Anime Hair Studio

New features

Blank Strand Lattices
Create an editable 3-by-3 strand lattice directly from the Strands toolbar or Curves > Create Strand Lattice, without drawing source strands first. The existing Create Lattice from Strands command remains available.
Independent Mesh Topology
Adjust Horizontal Loops and Vertical Loops separately in the lattice's Topology section. Change mesh density without adding, removing or moving editable control points; settings support undo, linked mirrors, project save/load and custom hairstyle presets.

UI changes

Clearer Lattice Controls
Curve Lattice now labels the editable cage settings as Horizontal Controls and Vertical Controls. Mesh loop settings live in a separate Topology section, with editable values and reset buttons.

Tweaks and quality of life

Lattice Guide
The searchable in-app guide explains blank lattice creation, creating lattices from existing strands, and the difference between control-point density and mesh topology.

Bug fixes

Stable Lattice Resolution
Changing lattice control counts no longer changes the chosen mesh loop counts. Older lattices retain their existing mesh resolution until edited; non-loft Curve Surface geometry keeps its existing behaviour.

New features

Isolated Stress Test
Open Debug > Stress Test to generate a disposable scene with per-strand rigs and physics, or compare render-only mode. A full-effects Gem option exercises fractures, inclusions, pearlescence and rainbow reflections. Reports show frame intervals and CPU work, not GPU timings; the test does not modify the current hairstyle.

UI changes

Material Editor Cleanup
Material readouts and shader-specific visibility now share one editor model. Existing controls, precision, colour-picker behaviour and undo boundaries are retained; no layout changes are introduced.

Tweaks and quality of life

Shared Gradient Texture Reuse
Strands using the same material reuse its unchanged gradient texture. Edited or restored gradient stops rebuild it on the next update, without regenerating it for every strand.
Large Scene Refreshes
Reduced repeated searches in material, outliner and selection updates. Refresh-local lookups preserve object order and are rebuilt after edits, undo or loading.
Rig and Physics Cleanup
Reduced repeated rig lookups and reused CPU scratch data in preview updates. Performance still depends on scene complexity, rendering resolution and material settings.
Internal Reliability Work
Consolidated material control bindings and focused regression coverage for resource replacement, undo, shared materials and preview cleanup. Project formats and authored geometry remain unchanged.

Bug fixes

Gradient Endpoint Colours
Fixed gradients reverting to the first colour beyond the final stop. Roots and tips now retain the nearest endpoint colour outside the authored stop interval.

New features

Rigging Workspace
A new workspace for building and editing hair rigs, with separate Strands and Rig outliner views, bone and joint selection filters, and standard transform tools. Rig data is saved with the project.
Bone Chain Creation
Create automatically named bone chains from one or more strands, with automatic source binding and optional linked-mirror creation. Choose an averaged path or follow strands end-to-end, inspect a live bone preview, then Apply or Cancel.
Rig Hierarchy and Hair Root
Organize chains under a shared Hair Root, create child chains, or drag chains onto another bone to attach them. Parent transforms carry attached chains while preserving their offsets; supported mirrored relationships update together.
Binding and Pose Preview
Preview deformation without changing the source hairstyle. Adjust Binding Blend up to 300%, assign Hair Root influence, inspect selected-bone weights, and use pose Undo, Redo and Reset. Temporary poses are not saved as animation.
Hair Physics Preview
Play, pause, shake, reset and stop simulated hair, with gravity, stiffness and damping controls. Move or rotate the head handle to test motion; unbound hair and meshes follow the head rigidly. Physics is a preview, not exported animation, and currently has no head collision.
Bone Rotation Limits
Set bones to Free, Limited or Locked, adjust sideways and forward/back limits, and rotate the movement cone locally. Per-bone physics toggles control which segments simulate; supported mirrored pairs share limit edits.
USDA Skeleton and Weight Export
Export the authored skeleton and bound meshes with skin weights through the USDA export dialog. Bone names, hierarchy and binding blends are retained; temporary poses, physics settings and animation are not exported.
Shared Mesh Scale Pivot
Scale multiple selected meshes around their combined selection centre using Shared Selection Pivot in Mesh Object mode. Turn it off to return to individual pivots.
Pattern Profile Handles
Show width and depth profile points directly on the active Pattern brush preview and drag them to shape the profile. Handles follow the selected root, body or tip section, including the middle repeat when neighbours are shown.
Anime Shader Outlines
Add coloured outlines with separate silhouette and overlap thickness, adjustable up to 12 px. A depth-gap control suppresses shallow overlaps, and overlap lines taper as they approach the cutoff.
Experimental Gem Shader
Try a stylized crystal material with saturated colour, dark internal depth, anisotropic highlights, shiny inclusions and parallax fractures. Separate controls adjust fracture depth and scale, inclusion scale, pearlescence and rainbow reflections. This is a viewport approximation, not physically accurate refraction.
Boolean Remeshing
Remesh strands with the Cut and Stitch Boolean mode alongside Low, Medium and High Effort. Braids and strand-lattice meshes also support Boolean; open surfaces are cut and stitched without adding thickness. Mesh-source results use triangles and are not guaranteed watertight.
Searchable In-App Guide
Open Help > Guide to search tools and features in the right-hand panel, including the Rigging workspace. Explanations use the app itself without adding video assets.
Guided Head Import
Follow an interactive walkthrough for importing a head or full-body mesh, adjusting the head, fitting the scalp and fine-tuning it. The guide spotlights relevant controls and includes compact Back, Pause, Next and Exit controls.

