Hair Wrangler is a Blender addon designed to make working with realistic style hair easier and more intuitive. It focuses on giving artists the ability to use regular curves (and geometry) to style hair, which can feel much more natural and precise compared to Blender’s default grooming tools. It allows the 3D modeller use their existing skillset, and avoids getting stuck figuring out complex geometry nodes and grooming tools.
The addon is aimed at simplifying workflows while still offering the flexibility to create everything from realistic hairstyles to abstract designs. It’s especially useful for those who want to spend less time setting up complex systems and more time focusing on the creative aspects of their work.
Hair Wrangler has a growing number of features designed to simplify and enhance the hair creation process in Blender:
Getting started is effortless. Import a fully configured hair system with a single click, complete with everything you need to begin styling. This saves time and allows you to dive straight into the creative process.
At the heart of Hair Wrangler is its ability to let you control hair with regular Blender curves. This means you can shape and style hair strands in a way that feels natural and intuitive, using tools you’re already familiar with. No need to wrestle with complex grooming tools—just create or modify curves, and watch your hair system follow suit.
Hair Wrangler allows you to easily switch between strand-based hair and geometry-based visualizations with a single click. This feature is particularly helpful when you’re trying to refine the overall shape of the hair or need a clearer view of how it flows in 3D space.
If you’ve already created a hairstyle using poly curves, Hair Wrangler makes it easy to integrate them into your workflow. Add them to the system, and they’re automatically converted to strand hair, preserving your effort while giving you the benefits of Hair Wrangler’s features.
Managing hair modifiers can be a tedious process in Blender. Hair Wrangler simplifies this by providing a dedicated UI to add, rearrange, and tweak modifiers without having to dig through menus. This keeps your workflow clean and focused, so you can make adjustments quickly.
Adjusting how your hair system appears in the viewport is straightforward with Hair Wrangler. Whether you’re tweaking density, resolution, or other display settings, you can make adjustments directly in the addon without switching render engines or navigating complex menus.
Hair Wrangler has been tested and is fully compatible with Blender 4.1 and later versions. Using an older version of Blender may result in unexpected behaviour or missing features.
.zip file to your computer. There’s no need to extract the file..zip file, which includes additional features. Again, do not extract the file..zip file (free or pro) and select it.To ensure Hair Wrangler remains enabled (and your pro activation is saved) in future Blender sessions, click the Save Preferences button at the bottom of the Preferences window.
Switch to the 3D Viewport and look for the "Hair Wrangler" panel in the N-panel (press N to toggle it). You should see your free features, or, if using the pro version, additional options unlocked after activation.
If you encounter issues during installation:
.zip file wasn’t extracted before installation.Creating hair with Hair Wrangler is built around three core concepts:
The first three buttons in the UI correspond to these concepts:
What It Does:
Adds a new hairstyle to the scene, starting with one default segment. A set of starter shapes is also added to serve as profile shapes for your hair strands.
When to Use It:
Note: In most cases, you should only need one hairstyle per blend file—even if your scene includes multiple characters. The recommended workflow is to create each character in separate files and then link them into a common file. Unless you are building a character with multiple hairstyles you should only need to use this once.
Outliner showing collections and objects that are added when the user clicks New Hairstyle
3D Viewport showing the initial hair clump and profile shapes after the user clicks New Hairstyle
What It Does:
Adds a new segment to the active hairstyle. Each segment consists of:
When to Use It:
Use this button to create a new, distinct section of the hairstyle (e.g., a ponytail, bun, pigtails, bangs, or side-specific sections). Typically, a complete hairstyle will have 2–4 segments.
How It Works:
Outliner showing a hairstyle with 1 segment. A segment consists of a collection of curves and a geometry node hair system
Outliner showing 1 hairstyle consisting of 3 segments
Outliner showing 3 segments. The top segment contains 2 geometry node hair systems.
This panel centralizes key controls for managing your hairstyle, ensuring you can quickly adjust names and settings as your project evolves.
Displays the currently active hairstyle. Click the pencil icon to rename it. You can also rename it in the outliner, but due to Blender’s update behavior, you may need to click elsewhere in the scene to see the change.