I am currently weight painting a rig to my character but cannot parent the hair/beard to the head. I have tried selecting the vertex group and shift selecting the rig in object mode and parenting but no luck. What is the correct method of having the hair and beard of my character follow the head correctly when posed?
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Hi, you could try to parent with empty, and then paint the head weights.
If your head is rigged/weighted correctly you can try this:
<Note: If something isn’t working correctly, I unparent, remove all the weights and vertex groups before trying this.>
- Select the hair (or beard) and add the Data Transfer modifier
1A. Select “Vertex Data” and select the character model as the source.
1B. Click “Generate Data Layers”, then “Apply” - With the hair still selected, shift-select the armature, ctrl+p, select “Armature Deform” (and not any options below that).
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Hi thanks for the help. How do I select the hair exactly? When I select the mesh in object mode and switch to particle edit mode and press A, I can select the beard but not the hair. Then the head mesh is not an option to select as source for data transfer modifier. Should I be able to select in viewport or do I have to select in the dropdown list? Sorry if this is really basic stuff it is my first character rig.
Update: working now. I had to move the armature modifier to the top of the stack.
Dude, I created an account just to log in and say thank you! I fought with this for hours until your directions worked. Cheers!
Glad I was able to help.
Sorry to deploy the “Rage” virus here, but I downloaded an OBJ character and applied a rigify rig to it. The character consists of one single mesh, yet the hair won’t move with the head, at least not all of it.
Now I went and selected linked all hair mesh parts - should I separate it from the main mesh to perform @Safetyman 's parenting trick?
I also tried weight painting (had auto weighting selected when parenting the mesh to the rig) to see if those parts of the hair had been affected by the last spine bone, but no matter what, it’s all just blue. I can ctrl-select bones all day long, doesn’t show anything else but: blue.
I did this for the first time after 15 years and I’m… lost 
OK, for some reason weight painting now produces some weights once the respective bones are ctrl-clicked on. Doesn’t make any sense to me though, see screenshot
Weight painting isn’t my forte so anything I could come up with should be taken with a grain of salt. I suggest making a backup copy in case something bad happens.
If the hair doesn’t share vertices with the head:
- Select the model, tab into edit mode, and select all the hair verts only (there are multiple ways to do this so I won’t go into that here).
- Remove the hair from the rest of the model… p key then choose “selection”. Tab out of edit mode, then select the hair object.
- In the Object Data Properties panel, delete all the vertex groups. This is to avoid any conflicts but may not be necessary. It’s just easier to add weight painting later on if you need to.
- With the armature selected tab into edit mode, click on the head bone, get out of edit mode, select your hair object, then shift select the armature, press CTRL + P, and on the menu that shows up, click “Bone”.
Now you have a hair object that is parented to the head bone of the rig, so it will all move as one with the head (bone). If you wanted hair physics or something… that’s a whole other ball of wax, but is should be easier to implement now that the hair is separate.
Someone else may have a better solution, but this is what I would do.
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OK, that’s what I was thinking anyway. I read somewhere else to scale up mesh & armature, since auto weight paint has trouble identifying vertices that are very close together, but that didn’t help either.
I’ll wait a bit - already made a vertex group for the hair so I’ll try that anyway!
Thanks 
Thanks. Just signed up here to thank you for this information 