How did they do the fur in Tropical Freeze?

mrlafle

I just can't get over how good this fur looks. It's full, dynamic, relatively shiny, and it's all real-time. Any ideas on how they did it? At first I figured it was the old "fins and shells" but I don't see the hovering segments you get from that. Unfortunately there's no Iwata Asks for this game...

Snowfly

Looks like the old shell technique to me:
IMAGE

MrHobo

Looks like very dense alpha shells with each shells UV's scaled/offset slightly to give the illusion of groomed strands.