Hair Card Troubleshooting & FAQs

Dark or backwards-shaded cards

The issue: A hair card looks unusually dark or catches specular sheen from the opposite direction. When you orbit the camera, the highlight moves the wrong way.

Why it happens: The hair card is facing the wrong direction. This usually happens if the card was drawn from tip to root instead of root to tip, or if it twisted sharply during placement.

1. Select the card

   Press Q to enter Select mode and click the dark card.

2. Rotate it with the Twist tool

   Press T for Twist. Click and drag in the viewport to rotate the card along its length until its front side faces outward toward the light.

3. Check the card curve

   Press E for Width Bend to ensure the card arches concavely against the head rather than sticking out backward.

Grooming tools grayed out on import

The issue: Immediately after importing a head model (Ctrl+I), grooming tools like Draw Strips (B) and Comb (C) are grayed out and cannot be clicked.

Why it happens: HairStorm is mapping the head surface in the background so cards can snap to the scalp cleanly without clipping inside the skull. The tools unlock automatically as soon as this quick calculation finishes.

Scale is too big or too small

The issue: The head asset looks microscopic or gigantic when imported, or exported hair cards appear at the wrong size in Unreal Engine or Blender.

Why it happens: 3D software uses different measurement units. Unreal Engine uses centimeters; Blender uses meters.

Cards flickering or showing through

The issue: Hair cards placed behind other cards pop through or flicker when orbiting the camera.

Why it happens: Two transparent cards placed at the exact same height compete for visibility.

1. Keep layers slightly separated

   Follow the Layering Strategy: place the scalp cap directly on the skull, main locks slightly above, and wisps on the outer layer.

2. Nudge cards with the Move brush

   Press M for the Move brush and gently pull overlapping hair cards slightly away from each other to establish clear front-to-back depth.

3. In your game engine: Use Masked hair material

   In Unreal Engine or Unity, set your hair material blend mode to Masked with temporal anti-aliasing (TAA/TSR). Masked materials write to the depth buffer and never flicker. See our UE5 Hair Guide.

Dark borders at a distance (Mipmaps)

The issue: When zooming away from hair cards in game viewports, dark halos or faint white borders appear around strand edges.

Why it happens: As game engines downscale textures for distant views (mipmapping), black background pixels from empty texture areas bleed into the hair edges.

Solution:

• In Stage 3, keep at least 0.5 cm margin between hair card slots.
• Leave Edge Dilation enabled. HairStorm automatically expands hair colors into empty space so distant mipmaps never sample dark background pixels.
• Read our full guide: Hair Card Atlas Padding & Mipmapping.

Exported textures missing color edits

The issue: You tweaked brightness, contrast, or color curves in the Texture tab, but when you clicked Export, the output files had the original unedited colors.

Why it happens: HairStorm separates raw game textures from preview color adjustments:

• Main Export button: Exports the raw baked PBR map channels for game engines.
• Save Texture (in Texture Viewer): To export your custom color edits (curves, hue, saturation), open the Texture Viewer dialog and click Save Texture.

Finding project files and autosaves

HairStorm saves your files in your standard Windows user profile:

• Project files: %APPDATA%/HairStorm/Projects/ (files end in .hairstorm)
• Autosave recovery: If your PC suddenly shuts down or loses power, look for .autosave.hairstorm in that folder. Rename it to open and restore your groom.