Nvidia HairWorks (computer graphics)

[EdG]

Here is some news for long-haired computer enthusiasts: Nvidia announced an improved technology for rendering realistic hair in video games.

NVIDIA Shakes Its Flowing Mane With Life-Like HairWorks 1.1 Demo (http://hothardware.com/news/nvidia-shakes-its-flowing-mane-with-life-like-hairworks-11-demo)

The article includes a good video.

Rendering realistic hair requires a lot of computation. This is especially difficult for video games that must be rendered in real-time (movies are rendered much more slowly at minutes per frame).

I note that the claim of 500,000 hairs is much more than the average person's 100,000-150,000. I suspect that the author meant segments of hair strands.

It is always good to see hair as a driver of advancements in computer technology. :cheese:
Ed

[meteor]

Awesome stuff! :applause Thanks so much for sharing, EdG! :thumbsup:

I know recreating realistic hair movement is a huge challenge in computer graphics (remember the much-discussed achievement for Brave/Merida's curly mane by Pixar (http://www.wired.com/2012/06/pl_bravehairtech/)?), so it's great to see such incredible improvement since then! :applause

By the way, all this stuff makes me think that someday we might use all this programming to create robots that will quickly scan super-matted/dreaded hair and find the path of least resistance and detangle it in no time! That would be so awesome! :cloud9:

[Loktra]

Wow! I especially loved the demo on the animals. After playing skyrim mods with long hair (but no physics whatsoever) this is just a dream come true. Unfortunately in this case, I'm probably going to be sticking with my AMD for a good long while.

I wrote a really long rant on my feelings about game hair, but I'll shorten it to this: The HairWorks hair is great, but I hope any games that make use of it in the future have facial animations and the like up to the same caliber.

I suppose this does give me some direction on what my next graphics card will be.

[EdG]

meteor - thanks for the link! :)

Loktra - I too own AMD video cards.
Ed

[Aderyn]

That's fantastic! I've always wanted long hair in video games, but it always has issues such as clipping/not laying properly/etc. I'd also love to see more curly hair! Nice to see some significant progress. :)

[EdG]

Aderyn - maybe we'll see more loose hair too (Laura Croft wore a braid because computers at that time couldn't depict anything else).
Ed

[DeadlyUnicorn]

I can not wait for the day every game has these features for all lengths and types of hair.. I'm thoroughly disgusted with hair in some games.. And honestly it isn't even so much the graphics most of the time but the style options.. The older games I understand they just couldn't do it very good but.. Some of the newer games (GTA5s female hair... The female online characters in general, what were they thinking?? x.x) I feel like they have no excuse lol. But I suppose it doesn't bother me too much. I'd rather have a good game than good graphics

[iYaap]

This is the best news since the calculating-machine! Guild Wars should instantly implement this technology! ;)

[EdG]

DeadlyUnicorn - I must admit that I'm not a gamer. I have always been interested in computers.

iYaap - we're the most likely people to cheer for computer graphics technology for long hair. :cheese:
Ed

[Nightshade]

Wow! I especially loved the demo on the animals. After playing skyrim mods with long hair (but no physics whatsoever) this is just a dream come true. Unfortunately in this case, I'm probably going to be sticking with my AMD for a good long while.

I wrote a really long rant on my feelings about game hair, but I'll shorten it to this: The HairWorks hair is great, but I hope any games that make use of it in the future have facial animations and the like up to the same caliber.

I suppose this does give me some direction on what my next graphics card will be.

I agree on Skyrim and modded hair. I can't wait for this (and I'm running NVIDIA so hurry it up, guys!)

[velorutionista]

That's really cool - especially on the animals (it's amazing how it makes them so much fluffier!)

[Ares]

AMD TressFX, anyone? :rolleyes:

[EdG]

Ares - I have read about AMD's TressFX. It is good to see that both Nvidia and AMD are working on the important things. ;)
Ed

[Ares]

Haha, yup. Don't think they ever really did anything with TressFX though. At least not from what I've noticed.

(Source: I have a Radeon 280. I'm not good at hardware or a big gamer, my BF gave me his old gaming PC haha)

[WannabeViking]

This has really come a long, long way. TressFX in the Tomb Raider reboot was pretty awesome; this is even better! Hopefully won't melt your GPU anymore either.