Modifiers Tab

The Modifiers tab is where you style and shape your hair. Basic strands become clumped curls, frizzy flyaways, tight coils, or any hairstyle you can imagine.

The Modifier Stack

Modifiers are applied in order from top to bottom. Each modifier builds on the previous one's output.

1. Clumping (groups strands)
   ↓
2. Coil (adds curls to clumps)
   ↓
3. Frizz (adds randomness on top)
   ↓
Result: Curly, clumped hair with natural frizz

Order matters. The same modifiers in different order produce different results.

Guide-Level vs Strand-Level

Some modifiers work on guides (before strands are generated), others work on strands (after generation):

Guide-level (shape the sparse guide curves):

Guide Flow, Braid, Cornrow, Guide Sculpt, Guide Add

Strand-level (shape the dense interpolated strands):

Clumping, Coil, Frizz, Loc, Cut, Surface Offset, Simulate

Both types cache results in memory. When you change a parameter, only the affected parts re-compute.

The Strand Modifiers

1. Clumping

Groups strands into natural bundles.

Use for: Wet hair, natural grouping, tight curls, any realistic hair.

Key features: Hierarchical/fractal sub-clumps, curl effect, noise effect, stray strands, tightness profile curve, per-clump expressions.

2. Guide Flow

Pin-based flow control with direction and bend profile.

Use for: Combing direction, partings, styled looks, surface-hugging fur.

Key features: FlowPin editor (click-drag on surface), smooth blending between pins, bend profile curve, optional pin length scaling.

Note: This replaced the old arrow-based "Flow Direction" modifier. Old scenes load fine but the legacy modifier is inactive.

3. Coil

Adds spiral curls and waves.

Use for: Curly hair, wavy hair, ringlets, perms.

Key features: Count/Radius with scale curves, Helix/Wave/Corkscrew modes, phase variation, clump-coherent phase, range controls.

4. Frizz

Adds random displacement and noise.

Use for: Natural variation, flyaways, messy hair, wind-blown looks.

Key features: Magnitude/Frequency with profile curve, correlation, preserve length, seed.

5. Braid

Creates braided structures from Blender curves.

Use for: Braided hairstyles, twists, ropes.

Key features: Curve-driven path, 2–6 strand weave, true over-under pattern, thickness/width/tightness/twist controls, taper section.

6. Cornrow

Creates scalp-attached braids with anchor strands.

Use for: Cornrow hairstyles, protective styles.

Key features: Draw-on-surface curve creation, anchor strand system (count, spread, offset), thickness squeeze at crossovers, noise displacement.

7. Loc/Dreadlock

Creates dreadlock-style hair.

Use for: Dreadlocks, locs, matted hair.

Key features: 18 parameters — coil structure, buildup system, frizz, multi-section buildup, debris/matting profiles, irregularity, twist. All support expressions.

8. Cut

Trims strand length.

Use for: Haircuts, length variation, layered cuts.

Key features: Length parameter (1.0 = keep all, 0.5 = cut half), profile curve, variance, expression support for procedural cuts.

9. Surface Offset

Pushes strands away from the mesh surface.

Use for: Preventing scalp penetration after clumping/frizz, maintaining clearance.

Key features: Offset distance, strength, preserve length, smoothing passes. Typically placed after styling modifiers.

10. Simulate

Physics simulation with GPU acceleration.

Use for: Animated hair, dynamic movement, physics-based styling.

Key features: GPU-accelerated solver (8–20x faster), body collision, self-collision, wind with turbulence, shape matching, film-quality mode, timeline sync with frame caching.

Guide-Stack Modifiers

These act on guides, upstream of interpolation. They are part of the same stack model — ordered, toggleable and non-destructive — and in 1.5.1 Guide Interpolate and Guide Mirror are added from the Modifiers tab like any other modifier.

Guide Interpolate

New as a modifier in 1.5.1. Fills in dense guides between your sparse sculpted ones. Your sparse guides stay the input, so the count can go back down. Position matters: before a Guide Flow the new guides inherit that flow, after it they keep the shape their neighbours had. See Guides Tab.

Guide Curl

Curls the guides themselves, so the curl is structure the strands interpolate rather than a wobble added to each hair. Curling does not change the guide's length. Full documentation.

Guide Sculpt

Hand-comb guides with Blender's Sculpt Curves tools. Stored as a relative, id-keyed delta layer, so hand work survives regeneration — change density, seed or guide count and the sculpt re-applies on top. Full documentation.

Guide Mirror

Mirror guides across an axis so you can groom one half and generate the other. Merge threshold prevents a doubled centre part. Full documentation.

Guide Resample

Resample every guide to a uniform control point count along arc length. Required before Simulate when guides were imported with varying point counts. Full documentation.

Masks, attributes and selection sets

New in 1.5.1. Three related ways to say where a modifier acts.

Selection sets

A selection set names a group of guides, and a modifier's mask can point at one instead of at everything. Guide Mirror can mirror one region of a groom and leave a deliberately asymmetric region alone. A selection set still means the same guides after a Braid or a Cornrow.

