GPU Pro 5

5

II

TressFX: Advanced Real-Time

Hair Rendering

Timothy Martin, Wolfgang Engel, Nicolas

Thibieroz, Jason Yang, and Jason Lacroix

5.1 Introduction

Hair is one of the key materials in the realm of realistic real-time character ren-

dering that has proven to be a difficult endeavour. The conventional approach

would be to author hair using “fins and shells” or a standard mesh, then use a

combination of textures, noise maps, and anisotropic lighting to produce the ef-

fect of a full head of hair [Scheuermann 04]. In this chapter, we cover a real-time

hair rendering technique that renders hair as individual strands and how that

technique was modified and optimized ...