UI changes

Collapsible Settings Sections
Collapse individual sections in the attribute editor and rigging panel to keep the controls you need in view. Section headings are more compact, and redundant selected-strand messages and the header delete button have been removed.
Cleaner Viewport and Outliner
Visibility icons no longer use accent-coloured boxes. The view cube sits clear of the transform panel, and the large white cross on the physics-preview head handle has been removed.

Tweaks and quality of life

Wireframe Colour Preference
Choose and reset the ordinary topology-overlay colour in Preferences. Selection, locked-strand and guide colours retain their distinct meanings.
Camera Field of View
Adjust the perspective camera field of view from 10 to 100 degrees in Display. Orthographic views disable the control; returning to perspective retains the chosen value for the session.
Anime Shadow Highlights
The rim colour can now contribute an anisotropic highlight within shadowed areas. An optional Shadow Jaggedness toggle adds strand-aligned variation using the existing highlight noise controls.
Physics Preview Performance
Playback reuses rig display objects and buffers instead of rebuilding them every frame, with additional preview rendering optimizations. Performance still depends on scene complexity and material settings.
Rig Visibility and Controls
Hide individual bones or entire chain folders without disabling their physics. Separate Objects, Bones and Handles filters control visibility and selection; World/Object transform space and side-aware bone naming are available in Rigging.
Remesh and Rigging Code Cleanup
Separated remesh preview scheduling, worker cleanup and bone-chain proposals into focused modules. Cancellation and late results are guarded, and initial creation and live settings changes use the same proposal logic.

Bug fixes

Always-Available Radial Menus
Radial menus are now a core feature and cannot be disabled in Preferences. Older disabled settings are ignored.
Gradient Colour Picker
Fixed the gradient editor disappearing while choosing a colour. The shared colour picker also supports a screen eyedropper where the browser provides it.
Outline Occlusion and Selection
Corrected ragged outline artifacts around head-mesh boundaries. Selection outlines render above material outlines while preserving scene occlusion.
Gem Effects During Physics Preview
Inclusions and fractures now follow the deformed rigged hair instead of appearing to slide through it. Their procedural scale is independent of stretched UVs.
Pattern Width and Depth Continuity
Corrected repeating width and depth profiles across root, body and tip sections, including asymmetric curves and sections with different point counts. Profile endpoints now stay linked for continuous repeats; previously baked scene strands are not rewritten.
Pattern Shape Settings
Pattern Strand Shape settings now appear when entering Brushes with Select or transform tools, even without a scene strand selection. Retained scene selections no longer give the builder unrelated mesh or braid settings.

New features

Convert Strands to Meshes
Convert selected strands into editable meshes from the Curves menu or radial menu. The source strands are kept and hidden so you can return to them.
Convert Meshes to Strands
Build an editable strand from a mesh’s shape, with automatic root and tip detection, adjustable control-point count and a direction flip. Reconstruction uses the mesh itself, not the original strand data; complex shapes may still need adjustment.
Import Editable Meshes
Import OBJ, USDA or FBX geometry directly into the Meshes workspace. Choose to import disconnected parts separately, or split an existing mesh into parts from its context or radial menu. Import is for static geometry; materials, textures, rigs and animation are not imported.
Invert Faces
Reverse the entire mesh’s face direction in Object mode, or only selected faces in Face mode.
Custom Accent Colour
Choose an interface accent colour in Preferences. Tool icons, radial menus, selection highlights, curve previews and performance readouts follow your chosen colour.