Painted channels and vertex groups

Many parameters can be driven by something you painted rather than by a single number:

a vertex group from Blender, read with vgroup("name")
a texture map, read with map()
a painted channel, read with attr("name")

Use the channel picker beside the parameter rather than typing a name: it lists the channels the stack actually offers at that point, so what you can choose is what really exists. If a name cannot be found, the parameter falls back to its own slider and the panel names the field responsible. See FollicleScript and Texture Masks.

Which parameters can use painted data

Not every parameter can read everything. This is what each part of FollicleFX accepts in 1.5.1:

Where	Expression	Texture map	Painted channel	Vertex group
Clump, Coil, Cut, Frizz, Loc (parameters with ƒx)	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Primitive tab: Length, Width Scale	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Primitive tab: Density Multiplier, Region	Yes	Yes (its own map)	No	Yes
Guides tab: Density, Length, Noise	Yes	No	No	Yes
Guide Curl: Curl, Ellipticity, Wave, Cycles, Twist, Switchbacks, Amount, Variation	Yes	No	Yes	Yes
Surface Offset: Offset, Strength	Yes	No	No	No
Braid, Cornrow, Guide Flow, Guide Interpolate, Guide Resample, Draw Guides, Simulate	No	No	No	No

Where an expression cannot read a channel or vertex group, a name like attr("x") is reported as not found and the parameter uses its slider.

Masks

These modifiers have a mask you can paint or drive: Clump, Coil, Cut, Frizz, Loc and Surface Offset on the strands, and Braid, Cornrow, Guide Curl, Guide Flow, Guide Mirror, Guide Sculpt and Simulate on the guides. Guide Mirror uses its mask to choose which guides are mirrored. Guide Interpolate, Guide Resample and Draw Guides have no mask.

The parameter row

New in 1.5.1. Every parameter is one row that is a value, a slider and an expression at the same time. The same row carries the map field and the channel picker, and it looks and behaves the same in every panel. Controls also disable each other correctly: Cornrow's Lead In is off exactly when Feed Angle overrides it.

Using the Modifier Stack

Adding Modifiers

Click "Add Modifier..." dropdown → select type. Modifier appears in the list.

Removing Modifiers

Select modifier → click × (delete) button.

Reordering

Select modifier → click ↑/↓ buttons. Order affects the result.

Enabling/Disabling

Each modifier has a checkbox. Uncheck to skip without deleting.

Renaming

Double-click or click to rename. Use descriptive names for complex stacks ("Base Clumping", "Tip Frizz").

Modifier Order Guidelines

Recommended Order

1. Guide Flow (direction)
2. Clumping (structure)
3. Coil (shape)
4. Frizz (detail)
5. Cut (final shaping)
6. Surface Offset (prevent penetration)
7. Simulate (physics — always last)

Why This Order Works

Structure first: Clumping defines the overall grouping
Shape second: Coil adds curls to already-grouped strands
Details last: Frizz adds chaos on top of structured hair
Physics last: Simulate acts on the final styled result

Bad Order Example

1. Frizz (randomizes first)
2. Clumping (tries to group random strands — looks wrong)

Texture Masks

Most modifiers have a Mask that controls where they act. Guide Interpolate, Resample and Draw Guides do not: they change the number of guides, so there is nothing to blend against.

White (1.0) = full effect
Black (0.0) = no effect
Gray (0.5) = 50% effect

Mask Workflow

Click the source chip beside Mask.
Choose Texture and click Paint, then paint white where you want the effect and black where you don't. Save, Load and Clear manage the image.
Or choose Attribute to use a selection set, a painted channel or a vertex group, or Expression to compute the mask.

Separate Masks

Some modifiers have more maps than the main mask: Clump (Curl Mask, Noise Mask, Density Map), Loc (Tightness Map), Cut (Cut Map), Cornrow (Dropout), Simulate (Pin Map, Stiffness Map) and Guide Flow (Direction Map). See the Texture Masks page for painting tips and vertex groups.

Presets

Save and load modifier stacks as presets.

Built-in Presets (7)

Natural Wavy
Tight Curls
Dreadlocks
Straight Sleek
Messy Bedhead
Braided
Afro

Custom Presets

Build your stack → click Save → enter name. Load later from the Presets dropdown.

FollicleScript in Modifiers

Most modifier parameters support inline expressions:

# Per-clump tightness variation
rand3(0.6, 0.9, clump_id)

# UV-based frizz gradient
lerp(0.05, 0.3, v)

# Per-strand random variation
rand(index) * 0.5

Click the ƒx button next to any parameter to switch between slider and expression mode.

Tips

Start simple. Add one modifier at a time. See its effect before adding more.
2–4 modifiers is typical. Don't use all 10 at once.
Use masks for localized control instead of uniform effects.
Disable, don't delete. Use the checkbox to temporarily skip modifiers.
Save presets for reuse across projects.
Expressions add realism. Uniform values look CG; per-strand/per-clump variation looks natural.

Common Mistakes

Wrong order: Frizz before clumping. Always structure first, details last.
Too much frizz: Start with magnitude 0.5–1.5, increase gradually.
No variation: Uniform parameters look artificial. Use expressions or texture masks.
Ignoring Surface Offset: After heavy clumping/frizz, strands may penetrate the scalp. Add Surface Offset to fix.