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  • Published 22 Jan 2026

Curve hair rigging automation

I'd love to see a function for easier rigging and animation of curve and mesh hair. Curves are a very common and good way of making hair for stylised characters, but they can't be easily posed as-is. A function/modifier to automatically add bones to each curve point and then hook the bones to the points would be extremely useful.

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Development Status: Open

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spidu
22 Jan 2026

1 Comment

pxy-gnomes

That would be one nice possibility of development for Blender I believe. I see at least two opportunities here for further development on that regard:

  1. Anyone who has tried to maintain the Curve Objects as Procedural features in a Rigged Model in order preserve the versatility of such Objects --instead of the destructive method of Converting Curve to Mesh-- and then Rigging such Hair Curve Mesh Objects, would probably find critical issues in making 3D Animation with such inadequate Setup. Blender would highly benefit from a revamped, more robust and efficient method of Rig-Binding various Curve Object Data (not just Curve Points) to Armature Object Bones, than the Hook Modifier.

  2. If anyone here has played in Blender with the potential of the Skin Modifier for Stylized Hair Modelling (and Rigging?), one might have realised it can be actually pretty fun and relatively intuitive, but, unfortunately, it also has got fundamental limitations, which in my understanding, if such Object Modifer were revamped for more advanced Modelling/Sculpting AS WELL AS Rigging & Animation, this stuff could be ground-breaking. What I mean is that, in terms of certain aspect of the Workflow, making Stylized Hair with Curve Objects has a few things in common with making Stylized Hair with Skin Modifier...! The problem is that BOTH of those methods seem to be lacking features or a more robust structure, in order for them to be versatile, non-destructive, and favorable methods for creating Hair Styles for 3D Rigged Models in Blender. By the way, one of the issues of the Skin Modifier, is that the Axes do not really 'understand' Local Space (they are purely World Space based), which leads to very difficult (if not impossible) manipulations in certain cases of Modelling (I'm not sure about Posing); then, it is possible that the Rigged Curves, with Hook Modifier(s), also do not 'understand' Local Space similarly or as an analogy, and this might be why it is also inadequate for 3D Animation (although just Modelling is fine in this case I think). If I'm not wrong, both methods ultimately would require a destructive method (which sucks!) in order to be adequated for 3D Animation.

So, basically, Blender riggers are limited by their Geometry Nodes skillset... Thinking about that, maybe it would be time to consider:

  1. Blender Development and/or some nice fellows, creating an "universal" Geometry Nodes Object Modifier dedicated to solve, at once, that current, critical limitation to Modelling & Rigging, which exists in both Curve Object's approach and Skin Modifier's approach? which immediate application would be to Hair Styles (which could benefit from the incredible designing system of the Curve Objects, the simplicity of the Skin Modifier, the versality and non-destructiveness of the Setup for Rigging & Animation if that is wanted for Performance, but not for Functionality!). What do you guys think?