First test with Hair Grooming in UE 4.24.
Character made with CC3 , animations done with IClone and sent to UE4 via Live-Link.
Hair Guides were created with C4d and exported as Alembic file to UE4.
In UE4 I imported the Hair Alembic File as Groom and all Physics are realtime with Niagara.

Groom is very new and " Experimental" but it works really cool !!!!

CC3 Character :



Unreal realtime :




Video :




Info about Grooming :

https://www.fxguide.com/fxfeatured/ue4-real-time-hair-advances/

best :-)

Very cool, now we need a way to create something similar in Character Creator so we do not need C4D...

 

And   we need a way to render something similar in iClone so we don't need Unreal or Unity.

hmm , you only need a prog that can do "Hair Strands/Guides" ... Daz3D can do and Blender also ... I have to try it.
Maybe IClone will come up with a Hair System. You only need Hair Guides.  :-)

p.s.   but for sure there will be "groom hairstyles" in the near future in the shops  ;-)

Bassline ,
Nice work , I have been trying to get the hair to work direct from iclone to Unreal as a a alembic file to use the groom tool  but unreal wont accept them for groom only supports 3rd party plugins at the moment  . I did not know C4D had the tools required to export the alembic file with the settings groom accepts. What settings did you use on the alembic export  to get unreal to accept  the alembic file as a groom ? you use Ornatrix?

Had a look at your past posts and you made a dance vid with the unreal cyberhunter , made me laugh as that the char i am working on a dance vid with as well .

Thank you rogyru :-)

Groom only accept Hair Data Alembic , no splines , no polygons or Ngons.

The groom could be Haircraft from ILM or Barbershop from Weta Digital – so long as it conforms in terms of the Alembic export and the set of attributes that we’re looking for upon input. When UE4 gets the groom in engine, UE4 is looking for a set of standard attributes that really make up a groom.
A groom is more than just a set of curves – there are key attributes that matter, for example, the width and color, and this set of metadata is all vital.

I guess Blender can also export Hair Data as Alembic , did't test it yet.

I didn't use "Ornatrix" ...only  normal C4d hair.



I have tested it with Daz3D Strand-Base Hair and it works too , but Daz can't export hair or splines as Alembic , so you have to export as "Obj".
Now you have to import the Object File into your 3D App (here I use C4d but Blender should do it also) and you have the Hair as Splines.
Tick the Splines and convert it to HAIR...and export it as a single Alembic file.....



Imported to C4d  and got Splines ...



Convert Splines to Hair :




Export only the Hair as "Single Alembic File".

Import the Single Alembic File in Unreal , it will automatically Import it as "Groom Hair" 





hope I could help a bit  ...

For all the "Crazy People" that wanne try "UE4 Alembic Groom" here is my working Alembic Hair File :
It has 50.000 Strands.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-xLYm9MB-s&t=1s

Some Tips :

1. Reset the transfomarion of your Character to "Zero"  (x,y,z,=0) and the Hair too , then it is easier to adjust the hair to the Character.
    Import the Groom Hair with this settings :


2. Use a Character with Haircap ( black for black hair )
3. Drop the hair in the Unreal outliner above your Character and Unreal ask you on which bone you want to constrain the hair....take HEAD.
4. Add Component Niagara Particle System and choose GroomAssetSystem in Niagara System Asset.
Now the hair moves WOW  :-)
5. Untick rendering "Visible" (switch off!!!!)  under Niagara , then you get the right material while physics is working (took me a while to find it out)
6. Have fun :-)
  p.s.

Here the Niagara setting I have used  and please let me know if it worx for you , thx :



AND DONT FORGET TO TWEAK THE PHYSICS OF YOUR CHARACTER ,  here are mine :

Bassline

Thanks for the breakdown on the workflow its appreciated. I will try out the alembic file.Might be a good idea to start a thread for this in the Live link forum ?. With any luck RL might look at future plugins to help transfer Hair from iclone top unreal.

On a separate note have you used any cloth physics in unreal from characters in livelink ?. At the moment it seems you have to use either Apex tool for this which is not supported by RL . Hair and cloth physics from Iclone to unreal are a bit of a mystery at the moment for me.

Yes , I've used Cloth Physics in UE4,  it is based on NCloth. It is similar to the IClone Physics, only difference is that you have to paint your weights to the cloth polygons.
It is not as accurate as Niagara and I guess cloth will get Niagara Physics in future versions too ... it is soo much better because it's particle based.
The only way to get IClone Physics to UE4 is with Alembic.

Above I forget to mention the groom import Conversion ( Rotation X -90 /  Y 00 / Z 180 )

New Groom Hair "Afro Style"  :-)