Summary

Created: Sep 22 2024 by Silverlags Last documented update: Sep 22 2024 by Silverlags

This guide will walk through the basic steps of how to change a hair mod to correspond to a different slot, showing you how to change a hair mod from slot 01 to a different slot for female V.

Requirements:

• Hair mod to replace

• Wolvenkit to analyze mods, replace names, and pack mod

Step 0: Get the modded files

1. Switch the Asset Browser to the Mod Browser by flipping the switch (2) on the image below

2. Locate your hair mod

1. Add all files inside the mod to your project. These files will be called "your hair" in the rest of this guide.

Which files does your hair have?

Does your hair have any files with the extension .app under the following path?

base\characters\head\player_base_heads\appearances\hairs

• Yes (left): Proceed to #files-with-an-.app-file

• No (right): Proceed to #files-without-an-.app-file

• Everything is in the root, and you have no idea which is which:#files-a-bunch-of-borked-files-in-your-projects-root

Files: A bunch of borked files in your project's root

Happens when a mod has been packed with incompatible Wolvenkit versions.

1. Delete all files - we'll start over

2. Starting with Wolvenkit 8.15, you can find a scan button in the Asset Browser. If you do not have it, install a Nightly.

3. Click the scna button and try adding these files again.

4. If the file names do not resolve themselves, you will have to mix and match. Read on with Case 2.

Files: Without an .app file

The modder has taken and overwritten original game assets, and you'll have to do the same.

In this section, we'll do the following things:

• Find a compatible hair in the files

• Move your hair to overwrite that one instead

Let's get started:

1. Open Cheat Sheet: Hair -> #name-of-meshes-by-index

2. Find the mesh file for the slot that you want to replace. We now need to check if it is compatible.

Can I use this hair?

1. Switch the Mod browser back to the Project Browser

2. Use the Wolvenkit search with its full name, for example, hair mesh 34: hh_151_wa__judy_variation02_common.mesh

3. Select Browse to Asset Folder from the context menu:

1. You will see the hair meshes from the cheat sheet, among with a bunch of other files:

1. This hair has .rig and .animgraph files, which means that it has physics. Does your hair have those files included?

   • Yes: You can use this hair. Continue to #5

   • No: You can't use this hair. Go back to the previous section and pick a different hair slot from the list.

1. If your hair has more submeshes than the hair you are replacing, you can't use it either (not without #files-with-an-.app-file). Go back to 1 and pick a hair with more submeshes, such as one of the braids or the sumo hair.

2. OK, so you can use the hair. Add it to your project.

   • If it has a _cyberware_01.mesh and your mesh does not, you can simply create a copy (hold ctrl while dragging)

Re-slotting the hair

You will reassign the hair to a different slot by overwriting different game files. We do this as follows:

1. Right-click on a mesh and click on rename (can be done using shortcut key F2) and type the desired slot's mesh name along with its cyberware version

1. Repeat this with all files for your hair.

2. Your project browser will now look like this:

1. Drag each of the files to the new mesh's folder (hh_089_ma_thompson)

2. You will see a dialogue asking you to overwrite. Select "Yes":

1. Delete the now empty folder hh_033_wa_player. We don't need it anymore.

Files: With an .app file

The modder has overwritten the hair's control files. It should look like this (subfolder names can vary):

This is good news, because it's the easy case. You only need to do two things:

• Pick a new hair slot

• Move your .app files to overwrite the ones from that hair.

Let's get started.

1. Open Cheat Sheet: Hair -> #hair-control-files-by-index

2. Pick any hair by slot - we will use slot 04 and search for all its .app files: hh_003_pwa__hairs_89 > .app

3. Add all these files to your project:

Now, we need to overwrite all these files with the ones from our other mod.

1. Select the first .app and press f2, or select "rename" from the context menu

2. Change its number from 059 to 89

3. You will get a file overwrite confirmation. Select "yes"!

Wait, we're missing a file!

