2008 ACM SIGGRAPH Class on
Realistic Hair Simulation -- Animation and Rendering
Friday 15 August, 8:30 am - 12:15 pm



Class Overview

Summary Statement

The last five years have seen a profusion of innovative solutions to one of the most challenging tasks in character synthesis: hair simulation. This class covers both recent and novel research ideas in hair animation and rendering, and presents time tested industrial practices that resulted in spectacular imagery.

Available for download:

  • Submission Abstract [PDF]
  • Class Proposal and Syllabus [PDF]
  • Class Notes [PDF]


Class Organizer

Florence Bertails
INRIA Rhône-Alpes
Florence.Bertails@inrialpes.fr


Class Lecturers

  • Marie-Paule Cani
    National Polytechnique de Grenoble, France
    Marie-Paule.Cani@imag.fr

  • Sunil Hadap
    Adobe Systems, formerly PDI/Dreamworks, USA
    sunilhadap@acm.org

  • Florence Bertails
    INRIA Rhône-Alpes, Grenoble, France
    Florence.Bertails@inrialpes.fr

  • Ming C. Lin
    University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA
    lin@cs.unc.edu

  • Kelly Ward
    Disney Animation, USA
    kelly.ward@disney.com

  • Steve Marschner
    Cornell University, USA
    srm@cs.cornell.edu

  • Tae-Yong Kim
    Rhythm & Hues Studios, USA
    tae@rhythm.com

  • Zoran Kacic-Alesic
    Industrial Light & Magic, USA
    zoran@ilm.com


  • Abstract

    The class addresses the special-effects developers and technical directors who are looking for innovation as well as proven methodologies in hair simulation. The audience will get a good grasp of the state of the art in hair simulation and will have plenty of working solutions that they can readily implement in their production pipelines. The class will also be a boot-camp for aspiring computer graphics researchers interested in physically based modeling.

    The class covers two crucial tasks in hair simulation: animation and rendering. For hair animation, we first discuss recent successful models for simulating the dynamics of individual hair strands, before presenting viable solutions for complex hair-hair and hair-body interactions. For rendering, we address issues related to shading models, multiple scattering, and volumetric shadows. We finally demonstrate how hair simulation techniques are nowadays developed and applied in the feature films industry to produce outstanding visual effects.

    Copyright © 2008.