How do I make dynamic 3D-printable hair?

Question

I am trying to make dynamic hair that can be 3D-printed. It needs to be physics-enabled (so some kind of particle system, maybe?) and, through some kind of transformation, needs to end up as a single "blob" mesh with no gaps or interior faces, so it can be 3D-printed.

I've so far considered / tried:

• Manually sculpting the hair - but then it's not dynamic!
• Soft bodies - but they don't have the same dynamics as hair!
• Metaballs x Hair particle systems - but I haven't found any way to combine the two!

What do you people think? Any help would be much appreciated!

Answer 1

Blender 2.80, add hair at a reduced count, comb it out, go to modifier then convert. Then place the origin in a center point of the head. In edge, select all, "A". Now "E" for extrude, then "S" for scale, making face. Now in object mode add the modifier for solidify.

Takes some playing around. Maybe shrink a sphere to this. depends. Shrink works pretty good for body mesh expressions on Manuel Bastioni models. Nice clean, crisp slice, I always delete behind the eyes and internal mouth.