1. Your mod didn't have hh_003_pwa__hairs_89_cyberware_01.app.

2. Optional: Take a moment to curse these incompetent guide writers, or yell very loud.

3. Select hh_003_pwa__hairs_89.app in the mod browser

4. Hold the ctrl key down and drag it on itself

5. You will get a file overwrite confirmation. Select "no" to create a copy.

6. Overwrite cyberware_01.app with your copy.

Pack 'n' go

You can also click on the down arrow next to install and set to "Install and Launch" to do these two steps for you!

That's it! You can now test your new hair mod.

Troubleshooting

You are missing a file

An .app file

Go up to #files-with-an-.app-file -> #you-are-missing-a-file

A .mesh file

If your mod does not have any .app files, you have the following options:

• Overwrite it with a duplicate: just duplicate one of the existing files, and add it a second time. This may cause clipping.

• You can overwrite it with a shadow mesh:

  • Search for base\characters\common\hair\shadow_meshes\hh_ > wa (> ma for a masc V)

  • Find something that looks vaguely similar

  • overwrite

• You can find a different hair to overwrite

A .rig or .anim file

You need to find a different hair to overwrite.

Published: March 15 2024 by D.I.S.C.O Last documented update: March 18 2024 by

This guide will teach you how to

• port a hair mesh from a different game to Cyberpunk

• add physics ("dangle bones") to parts of it

• use the UUH4V framework to avoid conflict with NPCS

Wait, this is not what I want!

• For an overview of existing hair files and -colours, check Cheat Sheet: Hair

• For a more detailed guide on hair physics, check Dangle bones or Moving a Dangle Chain

You can find a video tutorial by eagul on youtube:

Requirements

• Blender >= 4.0

• the Wolvenkit Blender IO Suite (most recent version)

• UUH4V Framework (To avoid conflicts with spawned NPCs)

Introduction

You first need to understand the files you need for hair to work in CP2077. There are three type of files: the Mesh, the Texture and the Physics.

The Mesh

Adding the head

Begin by importing the player’s head. This will allow you to adjust your mesh more accurately and to avoid clipping.

1. Export the mesh from Wolvenkit

2. Import the mesh into Blender

Adjusting the hair

1. Import your hairstyle mesh. This tutorial is using the Festive Hunter’s hairstyle from Nier Reincarnation, since a future version of this tutorial will also cover the addition of ornaments to your hair

1. The modded hair will come with its own armature (bones), modifiers and materials. Delete all those, since you don't need them:

   • Bones: The "armature" object in the Outliner (top right panel)

   • Vertex groups: In the "data" tab (green triangle) under object properties (bottom right panel)

   • Modifiers: In the "modifiers" tab (orange wrench)

1. Reposition and refit the hairstyle to fit V's head.

Rigging the hair

Unlike clothes, most head meshes only have one bone: Head. More complex designs and physics will involve more bones, but we'll stick to the easy version for now.

1. Select your hair

2. Switch to Edit mode (Hotkey: Tab)

3. Select all vertices (Hotkey: A)

4. In the Data tab of the Properties panel (green triangle), create the Head entry (see screenshot below)

5. Click on Assign

If you were to add this mesh in-game, it would stay on your character's head like a helmet.

Submeshes and materials

You can check the #splitting-off-submeshes-mildly-advanced guide, or read up on material assignment in Wolvenkit under Submeshes, Materials and Chunks.

The Physics

Remember when I said “like a helmet”? That also means your hair will not have any physics. Some short hair won’t have physics to wave around to begin with, but if you want your bangs and ponytails to wave when you open the character editor, get ready for some trial and error.

1. First of all, understand which part of your hair you want to have physics first, and separate them into a submesh:

   1. In edit mode, select the part that you want to split off (You can use "Select Linked", Hotkey Ctrl+L, to speed this up)

   2. Once you're content with your selection, separate the selection into a new submesh (Hotkey: P -> S)

2. Repeat the previous step on the submeshes that you don’t want to move. In this case, only the bangs will move:

Finding vanilla hair to replace

Search for a vanilla hairstyle from the game that resembles your physics part the most, and export them with Wolvenkit.

