Bilkent University
Department of Computer Engineering

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S E M I N A R

 

A New Approach to Human Hair Simulation

 

H. Dogu Taskiran

MSc.Student
Computer Engineering
Bilkent University

One of the many challenges in simulating believable virtual humans has been to produce realistic looking hair. The virtual humans, two decades ago, were given polygonal hair structure. Today, this is not acceptable. Realistic visual depiction of virtual humans has improved over the years. Attention has been given to all the details necessary for producing visually convincing virtual humans and many improvements have been done to this effect. On a scalp, human hair are typically 100,000 to 150,000 in number. Geometrically they are long thin curved cylinders having varying thickness. The strands of hair can have any degree of waviness from straight to curly. The hair color can change from white to grey, red to brown, due to the pigmentation, and have shininess. Thus, difficulties of simulating hair stem from the huge number and geometric intricacies of individual hair, complex interaction of light and shadow among the hairs, the small scale of thickness of one hair compared to the rendered image and intriguing hair to hair interaction while in motion. We are in the process of developing a new method based on the micropolar elasticity theories which is being applied for structural dynamics of slender like bodies in civil engineering, mechanical engineering, MEMS devices etc. to the simulation of slender structures like human hair, grass etc. Also new trends in human hair simulation and rendering will be discussed to be able to generate photorealistic human hair.

 

DATE: May 16, 2005, Monday @ 17:40
PLACE: EA 409