Creating Virtual Fur and Hair Styles for Synthetic Actors

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss both the aesthetic and technical concerns involved in the creation of synthetic hair and fur using our Styler and Hair Rendering software. Both pieces of software described in this paper were originally conceived for creating any kind of hair and rendering images of natural-looking hair. Taking advantage of the impressive realism of these images, we present in this paper an exploration of the software’s capacity to improve the appearence and quality of hair in synthetic human images, one of our main research areas.

In Section 2. we summarize some of the approaches to creating synthetic hairstyles. In the two following sections we describe the basic processes of the Styler and Hair Rendering programs for modeling and rendering hair, their technical improvements and aesthetics related to the main interface’s limitations. In the last section we present all the steps involved in making hair styles, beards, moustaches, furs, hair rendering with facial texture mapping, and hair growth animation. The images resulting from this interactive work are shown on their corresponding section.