Dynamic Hair in udk

melviso

Been doing research on hair simulation using udk.I intend to import a character with long curly black hair into udk.I intend to try out the tressfx or nvidia hair thingy but I am wondering if this is possible in udk.
Found this thread:
http://www.polycount.com/forum/showthread.php?t=97353
http://www.nvidia.com/content/PDF/GDC2011/Epic.pdf
http://translate.google.com/translate?act=url&hl=en&ie=UTF8&prev=_t&rurl=translate.google.com&sl=zh-CN&tl=en&u=http://www.cnblogs.com/miloyip/archive/2011/06/14/alice_madness_returns_hair.html

I am particularly interested in how the hair in alice madness was done but I have no knowledge of programming.I am guessing the dev team for alice used their own inhouse program?
I downloaded this demo from nvidia's website
[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sY_aMJC1RlA"]Hair Tesselation Demo (DirectX 11) 1080p - YouTube[/ame]

Is there a way this can be used in udk.I have no idea how go about generating the hair strands for use in a game engine.Or one can just import hair splines from blender,maya,or 3dsmax to get the hair strands in?

Eric Chadwick

For creating hair planes, see http://wiki.polycount.com/HairTechnique

melviso

I know how to make polygonal hair using alpha planes.I am looking into trying out strand like simulated hair instead of polygonal ones.
I recall this was possible in tombraider 2013 as well as with Alice madness.I downloaded the nvidia hair demo and it runs smoothly on my laptop.Is there a way to incoporate nvidia hair into UDK or UDK does not currently support realtime hair strands.
I am also looking into Maya Lt because of shaderfx.I seems like a somewhat alternate version of Udk with realtime effects and tesselation now possible in the viewport.I wonder if it supports audiofiles import into a scene as well.But the drawbacks are MayaLt won't be able to support large scenes,hair curves,apex cloth or god rays light shafts like udk.

melviso

I asked around and I am being told most games don't use the strand method because it will compromise performance.Polygonal hair is a very time consuming to set up and doesn't work with long haired characters.Duplicating hair clumps is very repetitive,animating it is going to take time as well.Considering next gen consoles,won't this be possible?

Eric Chadwick

Unlikely.

Graphics card demos are rarely easy to implement in an actual game, because there's a lot more going on in a game than in a demo, so everything needs to be very performant.

Polygonal hair is still the way to go.

twigs192

http://youtu.be/LRcwHG9F0OA

Been working on trying to replicate Alice Madness Returns hair physics in Unity3d, this is what I've got so far.


Nothing is baked, 100% Dynamic!

You can grab the demo scene here: http://www.mediafire.com/download/8hw860c5ac6lnab/Hair_test.rar

melviso

Nice work,twigs192.Looks really good.Thanks for the link.

Mark Dygert

I think the closest we will see in this generation is polygonal hair with a dynamic cloth driver. I doubt we'll see strand by strand based physics anytime soon, unless that is the only thing running. You have to balance it all out.

Long haired characters have always been a problem and will continue to be problems for the foreseeable future.

melviso

I think so as well.Although Alice madness was really well done.Nvidia apex cloth as well as bullet seem to be coming along nicely.I don't think udk supports bullet though.Would really love to see an apex plugin for Blender but that isn't going to happen anytime soon.