Hair

The real trick is getting hair and things like grass to move realistically. Disney and Pixar are only now getting to the point where they can do this convincingly in animated films, so we're probably not there yet in HL2. But the hair model does look better (even if it doesn't move).
 
I'm just wondering how they made it .. is it some sort of a semi-transparent texture?
 
Final Fantasy:Spirits Within and Monsters Inc were the first two movies that did hair really well. The main character in FF had like 3000 independently animated strands. Sully's fur is amazing to see. When he sleds down the himalayas and lands in the snow. The end shot when he is face down in the snow has the best wind-on-fur animation I've ever seen. Indistinguishable from reality.
 
Sully's hair was done really well. Pixar had to write all this software that did nothing but control how his hair reacted in different situations/environments. But, considering Monsters Inc. isn't something that's rendered in real time, unlike HL2, I doubt we'll be seeing anything that impressive anytime soon.

Originally posted by SidewinderX143
no comment.....
Click to expand...
Then why did you?
 
Finding Nemos sea scapes is pretty amazing too..
 
Its pretty good, But i think its just a transparent image
 
yes, i agree with SPUD, it is still a block, (look at top) with them using sigluar layers, with a transparancy map...as seen in ut2k3, but done slightly more convincingly...
 
Originally posted by $pazmatazz

Then why did you? [/B]
Click to expand...

to make the point that I find the "digital pimpage" comment a bit weird. it is often used in this regard.


:)
 
everything in hl2 is rendered realtime, so the hair textures look really awesome for something that's supposed to rendered in such a short time whereas pixar films are obviously scripted and can take all the tiem they want to make sweet looking hair or grass.
 
Notice that Alyxs' hair is mostly covered (by some sort of head band) this is probably to reduce the ammount of hair the game has to draw. It is a usual practice in games to give characters haircuts that are easy to model (like Lara Croft's ponytail)
 
Pixar films are definately scripted.......

but anyhow, there may be an all new renderinig technique that allows hairs/wires to be drawn as black lines with a certain thickness, so polycountts are affected manttthis keyboard sucks
 
Actually the program that was written for the hair did render it in real-time. That is before it was recorded, so it was actually pre-rendered but, well you know what I mean. It took position and movement and gave the hair realistic movement. It's in the DVD, it's quite funny watching it in testing stages ^^

I guess this means it would be possible ingame, it'd just take alot of power for so many strands. Since these are obviously not individual hairs like in movies, they'd be easy to move around using the HL2 physics engine alone. The powerlines move from wind, why not hair?
 
I guess they took the finalfantasy spirits within hair further then the lame shagfur plugin for max :) wich renders individual hair lines and you can change it. by moving some base splines to guide the hair from the source (head to the points)
 
You can use some current techniques to make somewhat lofelike hair (nothing like pixar, but it will move) By attaching ALOT of bones to the head and having some hair textures attached to the bones. with currently available games you still have to animate the "Hair Bones".
With HL2's ragdoll effects you MIGHT be able to get the hair bones to flop around without animation (yet to be seen).

I predict that someday we'll have pixar quality realtime hair animation, but the CPU's required to runa game like that are a little ways off still.
 
I'm sure we could do some pretty hair stuff, but read my signature :)

We'd have to choose carrefully which pretty effect we want to do (even if it is not in the game itself) otherwise it will probably be freezing as hell
 
Originally posted by RoyalEF
Final Fantasy:Spirits Within and Monsters Inc were the first two movies that did hair really well. The main character in FF had like 3000 independently animated strands. Sully's fur is amazing to see. When he sleds down the himalayas and lands in the snow. The end shot when he is face down in the snow has the best wind-on-fur animation I've ever seen. Indistinguishable from reality.
Click to expand...


the reason it looked so good in FF is because whenever they did close ups with hair moveing they would key-frame the whole sequence. extremely time consuming.
 
Do you have proof that the hair we see in that screenshot isn't just a texture with alpha channels?

I welcome myself to the forums ;) ...it's great to be here!
 
Hi jhero :)

Anyway, about hair movement/rendering, ceown posted Gabe's reply about jiggling (pity we won't see any DOA bouncing) where it's stated that they'd focus on cloth/hair animation.
I take for granted they're not using mere alpha textures for hair :cheese:
 
Originally posted by Pr()ZaC
Hi jhero :)

Anyway, about hair movement/rendering, ceown posted Gabe's reply about jiggling (pity we won't see any DOA bouncing) where it's stated that they'd focus on cloth/hair animation.
I take for granted they're not using mere alpha textures for hair :cheese:
Click to expand...

God .. what a stupid email. No wonder Gabe doesn't always wanna reply to our questions. :LOL: :LOL:
 
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