UI changes

Hotkey Tool Settings
Holding a tool hotkey now opens its settings near the pointer as standard behaviour, without an experimental toggle. Releasing the key closes the popup and returns settings to Main, unless the separate floating-panel mode is enabled.
Mesh Attributes
Selected meshes now show their name and material in the Main tab.
Consistent Import Dialog
Mesh import uses the existing importer styling, with compact controls and consistent action colours.
Updated Tool Icons
Refreshed sculpting and mirror icons make the tools easier to distinguish.

Tweaks and quality of life

Backface Visibility
The Debug menu includes Show Backfaces for viewing the reverse side with the normal material, separately from the green backface diagnostic.
Experimental Accessory Strands
Add Accessory Strand is available under Dev Test Features and is off by default. Drag on an existing strand to position a flyaway, then drag away to shape it. Disabling the tool does not remove existing accessory strands.

Bug fixes

Remesher Strand Interpretation
Updated Curve Union integration to use AHS’s strand sweeps, correcting mismatches between the source strand shape and the remesher input.
Mesh-to-Strand Tips
Improved profile reconstruction and pointed-tip detection to better retain the source mesh’s shape.
Consistent Sliders and Highlights
Updated remaining legacy slider styling, including the remesher, and corrected accent colours on radial/list items, SVG icons, outliner visibility buttons and selected rows.
Reference Panel Layout
Fixed the docked Reference Images panel becoming squeezed into a narrow column.
Neutral Panel Tabs
Restored the clean underline-only active-tab styling without coloured text or filled highlights.

New features

Grease Pencil
The References workspace now includes Grease Pencil for sketching hairstyle ideas directly in the viewport. Draw on the background or the Front, Back, Left and Right reference layers, with adjustable brush size, smoothing and colour. An eraser removes unwanted strokes, and the viewport eyedropper lets you sample a colour from the scene.
Reference Shape Tool
The Shape tool lets you block out filled reference silhouettes with a closed lasso. Draw to add a shape and hold Shift while drawing to trim it, making it easier to plan larger hair masses alongside line sketches.
Mesh Editing Workspace
The Meshes workspace provides direct object, vertex, edge and face editing for modelling meshes. Work on the underlying polygon shape rather than only adjusting a strand’s center curve, with contextual tools and component selection.
Mesh Primitives
Cube, Plane, Cylinder and Sphere primitives can be added from the mesh toolbar. Their initialization settings provide a starting shape for mesh modelling inside AHS.
Poly Brush
Poly Brush lets you place and edit quad geometry on the active Live Surface. Add vertices, move components along the surface, draw connected strips, insert loops, relax geometry, and weld nearby vertices. Supported gaps can be previewed and filled while building the mesh.
Curve-Driven Face Extrusion
Face Extrude extends a selected mesh face along a drawn curve. This gives the extrusion an editable path for shaping longer forms instead of restricting it to a straight extrusion.
Standard Face Extrusion
Standard Extrude lets you drag a selected mesh face along its normal. A dedicated settings panel keeps the extrusion controls together while you work in the viewport.
Loop Cut and Edge Operations
Loop Cut previews and inserts a loop through compatible quad topology. Mesh Operations also includes Bridge Two Boundary Edges for connecting open edges and Set Edge Flow for relaxing selected edge vertices toward the surrounding quad flow.
Back Hair Mesh and Connected Strand Shell
The Meshes menu includes Back Hair Mesh and Connected Strand Shell creation commands. These provide additional starting points for building larger connected hair forms with mesh-editing tools.
Draw Capsule Guide
Capsule guides can now be drawn along a curve. Curve Step controls the spacing of the lengthwise cage loops, while Root, Middle and Tip profile settings shape the guide’s width and depth along its length.
Adaptive Remeshing
Auto Remesh Strands can retain a relationship to its source strands through Adaptive Remesh. Editing a source regenerates the connected result using Low Effort, so the original curves remain useful for shaping the remeshed form.
Pattern Types and Sections
Pattern brushes support Linear, Radial and Braid arrangements with editable strand counts and reusable pattern presets. Body, Root and Tip sections let you work on the repeating portion and optional end sections separately.
Curve Lattice Meshes
Selected strands can now be connected into an editable curve lattice mesh. Strand roots form the top edge and tips form the bottom, with the curves ordered across the surface. The original strands are retained and can be hidden while you work on the lattice.
Curve Lattice Guides
You can also create a guide from selected strands and use its smooth surface as a Live Surface. Guide creation leaves the original strands visible by default, with an option to hide them. Horizontal and Vertical Loops can be adjusted directly from the guide settings.
Pattern Brush Editing
The Brushes workspace lets you shape the strands that make up a repeating pattern. Neighbour Segments shows a repetition above and below the editable body, making it easier to check how the pattern connects as you move its control points.
Mesh Bevel Tool
The Meshes workspace includes a Bevel tool for selected edges, available from the toolbar and radial menu. Drag to adjust the bevel width and use the segment setting to add smoother transitions. Preview changes before committing, cancel an edit, or undo the completed operation.
Remeshing Effort Levels
Auto Remesh Strands now offers Low, Medium and High Effort. Low prioritizes speed, Medium balances speed and quality, and High adds further guarded topology refinement. Medium is the default, while Adaptive Remesh uses Low for faster updates. All three levels run in the background, and pending manual jobs can be cancelled.
Export Selection to OBJ
Selected strands and meshes can now be exported without exporting the whole hairstyle. The selection determines what is included, so selected hidden objects are still eligible for export.
Curve Normal Repair
Fix Curve Normals is available for selected strand, panel and braid curves. Rebuild Curve can also rebuild normals, and Reset Point Rotations clears unwanted point rotation that can continue to twist a strand after its normals are rebuilt.
Green Backface Debug View
The Debug menu can highlight back-facing geometry in bright green. This makes it easier to inspect reversed surfaces and unwanted twists while checking a strand or mesh.
Experimental Reference-to-Curve Tool
Selected portions of a reference image can be traced into curves through the experimental Select to Curve workflow. This provides a starting point for reference-driven shaping rather than automatically reconstructing an entire hairstyle.
Experimental Accessory Brush Builder
Accessory Brushes can be enabled through the experimental dev-test settings. The builder provides bundle recipes for a main shape and supporting strands, with straight, curved and side-by-side previews. This remains an experimental workflow.