What you want to look for is how much the vanilla hairstyle overlaps with your mod hairstyle. The closer their shape resembles, the better. In this case, I find hairstyle 05 to be the most suitable, so I export that mesh, as well as their rig and animgraph.

If you want your hair to have physics, be sure to include the .animgraph and .rig into the project. They are the physic components for the hair.

I've done this enough time to have some experience regarding which mesh should I use for weight transfer. For Front and Right Bang, use components from hh_081_wa__buns_02, for Left Bangs, use hh_040_wa__pixie_bob , for hair on shoulder, use hh_118_wa__gillean or hh_115_wa__alanah, for ponytails use hh_083_wa__ponytail_01.

-Import the mesh into the game and transfer the weights from vanilla mesh to your mesh. Watch this video if you don’t know how to transfer weights.

-Parent the hair meshes under the vanilla mesh’s armature, as well as add the armature modifier.

While you can put your ornaments and hairstyle together, I recommend keeping them separate. You can import any head item and use its armature instead. This is my personal preference to keep things tidy, to avoid confusion when we handle hair’s material and texture later. It’s best that you keep the hair and ornament in two separate mesh files.

-And we are now done with the Mesh Section, but we can’t export it just yet. We need to make sure that our hair will actually show up as hair in the game, so we shall move on to the next part.

The Texture

If you are porting a hairstyle from another game, it is highly recommended that you just adapt the UV of your hairstyle to fit CP2077’s shared hair texture instead of using the original texture. This will allow your hair to use the game’s hair color system, as well as saving you a lot of hassle when handling the materials.

Excluding beards, caps and private hairs, CP2077 has 5 types of hair textures. Export them from Wkit and add them into Blender so that you can use it as reference for UV editing.

Curly hair strands - base\characters\common\hair\textures\hh_curly01_alpha01_r.xbm

Dreadlocks - base\characters\common\hair\textures\hh_dread01_alpha01_r.xbm

Kinky hair strands - base\characters\common\hair\textures\hh_kinky01_alpha01_r.xbm

Long straight strands - base\characters\common\hair\textures\hh_long01_alpha01_r.xbm

Short straight strands - base\characters\common\hair\textures\hh_short01_alpha01_r.xbm

Most hairstyles I see use long straight strands, but don’t be afraid to use other types of hair and experiment with them.

Keep in mind that no matter what type you choose, you will always need three accompanying texture files for the hair texture to work properly. These files are gradient, id and flow. You can find them by replacing alpha in the file name with any of the terms above.

-Open UV Editing and edit the UV to fit the white parts of the alpha texture. The black parts of the alpha map are where the mesh will be transparent, thus creating the image of strands of hair. Keep in mind that the hair root is pointing upwards, while the hair tip is pointing downwards. The direction is important for gradient handling. Scale and rotate the UV to fit the alpha.

This is how your UV should ideally look like. Everything is where the alpha will work.

You can preview how your hair will look in Blender by creating a material and importing all the textures mentioned above. This part is optional, but it's nice to check for gaps before you export.

-Create a material and assign it on your mesh before opening the Shading tab.

-Connect alpha texture to Alpha slot of Principled BDSF.

-Create a mix node, set to color and multiply. Connect id texture to slot A and gradient texture to slot B, and connect the output of the multiply node to a Gamma node and set the value to 2.4. Connect the output of the Gamma node to Base Color of Principled BDSF.

-Connect flow texture to Rebuild Normal Z to Normal Map to Tangent of Principled BDSF.

-Turn on Viewport Shading.

This is what your mesh should look like. The black and white represents how hair color gradients will show itself on your hairstyle. Black is the root color., white is the tip color.

-Now you can export your mesh.

Wolvenkit

Create a project and copy the framework file from UUH4V Framework. I want to replace FemV hairstyle 33, so I chose file 33 for FemV.

