Creating Real-Time Marilyn Monroe Hairstyle in 3D

Introduction 

We are MountainDog Studios, an independent game studio based in the Netherlands, passionately building our project called Cold Paws, a story about Mounti (a mountain dog puppy) and Chitti (a ginger stray cat) and their beautiful bond. We’re just a small indie team of two, working hard every day on our dream game.

Right now, our only income comes from client work, and we use that to fund the game. It’s not easy; we work long hours, balancing game development with freelance projects.

We just started uploading assets to Fab a few days ago. We haven’t sold anything yet, but we’re learning and planning to create more. These assets are our way of raising support, little by little, while still doing what we love.

It’s a slow journey, but it’s full of heart and passion. We believe in what we’re building, and we can’t wait to share more of Mounti and Chitti’s world with you soon.

Our digital dog Mounti was featured on 80 Level two years ago, which was a huge moment for us and gave us the motivation to push even further. Right now, we’re developing more polished and advanced realistic versions of our main characters with more optimized polygonal cards, and we’re incredibly excited to reveal them.

We’ll be sharing more about the game and its story very soon – stay tuned!

Here is a sneak peek of Mounti directly from the Unreal Engine's viewport. 

Chitti is still in the early stages of modeling. Modeling animals in a highly realistic way is extremely time-consuming. We are aiming for cinema-quality characters using only real-time optimized cards, instead of Alembic grooms, for performance reasons.

Marilyn Monroe-Inspired 3D Hairstyle

We recently created a high-end 3D hairstyle inspired by Marilyn Monroe. It was designed for real-time gameplay and cinematics.

We collected detailed photo references of Marilyn Monroe from various time periods and angles. This helped us understand the volume, curl pattern, and silhouette required to faithfully recreate her iconic hairstyle. To guide the grooming process, we also drew over the reference images, sketching the hero shapes directly onto the photos. This visual breakdown allowed us to identify the most important forms, flow direction, and layering before moving into 3D, making our grooming process more focused and efficient.

Using Blender’s hair particle system, we generated strands on a plane. This setup allowed us to focus purely on the shape and flow of individual clumps for texture baking. The same method can also be implemented using Maya XGen or Houdini grooming tools, depending on the artist’s preference.

Once the strand shapes are ready, we convert them into mesh geometry. These mesh strips are then prepared for the next stage, where they are baked onto a flat plane to generate hair textures.

We randomly select hair strips and divide them into 4 or more groups, assigning different materials to each. These material groups will later be used to generate ID maps, color variations, root tint maps, and more.

Texturing & Baking

The hair geometry was baked into hair plane strip textures using Marmoset Toolbag 4. These texture maps are ideal for card-based systems and include:

• Alpha
• AO (Ambient Occlusion)
• Color
• Neutral
• Depth
• Flow
• ID
• Normal
• Root Maps

We used Blender’s Curves to place the cards, but most of the work was done manually. You can use general polygonal modeling techniques when placing the cards on the head; you just need to think artistically about how to curl specific shapes effectively.

When creating hairstyles like this, the key is to start with the most iconic and recognizable shapes. These primary forms define the character and immediately communicate the style. Once the major silhouettes and curls are established, you can fill in the gaps with supporting strands to add volume, flow, and natural breakup. This approach ensures the hairstyle feels both structured and dynamic, with the hero hairs guiding the visual narrative.

One of the key challenges we face during hairstyle production is achieving clean, iconic shapes while keeping the polygon count optimized. Balancing visual fidelity with real-time performance requires precise control, especially when shaping hair cards to follow the silhouette of the groom.

A major focus is capturing the hero shapes: the defining curves and flows that give the hairstyle its character. This often involves manually placing and adjusting individual clumps of vertices with great care. For example, when shaping a curl, we closely study the reference and then arrange the hair card clumps to match the arc and direction of that curl.

We use smooth selection and rotation tools, working around custom pivot points to gently bend and shape each clump into form. In Blender, we also take advantage of curve-based deformers when needed, which provide additional flexibility and control over the natural flow of the strands.

You can render the hairstyle using:

• Blender Cycles
  Great for realistic rendering.
• Marmoset Toolbag 4
  Ideal for real-time lighting, baking, and previewing textures with ease. Also great for real-time presentations, with easy material setup for people who can't use advanced engines like Unreal Engine 5.
• Unreal Engine 5
  Real-time rendering using our advanced hair shader in UE5.
  This shader includes Flow Map, Root Tint, Depth, Spec, and more.
  Artists can achieve film-quality hair in UE5 with minimal setup, using this shader with added alpha transparency features.

Conclusion

The shader is available with our hairstyle package on our store page. It will also help us to raise funds for our game. We are planning to release more art soon on Fab. 

You can find our art on ArtStation and Instagram.

MountainDog Studios, Art Studio