UI changes

Dedicated Keyboard Shortcut Settings
Keyboard Shortcuts has its own entry in Settings. Tool and workspace bindings can be customized, with a reorganized shortcut reference for looking up commands.
Refined Panel Controls
Panel tabs, sliders and reset controls use a more consistent layout. Sliders use a slim light-grey fill, while active tools and toggles share the blue selection colour.
Collapsible Side Panels
Side panels can be collapsed by dragging their edge past the collapse threshold. Small edge tabs remain available to expand them again without leaving a full-height collapsed panel in the viewport.
Startup Progress
A compact AHS loading panel shows the stages of workspace preparation, making it easier to see what the application is loading before the editor is ready.
Attached Glass Panel Style
Preferences includes an Attached Glass appearance that connects the upper panels and viewport controls to the title bar. The separate Glass Panels style remains available for the floating-panel layout.
Better Tool Settings Placement
Floating tool settings use the available viewport space more carefully and avoid covering the performance box. Longer settings panels can scroll instead of extending beyond their available height.
Clearer Selection Feedback
The attribute editor identifies the current selection and provides an empty-state explanation when no strand is selected. Workspace and tool context are shown in the status area, and unequal numeric settings display Mixed instead of implying that every selected object has the same value.

Tweaks and quality of life

Horizontal and Vertical Loop settings update curve lattices automatically without an Apply button.
Lattice meshes and guides have a normal-offset control for pushing control points outward or inward along their normals.
Selected guides can be seen through strands, and guide control points follow the shared control-point size preference.
Curve rebuilding includes an option to rebuild normals, with point-rotation reset available for correcting unwanted authored rotation.
Mixed numeric values are identified when a selection contains objects with different settings.
Accessory Brush and Curvy remain available as experimental dev-test features rather than being part of the standard workflow.
Shortcut editing includes conflict detection, explicit key swaps, individual resets and Reset All. Save activates the changes; Cancel leaves the current bindings intact.
Ctrl adds to selection and Shift removes from selection in the updated click and drag-selection workflows.
Multi-strand width and depth edits apply the same change across the selection, preserving differences between the starting values.
Shared sliders and their numeric fields group an edit into one Undo step. Escape cancels an active supported control edit, and simply focusing a field no longer adds an Undo entry.
Connected mesh edges, loops and corners can be beveled together. Hold Shift during a bevel drag for finer width adjustment.
Curve lattice creation is available from the strand radial menu as well as the Curves menu.
Draw Strand, Pattern and Accessory stroke settings retain independent session values when switching between their tools.
Custom hairstyle presets load their catalog first, with full project data and preview buffers requested when needed.
Braid and chain OBJ assets load on first use, and the larger remeshing runtimes load when requested rather than during startup.

