Mask to hide behind a skin and vertices manipulation.

novus

In my Unity project we are using Spine as a paper doll system and we have Hat skins and Hair skins.
Some of our hat skins are full on helmets or just small hats that do not cover the hair.

1- Is it possible to add a mask to the hat skin that would cover anything that the hat cannot cover and needs to cover?
2- Is it possible to manipulate the vertices of the hair under the hat skin to tuck it in properly?

Here are some screenshots
![https://ibb.co/VgFJD2h](https://)

![https://ibb.co/ZYBDN6p](https://)

Spinebot

In Spine, you can use clipping attachments to create masks that hide parts of other attachments, such as hair under a hat. However, clipping is a CPU-intensive operation and should be used sparingly. You can create a clipping attachment that matches the shape of the hat and use it to mask the hair. Keep in mind that clipping attachments can only use polygonal shapes, so you'll need to design your mask accordingly. For more information on clipping, you can refer to the Spine Clipping User Guide.
You can manipulate the vertices of the hair mesh to tuck it under the hat. This can be done by adjusting the mesh in the Spine Editor to fit under the hat. You can use linked meshes to create variations of the hair mesh that fit different hat shapes. This approach allows you to deform the hair mesh to fit under the hat without needing to create separate animations for each hat. For more details on mesh manipulation, you can refer to the Mesh Attachments User Guide.

Harald

@novus In addition to what Spinebot mentioned, depending on how you implemented the hair, you might perhaps want to change attachment (or skin-placeholder) visibility of hair, ear, etc. attachments when wearing a helmet. You could for example switch from normal hair to tucked-under hair attachments or disable it completely.

I would highly recommend avoiding clipping attachments in this use-case, as it's not really necessary.

novus

@Spinebot These are very helpful, I will inform the artist

@Harald Yes, I have already thought of that but it is not a viable option for our needs. For full on helmets yes that is completely doable but for other hats, we cannot just change hair.

Erika

I use a very simple trick for this: I add a blank pixel in the skin placeholder of the hair when a helmet is active. This way the hair will be replaced by that image automatically. It has worked wonders so far, so I hope it may also be feasable for you!

novus

Erika Yes it will work for full helmet, we already have none skins available, but for other normal hats, some part of the hair must be visible.

Erika

novus Sounds like a design problem then!
Assuming all your hair is weighted and solely animated with bones, I'd probably duplicate the hair in a new folder for hats, and readapt it in setup to fit the hats where it should peek out a little bit, then use hair from that folder instead of the standard one in such cases. Deforming the mesh in setup without adding direct deformations in the animations should still be a reasonable compromise and shouldn't impact performance or file size excessively.

Mesh tools can help in such cases to quickly change a mesh shape:
https://esotericsoftware.com/spine-mesh-tools