Remember this? Copy and replace one of the sets of three files. For example, you need to rename your imported mesh to fhair33_pt1.mesh. If that’s the case, you need to rename the .animgraph and .rig to fhair33_pt1.animgraph and fhair33_pt1.rig. Move them into the uuh4v_framework folder and replace the original file.. Having the wrong names will cause your mesh to morph weirdly.

-Open your mesh to check the materials. You want the materials to actually be what you want. Unless you have multiple submeshes, only the first entry in the material matters.

I want to use cards, not cards_top. I can manually change every instance of cards_top in the appearance, or find another mesh that uses cards in the first entry and copy the materials over instead. Since I joined my meshes into one mesh, only the first material entry matters for every appearance. This is the easy way to do it, because there are 35 appearances for 35 hair colors that you need to check over and edit. Copying the materials from another working hairstyle is the simplest way to do it.

Now you can install the mod and see how it looks in the game!

Oof. The color looks about right, but…

If you’re wondering why the hair is warping weirdly like that, it’s because of the physics. It is important to understand that the method taught in this tutorial is the easiest and fastest method, but also the most unreliable. Advanced modders can weight paint and edit rigs by themselves instead of relying on vanilla hair weights, but I know neither of those so I can’t teach you how. If you can’t get your hair physics to look right, it’s perfectly fine to leave it static instead. A good looking hairstyle is better than a glitchy wavy mess like this.

Static hair mesh, but no weird morphing.

Oh right, we got a hat, don’t we?

The hat’s texture is the same as any other item in the game. You can use MultilayerSetup files or metal_base.remt, it’s all up to you. Check here if you don’t know how to do that.

-Replace another mesh other than what you have for your hairstyle, and install the mod.

Tadaa! A simple hairstyle replacement with a fancy hat.

Summary

Created & Published: Summer 2021 by @Pinkydude

What you’ll need :

• The WolvenKIT console (CP77Tools)

🟨 WON’T WORK With AMM’s naked/shirtless custom appearances

I’ll assume you already know some basic modding (extracting the files with the console or WKit etc)

You need to grab the mesh you’re going to use as a body / chest and swap on the NPC. I made edit to mine, but I used the “t0_000_ma_base__full” body

Open the “buffer 0″ and check the files list, search for the skintone your NPC is using. Mitch is using the “male_01_ca_pale.mi” file

You can see I have it custom pathed already, but you can check the other files to see the path

Go to the “base\characters\common\skin\character_mat_instance\male\body” folder and grab the .mi file corresponding to your NPC’s skin tone

Copy and Paste it in a custom folder created at the base of your mod

Also create another folder where you will put the custom texture you want your NPC to use (edited or not)

Let’s go back to our buffer 0 of our mesh

custom path your skintone, in my case “male_01_ca_pale.mi”, to point to your custom folder. In my case “base\materialinstances\male_01_ca_pale.mi”

Open that .mi file. That file point to another .mi file, that we also need to copy and paste in the custom folder, and then custom path

It calls for another file, that we also have to copy and paste into the custom folder. That .mi file finally calls for the texture files! We custom path those as well

Once you have the .mi files all custom pathed, and the texture custom pathed as well (don’t forget to save the edited files of course) you can custom path the one in the mesh buffer as well and save, then rebuild the mesh using the console (so that the edit in the buffer actually have an impact on the mesh!)

Copy that mesh, and create the folders that goes to your NPC’s main outfit, and swap one of the slot. I used Mitch’s jacket to load the body mesh

That specific body mesh will now read and load the .mi files and .xbm files from your custom folders in the mod and your NPC should now have a different texture than your V!

Summary

Created: Sep 16 2024 by Last documented update: Sep 16 2024 by

This guide will show you how to create a custom hair colour to to replace an existing .hp file.

Creating a custom .hp file

You can find a step-by-step walkthrough under ->

Adding it to the character creator

This is currently under development! (Exciting, isn't it?)