Bug fixes

Curve lattice ordering and control-point visibility have been corrected, including mirrored lattice wireframes.
Curve lattice settings no longer remain visible when an unrelated object is selected.
Tested malformed project files are rejected without clearing the active scene, and later restoration failures attempt to restore the previous state.
Manual remesh results with no adaptive settings can be included safely in subsequent history snapshots.
Cancelled or superseded remesh jobs cannot replace the current preview. High Effort results that fail its geometry safety checks cannot be confirmed.
Mesh bevel now replaces the selected crease with bevel faces rather than only inserting a support loop.
Changing lattice loop counts several times during one edit retains the starting grid for cancellation and Undo.
Draw Strand presets no longer overwrite pattern-builder data through legacy preset fields.
Procedural brush tabs respect the active workspace and no longer redirect unrelated Draw Strand controls.
Viewport totals count visible authored meshes, respecting hidden parent objects instead of reporting hidden geometry as visible.

New features

Autosave and Crash Recovery
Anime Hair Studio can now keep a local recovery copy of your project while you work. Autosave runs after committed changes without interrupting active edits, and Preferences includes controls for enabling it and choosing how frequently it saves.
Material Presets
You can now save a material as a reusable preset and apply it in other projects. Material presets retain the reusable appearance settings without carrying over project-specific material assignments.
Base Colour Gradients
Hair materials can now use an editable colour gradient instead of a single base colour. Gradient stops control how the colour changes along the strand and are evaluated directly by the hair material for a responsive preview.
Expanded Selection Sets
Selected strands can be added to or removed from an existing set, and sets can hide, show, lock, unlock, or select all of their members from the outliner. The eye button beside a set controls every member's visibility and shows a partial state when only some members are visible.
Camera View Cube
Click Front, Back, Left, Right, Top, or Bottom on the view cube to snap directly to that view. Top and Bottom use a stable camera orientation so normal orbiting still behaves correctly afterward.
Multi-Cam View
The experimental Multi-Cam option divides the viewport into four equal views. Each view has its own camera and can be activated by clicking inside it. Perspective remains freely orbitable, while cardinal views use orthographic projection with independent pan and zoom controls.
Numeric Object Transforms
Object Edit Mode now includes a compact floating Transform panel. Translation, Rotation, and Scale can be entered directly, and each individual axis has its own reset button. Values update alongside viewport gizmo edits.
Viewport Curve Controls for Move
Move tool settings can expose Width, Depth, and Twist Curve controls directly on the strand. Width and Depth can switch between symmetrical and asymmetrical editing, and optional Width, Depth, or Uniform grab handles provide faster profile scaling.
Relax Position and Rotation Separately
The Relax tool has independent Position and Rotation controls. Position follows the surrounding curve, while Rotation smooths the authored orientation and displays the normal direction in the viewport.
Split Panel Tip Curvature
Split Panel strands have a signed tip-curvature control for shaping curved fringes in either direction. Additional tip density can be added where the split needs more detail, and open split boundaries can be displayed as hard edges.
Branch Surface Imprints
Attached branch strands can project their profile intersection onto the parent as additional topology. The imprint remains part of the parent geometry when the branch is hidden.

UI changes

Customizable Panel Styles
Preferences offers Default Panels, No Panels, and Glass Panels. No Panels extends the viewport behind the interface, while Glass Panels retains the panel structure with a translucent glass treatment.
Custom Glass Colour
The Glass Panels colour can be changed or reset from Preferences. The colour is shared by side panels, workspace controls, top viewport controls, dropdowns, tabs, and other glass-styled elements while preserving their value differences.
Responsive Viewport Header
Compact square buttons are aligned around the Workspace, Live Surface, and Layer controls. When horizontal space is limited, the buttons move to a second row while the dropdown groups avoid overlapping.
Pie-Style Radial Menus
Radial actions use pie-menu sectors with subtle dividers and a cyan hover gradient. Hovering over a submenu reveals smaller actions in a nearby outer ring, while lower-priority commands remain in the list beneath the menu.
Cleaner Interface Interaction
Interface labels are no longer accidentally selectable, while text fields and Patch Notes remain selectable. No Panels mode also uses simplified scrollbars and transparent outliner region rows.

