The Fur Lab

Overview

The Fur Lab is a URP paint and groom toolkit. Soft shells, clothing fuzz, animal fur cards, and human hair all live in one Forge — and the fun is what you paint, not just what the material defaults to.

Stamp a soft circle or your own brush alphas. Lay down Color Stamps for markings and wild coat art. Tint channels, crank Coat Tint Glow for neon tips and emissive streaks, soak wet maps, pile snow on the high ground. Comb the flow. Grow a mane. Carve a mohawk. Stack a fuzzy hood over a Lit jacket. Put grass under someone’s feet with the same tools.

That’s the point: this pack is built so a character can look authored, not like every other soft shell demo online.

You pick a system in Fur Map Forge, paint in the Scene, and hit Bake Coat when the look is locked. Shells don’t need a custom render feature. Setup Checker covers Depth, MSAA, wind, and fins. User Guide is under Tools → The Fur Lab.

Why it stands out

• Scene painting, not slider soup: Comb, Length, Mask, Occlusion, Thickness, Width, Wet, Snow, Color, same map usage across coats
• Brush Stamp Alphas: Soft Circle out of the box; drop your own PNGs into Shared/Brush Stamp Alphas, rotate with Stamp Angle
• Color Stamps + Coat Tint: drop colored decals from Shared/Color Stamps; Coat Tint Amount blends markings ↔ base fur
• Coat Tint Glow: emissive punch on painted tint (neon hair tips, glowing streaks, stylized markings)
• Wet + Snow Special FX: paint where it sits; runtime Wet / Snow Amounts for weather and melt
• Fur Noise Forge: Fur Strands density so shells look like hair fibers, not mushy foam
• Fur Cards: place / erase / groom card-brush tufts (Cards Per Stamp, strand shapes, projected albedo)
• Human Hair Cards: Draw / Edit / Shape splines, fan commit, Hair* card brushes, guide hulls for buns and ponytails
• Hybrid & Dual Shell: soft undergrowth + cards/hair on top, or two shell layers with their own wet / snow / tint
• Wind + motion: WindZone into tips; motion lag on the ends while roots stay planted
• Bake Coat: maps and meshes land under Shared with your Set Name; Skinned or Static Mesh for hair

What you can build

• Stylized characters with painted hair color, glow, and groomed silhouette
• Creature coats with markings, wet weather, and snow on the back
• Parka / boot / collar fuzz on clothing (Clothing Fuzz)
• Beards, brows, bangs, ponytails, and full heads of hair
• Props and environment fluff (grass patches, soft trim, tufts)

One character can wear several systems at once — short beard shells, hood fuzz, hair cards with color stamps, grass underfoot.

What’s in the pack

Shell shaders

• Short Fur Shells: everyday coat (12 shells)
• Professional Fur Shells: dual-lobe sheen, distance fade, optional silhouette fins
• Clothing Fuzz: short nap for hats, collars, velvet, trim (4 shells)

Cards & hair

• Fur Cards: Fur* strand shapes, place / erase / groom
• Human Hair Cards: spline Draw / Edit / Shape, fan copies, Hair* card brushes
• Hair Guide Hulls: temporary ponytail / bun meshes to paint against (never baked into the hair)

Add your own

• Brush Stamp Alphas: map-paint stamp shapes
• Color Stamps: colored coat / card markings
• Hair Guide Meshes: authoring hulls (Create simple closed meshes)

Tools

• Fur Map Forge: wizard + Scene paint bar
• Fur Noise Forge: strand density / clump / patterns
• Fur Runtime Controller: wet / snow / coat tint masters (single, dual, hybrid)
• Wind Zone Bridge + Fur Motion Responder
• URP Setup Checker + User Guide

Human hair

Ctrl+click strand curves, edit points, shape width / twist / wave / tip taper. Fan Count previews copies; Commit Fan makes them real. Guide hulls give you something solid for ponytails and buns.

Bake as:

• Skinned: moves with the face / scalp (great for facial hair)
• Static Mesh: Bake to a prefab, share on other character by parenting them under the Head bone to reuse the style
• Drop card brush maps into Shared/Hair Card Alphas: Bake Coat packs the atlases and sets up the materials for you.

Includes

• Short / Professional / Clothing Fuzz / Fur Cards / Human Hair
• Fur Map Forge, Fur Noise Forge, Setup Checker, User Guide
• Runtime Controller, Wind Bridge, Motion Responder
• Brush Stamp Alphas, Color Stamps, Hair Card Alphas (card brushes), Hair Guide Meshes

Requirements

• Unity 2021.3 LTS or newer (including Unity 6)
• URP only (Built-in / HDRP not supported in V1)
• Depth Texture for snow shelter / depth reads
• Mesh Read/Write on any mesh you paint, place cards on, or grow hair from
• MSAA 2x+ (4x recommended) for Alpha To Coverage strand edges
• Shells (Short / Professional / Clothing Fuzz): SM4.0+ geometry shaders (DX11 / Vulkan / Metal). GLES falls back to the base mesh
• Human Hair Cards: SM4.5+ (DX11 / Vulkan / Metal). Use Fur Cards or a baked look on GLES
• Optional: TFL_FurShellRenderFeature only if you want Professional silhouette fins
• Optional: Opaque Texture only if this project also uses refraction (glass / water / slime)
• Cards still render on GLES. Shell fluff and live hair cards do not. Run Tools → The Fur Lab → URP Setup Checker after import.

Support

Part of our Lab pack lineup. If something looks off, run the URP Setup Checker first, then check the User Guide. Then if all else fails please reach out via my website and submit a support ticket.