HairTechnique

Hair for in-game rendering can be a tough beast to master. Alpha blending is usually required to get soft feathery edges, but can cause sorting problems. Lighting can also be difficult, so hair is usually rendered using an emissive shader (without any lighting at all). If the hair is being lit, options include bent vertex normals, normal mapping, and anisotropic mapping.

Hair Technique Links

• How do I create real-time hair for games? by Tom "crazyfool" Parker, using Zbrush and Maya to create polygonal hair strips. (4MB backup PDF File:How do I create real-time hair for games 3DArtist Magazine.pdf)
• Fur breakdown Polycount forum thread
• Hair Authoring Tools and Techniques Round Up Polycount forum thread
• UDK - Translucent Hair Sorting
• UDK - Anisotropic Lighting
• Shader FX - Fur Shader Youtube video. Shader FX also has a hair shader with anisotropic lighting.
• Best method to create lowpoly hairs? Polycount forum thread
• Low Poly Hair with Gimp and 3ds Max ($) by 'ultramedia'
• Step-by-Step Example of Hair Creation Process in 3ds Max by Athey 'd4m4pma' Moravitz
• Creating Hair Using Alpha (Gears of War 2) by Kevin Lanning. Explanation here.
• Varga Hair Tutorial by Paul Tosca
• Pandicarus from Dominance War III Polycount forum thread, fur technique explained by Mike 'Squirrely Jones' Voeller: (2MB backup PDF File:Squirrelyjones fur.pdf)
• Using Pre-Rendered Fur Tiles for Texturing, with Maya Fur & Photoshop from the Polycount forum
• best videogame hair thread from GameArtisans
• Uncharted 2: Among Thieves art work thread from ZBrushCentral
• Hair Styling: A Teenager’s Dream, An Artist’s Nightmare (3MB PDF) - Bioware's Dragon Age presentation from GDC 2007
• File:Making of sotc.pdf (PDF, English translation) - Explanation about the "fins & shells" technique.
• ZBrush Tutorial: Bird of Prey
• Tutorial on using curves for long hair by Scythe

Hair Technique Examples

Fluffy fur used for this helmet. Polycount Forum thread Fur breakdown. Image by Joost Vanhoutte.

The Harpy and Elite Mount characters from Allods Online. Images by Astrum Nival.

The hair setup for Dominic Santiago in Gears of War 2, on PC/Xbox360. More pics here, words here]. Images by Epic Games.

Yuna from Final Fantasy X, on PS2. Images by Square Enix.

Hair from Final Fantasy 13, on PS3. Images by Square Enix		Screengrab from the PS3 running at 720p. The hair may be using screen-space stipple. Images by Square Enix.

Alisa Bosconovitch from Tekken 6, on PS3. Images by Namco Bandai Games

Varga from Dominance War II, in-depth tutorial. Images by Paul Tosca.

Pandicarus from Dominance War III, fur technique explained File:Squirrelyjones fur.pdf and here in the Polycount thread. Images by Mike 'Squirrely Jones' Voeller.

Hair from "Shadow of the Colossus" using the "fins & shells" technique, on PS2. Images from the "making of" article, in Japanese, and File:Making of sotc.pdf (PDF). Images by Sony Computer Entertainment, Inc..

Breakdowns of the "fins & shells" technique explained in this CGTalk thread. Images by Jason Falconer.

Drake from "Uncharted 2: Among Thieves", on PS3. Maya wireframe (top), in-game screenshots (bottom). Images by Rich Diamant.

Chloe from "Uncharted 2: Among Thieves", on PS3. Maya wireframe (top), in-game screenshots (bottom). Images by Rich Diamant.

---