Tweaks and quality of life

Press Ctrl+H with strands selected to hide them. Press it with nothing selected to unhide all hidden strands.
Rebuild Curve appears in the strand radial ring when space is available and in the action list when the ring is full.
Ctrl+D and the other duplicate commands work with selected Guides and References in their respective workspaces.
Strands can be dragged into another outliner region and receive an appropriate unique name.
Isolated View and Live Surface changes are excluded from Undo history.
Recognized viewport shortcuts work after using checkboxes, toggles, dropdowns, and sliders.
Hold S and drag to resize the Move or Smooth brush while keeping the cursor anchored.
Preserve Tips has an independent state for each applicable brush.
Zipper controls share the curve control-point display size and its preference.
The UV checker remains responsive on larger hairstyles, and exported UVs use the expected orientation in applications such as Maya.
Split Panel topology uses quads wherever the profile retains distinct corners, with triangles limited to collapsed taper regions.
Proportional Editing uses a lighter influence display that disappears when the selection is cleared.
Undo and Redo remain responsive with many visible strands.
Locked strands use a restrained grey treatment with a subtle translucent magenta wireframe.
Viewport shadows update live as strands, guides, lighting, and the camera change.

Bug fixes

Linked mirrored strands correctly reverse asymmetric Width Curve profiles.
Branch roots remain attached to their parent control points during object and hierarchical transforms.
Attached branches retain their authored orientation through large parent rotations.
Open curve editor windows follow the active strand when the selection changes.
Viewport Width, Depth, and Twist Curve controls stay attached to rebuilt strand geometry.
Tool shortcuts remain available while editing viewport curve points and after interacting with compatible panel controls.
Move Brush selection masking continues to update linked mirror instances.
Undo preserves Move Brush curve and control-point overlays without revealing unrelated controls.
Relax Rotation interpolates consistently across wrapped angles.
Guide Capsule radius changes preserve the capsule's position.
Standard object-mode marquee selection selects the strands inside the drag rectangle.
Top and Bottom camera snaps preserve stable orbit behaviour when returning to perspective.
Radial submenu labels, dividers, hover regions, bottom sectors, and action lists remain aligned and selectable.
Panel content and responsive layouts behave consistently across all three panel styles.
Texture updates wait for valid image data, preventing the associated Three.js warning.
Open zipper boundaries receive hard edges, while closed splits remain seamless.

New tools

Object Edit Mode
Component and Object are now the two edit modes. Component edits curves and control points, while Object moves, rotates, or scales a complete strand or guide from its root.
Branch Strands
Start a Draw Strand stroke from a control point on a selected strand to create a separate branch. Its root stays attached to the parent while the branch remains independently editable.
Twist Curve
The Twist Curve controls clockwise or counterclockwise rotation along a strand. Its points support custom values, positions, and interpolation, and can be displayed directly beside the mesh for editing.
Draw Capsule Guide
Sketch a curve to create a tapered capsule-shaped drawing surface. Step controls its loop spacing and one profile controls its width and depth taper.
Sculpt Proportional Editing
Move and Smooth Brush can extend their influence beyond the main brush radius using an adjustable falloff.
Turntable Preview
Turntable automatically orbits the camera around the hairstyle. Its speed can be adjusted from the Main tab while Turntable is active.

New features

Selection Sets
You can now create Selection Sets by selecting multiple strands and choosing Create Selection Set from the Spacebar radial menu or outliner context menu. Sets can be recalled, renamed, or updated later.
Strand Locking
You can now lock strands by selecting them and pressing L, using the radial menu, or using an outliner context menu. Locked strands cannot be selected or edited. Press L with nothing selected to unlock every strand.
Isolated View
Select the strands you want to isolate and press Ctrl+1, or use Isolate in the radial menu, to toggle a view containing only those strands.
Relative Multi-Strand Editing
Compatible settings can be changed across several selected strands without forcing them all to the same value. Their existing differences are preserved.
Mirror Strands and Clumps
Strands and complete clumps can create linked mirrored instances. The linked partner updates automatically and can be decoupled later for independent editing.
Sculpt Selection Masks
When strands are selected, Move and Smooth Brush affect only that selection. Every other strand is darkened and protected from the brush.
Twist Density
Dynamic Density can add support loops where the Twist Curve needs them without increasing topology across the whole strand.
Recent Projects
File → Recent Projects provides up to ten recently opened or saved projects.
Full Body Mesh Import
Full-body OBJ meshes can be imported from the File menu or by drag and drop. They are scaled to roughly seven heads tall and aligned to the scalp guide.
Shareable Hair-Only Projects
The Save window can exclude character meshes and references when you only want to share the hairstyle.

