How can I add natural secondary motion to hair in animation?

[Andrew_P]

I’ve been trying to animate a character’s hair blowing in the wind for a project, but my keyframes feel too stiff and uniform. I’m not sure how to make the individual strands and clumps move with more overlapping secondary motion that feels natural.

[Frank_J]

I split the hair into a few clusters and gave each cluster its own wind phase, then compared the sway curves to a simple sine test and felt the overlaps loosen up a bit. The big thing was letting the ends lag behind the roots so they accumulate a bit of drag, which helps with secondary motion.

[AndrewM]

I pushed more drag on the longer strands and kept the shorter ones snappier, and the timing shifted a lot when I nudged the wind change by a frame or two.

[AdamYW]

Are you sure the problem isn't the rig or the curve interpolation? Sometimes the stiffness comes from constraints that clamp the motion before the animation curves even move.

[Luna.R]

I had a detour thinking about cloth sims in other shots, watched a couple of cape tests, and then came back to hair with a slower bake and looser constraints. It felt a touch better, but the result was still inconsistent.