Tressfx-solution to time cosuming polygonal hair modeling.

melviso

Just found out about Tressfx,a realtime hair simulation features that creates pretty close realistic hair strands and it simulates in realtime.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CpS7_-EX9a8"]Tomb Raider - Scavenger Den Gameplay [PC with tressFX] - YouTube[/ame]

Problem is its not that perfect but a step in the right direction.This probably means we all stop going through that task of modeling polygonal hair clumps and tweaking textures and lighting to get good results.

Do u still prefer going through the process of creating polygonal hair or this is better?Though I should point out there isn't public knowledge yet about the process involved in tressfx.I do think there might be limitations to using this feature though.

CrazyButcher

melviso wrote: »

This probably means we all stop going through that task of modeling polygonal hair clumps and tweaking textures and lighting to get good results.

you mean just like pixel art died with polygons or painting lighting into textures when real-time lighting evolved

rendering technology hardly changes things over night, let alone make other things distinct, there is so many different techniques in games how to render stuff, this is just another way to do hair.

I remember almost 10 years ago, there was an Nvidia demo with nice hair
http://http.developer.nvidia.com/GPUGems2/gpugems2_chapter23.html

but it would saturate the whole chip doing just that single character and hair

rube

I actually switched back from tressfx hair to regular hair in tomb raider. I found the tressfx hair bounced around way to much. Also, I'd wager making a tressfx hairstyle would take just as long as polygon model, just a guess though.

Ace-Angel

Yeah, no kidding. I wish more people would realize that just because something is automated and new, doesn't make it better, especially since as the artist you need to learn the tool and jumping from tool to tool won't solve any of their problems.

I wouldn't be surprised if this took longer to work with, with combing and all in a lagging viewport, if you want to take things into a truly next-gen working environment with on the fly feedback.

Also, as you mentioned, the hairy is too jumpy and has some nasty sorting issues with foliage and SRGB colors around the feathered edges.

Lastly, as Butch mentioned, this Tech has been around since what, the first Dawn/Fairy demo? And with each update getting better? It's very expensive to have it on one character (you easily get a 30-40% performance loss depending on your VGA and brand name), let alone trying to have all characters run with this tech.

Frump

I'm excited about it. It's cool to see new tech and that it's actually already implemented in a big game.

I don't think it will replace other things, but it will be awesome to see it around more.

Tomb Raider is only the first major implementation, so it can be tweaked and improved to be less bouncy in the future.

pior

What I find interesting is that the Tressfx hair most likely looks too bouncy because ... the animation blending system of the game makes her head jump all over the place to begin with.

This article covers the issue, and how bad at it most high-profile games are (most likely by favoring foot planting over neck stability)

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/178013/Head_over_heels_Upper_body_movement_in_gameplay.php#.UTu8btF26Bk

Now to be a bit of a troll ... take the original Tomb Raider. The animations were stiff and old school but at least the head was always perfectly stable. A realtime hair solution on this would look silky smooth !

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LgDFsziF4bw"]Tomb Raider 1 Walkthrough ~ Part 2 (Caves) - YouTube[/ame]

melviso

Combing and styling strand hair is now very easy and stable.Blender has this feature.I wonder why Maya lacks this.

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxwox9C280Y&feature=player_embedded"]Creating a Realistic Head in Blender -- part 09b -- Creating Hair - YouTube[/ame]

From the vid,u can see its quite easy to create and style.I think the problem is going to be getting the simulations to be fairly realistic.I think a lot of game houses might be adopting this for next generation games.Probably solve polygonal hair creating/styling problems.Tombraider was the first game to use it,right now it can drop performances on low spec pcs because it hasn't been fine tuned.I am pretty sure in a year or so,It would be better in terms of performance.