Editing improvements

Selection Modifiers
Ctrl-click or Ctrl-drag adds to the selection. Shift-click or Shift-drag removes from it.
Selection While Transforming
Move, Rotate, and Scale now use the same click and marquee selection controls as the Select tool.
Precision Transforms
Hold Shift during Move, Rotate, or Scale for finer control. Scale Sensitivity can also be adjusted in the Scale tool settings.
Strand Rotation
The complete strand profile can be rotated without changing its control-point normals.
Move Brush Influence
Move Brush now captures its affected area on the initial click, so dragging does not pull new control points into the stroke.
Smooth Brush Preserve Tips
Preserve Tips allows Smooth Brush to relax a curve without moving its endpoint.
Live Surface Controls
Live Surface chooses which guide new strands conform to. Dynamic adds a contextual camera-facing drawing plane to that surface.
Guide Visibility
Click the guide-visibility button and check which guide types should remain visible.

Files and projects

Project Drag and Drop
Drop an .ahs file into the app to open it. A confirmation warns that unsaved work will be lost.
OBJ Drag and Drop
Drop an OBJ file to import it as a Head Mesh or Full Body Mesh without opening the reference-image workflow.
Hair-Only Project Loading
Projects saved without a character mesh reopen without inserting the default head.

UI/UX

Workspaces
The former Strands, Guides, and References edit modes are now organized as workspaces. Use 1, 2, and 3 to switch workspaces; Tab switches between Component and Object edit modes.
Radial Menus
Hold Spacebar to open context-sensitive actions and submenus without leaving the viewport. Holding a tool shortcut opens settings for that tool.
Blender Navigation
Preferences now includes Blender-style Middle Mouse navigation. Navigation tips and the Shortcuts viewer update to match the selected style.
Viewport Preferences
Camera smoothing, viewport background colour, control-point size, Compact Tool Buttons, and outliner region colours can be adjusted in Preferences.
Character Mesh Visibility
Head and body mesh visibility can be toggled from the Display tab.
Responsive Outliner
On narrower windows, the outliner docks into the right panel and expands when the Attribute Editor is collapsed.
Layered Side Bun Preset
A complete human-authored hairstyle is included as a starting point.
Patch Notes History
The Patch Notes viewer now includes a dated sidebar for browsing previous updates.

Performance

Selecting, transforming, and sculpting large groups of strands should now remain more responsive.
Object-mode transforms use lighter live previews before rebuilding final strand geometry.
Sculpt brushes perform less work on strands that cannot be affected by the current brush stroke.

Bug fixes

Undo no longer reverts multiple actions after drawing a new strand following an undo.
Selection highlighting remains visible across the available shaders and on lighter hair colours.
Control points on newly drawn strands can now be selected reliably in a new scene.
Width, depth, and twist editors now refresh after Undo, Redo, and live geometry changes.
Large rotations no longer flip strand frames or unexpectedly change authored control-point normals.
OBJ files containing unsupported line or point primitives no longer cause valid face geometry to appear as wireframe-like lines.
Several guide visibility, scalp editing, raycasting, and narrow-window layout issues have also been fixed.

Misc

Patreon and Ko-fi support links have been added to the title bar.
Object Mesh remains a planned OBJ import type and is not implemented yet.
Recent Projects depends on locally stored browser data.

Curve editing and selection

Shift-click a selected control point to remove it from the active selection.
Shift-click a selected strand to remove it from the active selection.
Ctrl+Alt-click a curve to insert a control point. Nearby points redistribute themselves to accommodate it while maintaining the previous curve shape.
Shift+Alt-click a control point to remove it while preserving the surrounding curve shape. Removing the tip shortens the curve, while attempting to remove the root has no effect.
Added Curves → Rebuild Curve to the title bar. This lets you change the number of control points on one or multiple selected curves while retaining their shape. Control points can also be evenly distributed along the curve.
Delete now removes selected strands, removable guides, or references. Scene-critical elements such as the scalp guide remain protected.
Ctrl+D duplicates the current selection. Strand copies can be positioned with the mouse, while guide and reference copies are created in place and selected for editing.
With two strands selected, hold Spacebar and choose Duplicate Procedural to open a window that creates evenly spaced blended strands between them.
Holding Shift before or during a Draw Strand, Braid, or Split Panel stroke constrains the stroke to eight directions in 45-degree increments while keeping it conformed to the active surface.
The F shortcut now cycles between framing the current selection and framing the complete scene.

New modelling tools

Added Move and Smooth sculpt brushes to the bottom of the viewport, with adjustable radius, strength, and falloff.
Added Curve Lattice as a new guide type.
Added asymmetric width and depth curves.
Width and depth curve points can optionally be displayed and edited directly on the strand mesh.

