at all static.
Video, spoilers for RE7, obviously:
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And since the actual question was how to create the hair cardsāI havenāt tried the add-on yet, but it seems this person already did the work for taking geo nodes hair (groomed to be sparse but the shapes you want) and making it into cards.
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And it avoids the biggest problem of all, they then donāt animate it.
Very stiff, restricted āhairā, no doubt due to the fact they are using basic cloth type simulation and collision with the body to move around the mesh hair strips or longish hair cards.
If the OP wants to rig and āanimateā the hair of that image shown, then really itās easy, you just treat the whole thing as a big, long ponytail, place a number of bones down along it and animate as if itās no different then a limb, etc.
Will it look anything like the beautiful flowing hair in Tangledā¦ hell no, but there is no way you are getting that with Blender, even as a video output, let alone in realtime for a game.
Just look at all the Blender Studio films, they pretty much avoid hair and cloth simulation, etc at all costs, I bet thereās a reason for that.
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