Tae-Yong Kim and Ulrich Neumann

Abstract Hair-to-hair interaction is often ignored in human hair modeling, due to its computational and algorithmic complexity. In this paper, we present our experimental approach to simulate the complex behavior of long human hair, taking into account the hair-to-hair interactions. For long hair, we propose the thin shell volume (TSV) model for enhancing hair realism by simulating complex hair-hair interaction. The TSV is a thin bounding volume that encloses a given hair surface. The TSV method enables virtual hair combing for surface-model hairstyles. Combing produces the effects of hair-hair interaction that occur in real human hair. Any hair model based on a surface representation can benefit from this approach. The TSV is presented mainly as a tool to modeling human hair, but this model also gives rise to global hair animation control.