References

Added the ability to crop 2D overlay reference images directly in the viewport.
Fixed the Left and Right 3D reference-plane assignments being reversed.
Added a preference for switching Left/Right naming between Viewport Perspective and Character Perspective.

Materials and viewport inspection

Added a toon-style Anime Anisotropic hair shader with configurable shadow bands, soft shadows, highlights, rim lighting, anisotropy, and highlight noise.
Restored the Lambert shader.
Added a preference for choosing the default shader used by new projects.
Added a UV Checker debug view.
Added a movable UV Inspector window for examining selected mesh topology in UV space.

Files and export

Added USDA export with support for mesh geometry, UVs, and editable strand center curves.
Added save and export dialog windows where you can name the file and choose which supported scene elements to include.
Project files now use the .ahs extension. Existing .animehair.json project files can still be opened.
Removed the old Maya Python export path. USDA is now the primary format for exporting editable curves.
Bones and weights are shown in the export dialog as planned export categories, but remain unavailable until skeleton and skin-weight authoring are implemented.

Presets and preferences

Added a preference for increasing or decreasing the display size of strand control points.
Added Compact Tool Buttons mode, which reduces viewport tools to smaller icon-only buttons.
Added an option to enable or disable region colours on outliner folders.
Preferences and custom presets can now be downloaded to a backup file and restored later. Browser storage still saves them automatically, but keeping an external backup is recommended.
Added custom presets for strand profiles and width/depth curves.
Clumps can now be saved as reusable Draw Strand brush presets.

Outliner and UI

Made the outliner more compact.
Added inline renaming for strands, clumps, guides, and references.
Added more contextual outliner actions for selections, clumps, guides, references, and mirror instances.

Bug fixes and improvements

Fixed Undo and Redo changing the current X-mirror editing setting.
Fixed recognized viewport shortcuts sometimes failing when a dropdown or range slider had focus. Text and number fields retain normal editing behaviour.

Editing and navigation

Reworked the transform gizmo for a more predictable feel.
Clicking a control point through the gizmo now selects the point, while holding selects the gizmo instead.
Added an orthographic view toggle.
Added Strands, Guides, and References edit workspaces through a viewport dropdown. Objects outside the active workspace are not selectable.

References and outliner

Added 2D overlay references that can be positioned in the viewport background.
Added 3D reference planes that can be assigned to orthographic views and hidden outside their matching view.
Images can be dragged into the viewport or directly into the References tab.
Added Strands, Guides, and References tabs to the outliner, including visibility controls for each type.

Preferences and shortcuts

Added a Preferences window under Settings.
Preferences include navigation-tip, tooltip, viewport-statistics, and experimental-feature controls.
Added S + left-drag to resize the active brush.
Added the Keyboard Shortcuts viewer under Help.
Added quick Live Surface and Layer dropdowns to the viewport.

Experimental radial menus

Added tool radial menus that appear while holding a tool shortcut and expose contextual settings.
Added a Spacebar selection menu with contextual actions such as mirror, duplicate, and delete.
Radial menus were experimental in this release and could be enabled in Preferences.

Hair cards

Added an early Hair Card toggle that removes strand back planes while retaining the existing strand settings.

New tools

Added the experimental Panel Strand tool for flat hairstyles, with procedural splits controlled by zipper points.
Panel strands snap to loops by default so shared points can weld into watertight geometry.
Added Capsule Guides as editable live surfaces for drawing strands. In this release, capsules generated only for the scalp.

Strand editing

Added an experimental single split to Draw Strand. The early implementation produced two meshes rather than one airtight mesh.
Added strand-profile trimming and Linear interpolation alongside Smooth interpolation.
Added Redo.
Added mirrored strand instances through the outliner. Linked instances update together and can be decoupled.
Strands can be dragged onto one another to create a clump, and clumps can be dissolved from the outliner.
Added experimental region-wide editing from the attribute editor.

Visibility and interface

Added Display-tab visibility controls for guide types and strand regions and layers.
Introduced a desktop-style title bar with File and Edit menus.
Reorganized the right attribute editor into Main, Display, and Materials tabs.
Added a Discord link under Help.

Materials

Changed the default material from Lambertian diffuse to a standard PBR shader with anisotropic highlights.
Roughness was the only exposed shader parameter in this release.

Bug fixes

Restored online project downloads, using the browser's default download location.
Added a head-transparency toggle to expose hidden control points in the Scalp editor.
Removed unused controls.

Anime Hair Studio

Transform

Translation

Rotation

Scale

Initialize Primitive

Extrude

Auto Remesh