Realistic Hair Simulation

The last five years have seen a profusion of innovative solutions to one of the most challenging tasks in character synthesis: hair simulation. This class covers both recent and novel research ideas in hair animation and rendering, and presents time tested industrial practices that resulted in spectacular imagery. The course is aimed at an intermediate level and addresses the special-effects developers and technical directors who are looking for innovation as well as proven methodologies in hair simulation. The audience will get a good grasp of the state of the art in hair simulation and will have plenty of working solutions that they can readily implement in their production pipelines. The course will also be a boot-camp for aspiring computer graphics researchers interested in physically based modeling in computer graphics. The class addresses the special-effects developers and technical directors who are looking for innovation as well as proven methodologies in hair simulation. The audience will get a good grasp of the state of the art in hair simulation and will have plenty of working solutions that they can readily implement in their production pipelines. The class will also be a boot-camp for aspiring computer graphics researchers interested in physically based modeling. The class covers two crucial tasks in hair simulation: animation and rendering. For hair animation, we first discuss recent successful models for simulating the dynamics of individual hair strands, before presenting viable solutions for complex hair-hair and hair-body interactions. For rendering, we address issues related to shading models, multiple scattering, and volumetric shadows. We finally demonstrate how hair simulation techniques are nowadays developed and applied in the feature films industry to produce outstanding visual effects. Prerequisites: Familiarity with fundamentals of computer graphics, physical simulation and physically based rendering is strongly recommended but not mandatory. Understanding of numerical linear algebra, differential equations, numerical methods, rigid-body dynamics, collision detection and response, physics-based illumination models, fluid-dynamics would be a plus. Target audiences include special effects developers, technical directors, game developers, researchers, or any one interested in physically based modeling for computer graphics.