I know there’s a couple of different types of hair that you can use in Character Creator 5. I know there’s smart hair, and then there’s, as I understand it, the regular Character Creator hair. I don’t know if there’s another kind.
When you want to take your character into Unreal Engine 5 later on for rendering, what is going to be the best type of hair to use that is going to give you physics and look realistic? Should I be using one of the Character Creator hairs, or should I look at using Metahuman hair? What plays the nicest with Unreal Engine? What do you all think is the best hair workflow overall when going to Unreal Engine?
If your final destination is UE5 and you care about realism plus physics, groom-based hair is generally the best-looking option, especially for cinematics or close-up renders. The downside is performance and workflow complexity. Metahuman hair grooms integrate very nicely with UE5 because they’re built around Unreal’s groom system, physics, LODs, and lighting pipeline from the start.
Character Creator hair is easier and faster to work with, especially the standard card-based hair. It exports cleanly and is more game-friendly, but under harsh lighting or close shots it usually won’t look as natural as a proper groom. Smart Hair is kind of a middle ground with better styling flexibility, but it still depends on the export setup.
Personally, for high-end renders in Sequencer, I’d lean toward groom hair or Metahuman-compatible workflows. For gameplay or multiple characters onscreen, card hair from CC5 is usually the more practical choice.
One thing to watch carefully is physics stability. UE5 groom physics can look amazing, but tuning collision and simulation takes time. Card hair tends to behave more predictably and is less resource-heavy. A lot depends on whether your project is cinematic-first or real-time gameplay-first.