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Cutting-Edge Animation
MiNaAu
Member Posts: 382
Hey everyone, I just found this in the newspaper, interesting development in digital hair. What will this latest development in graphics mean for games and animated films? Does hair really affect the way we see things 
?
Simulating galaxy-wide space battles? Not a problem. Showing dinosaurs rampaging through New york? Easy-oeasy. Recreating a Hoxton fin? Now, that's hard. For years, the challenge that has had the computer animators scratching their heads is creating realistic digital hair.
"Simulating a mass of curls is one of the most complex problems out there." says Frederic Leroy, director of the physics department at L'Oreal's Advanced Research Laboratory, A typical head (Matt Lucas and Patrick Stewart aside) contains 120,000 to 150,000 strands of fuzzy, wispy straight or permed hair each moving independently when you move your head, takj ir sunoky stand in the wind.
"Motion is the hardest part to simulate," says Leroy, "Up till now, computer models just haven't been able to render moving hair in a realistic, physical way." If you try to copy hair and get it wrong the results look terrible. The film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was the first computer-generated imagery movie that tried to show real people. Despite good skin colouring and smooth movements, it's digital characters made audiences uncomfortable and the movie flopped at the box office. It seems that while we like animated toys, robots and animals, digital people often just look weird - and much of our distaste is due to stiff, unnatural virtual haircuts.
This is the problem that researchers at L'Oreal's laboratory set out to tackle and, after five years of pulling their hair out, they think they've cracked it. "We started by modelling the physical characteristics of a single strand of hair. Even with powerful computer and the latst algorithms, that took two years," says Leroy. "Then it took three years to integrate that fibre into a model of a head of hair. But we've now got a well-rendered and physically realistic description of hair."
?Simulating galaxy-wide space battles? Not a problem. Showing dinosaurs rampaging through New york? Easy-oeasy. Recreating a Hoxton fin? Now, that's hard. For years, the challenge that has had the computer animators scratching their heads is creating realistic digital hair.
"Simulating a mass of curls is one of the most complex problems out there." says Frederic Leroy, director of the physics department at L'Oreal's Advanced Research Laboratory, A typical head (Matt Lucas and Patrick Stewart aside) contains 120,000 to 150,000 strands of fuzzy, wispy straight or permed hair each moving independently when you move your head, takj ir sunoky stand in the wind.
"Motion is the hardest part to simulate," says Leroy, "Up till now, computer models just haven't been able to render moving hair in a realistic, physical way." If you try to copy hair and get it wrong the results look terrible. The film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within was the first computer-generated imagery movie that tried to show real people. Despite good skin colouring and smooth movements, it's digital characters made audiences uncomfortable and the movie flopped at the box office. It seems that while we like animated toys, robots and animals, digital people often just look weird - and much of our distaste is due to stiff, unnatural virtual haircuts.
This is the problem that researchers at L'Oreal's laboratory set out to tackle and, after five years of pulling their hair out, they think they've cracked it. "We started by modelling the physical characteristics of a single strand of hair. Even with powerful computer and the latst algorithms, that took two years," says Leroy. "Then it took three years to integrate that fibre into a model of a head of hair. But we've now got a well-rendered and physically realistic description of hair."
