Conclusions

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During the course of this project one thing became clear. I was not going to be able to achieve photo-realistic hair. The technology needed to do this is not available and the techniques are not fine-tuned enough. There are many other additions I would have liked to make to get the hair looking more realistic, but unfortunately there was not enough time.

When I started this project I had only read about other peoples work in this area. I wanted to make my contribution with this project. I feel that the work that was done on this project was most unique in the way that I made the hair behave. I treated the hair like a particle system of strings. While I have read, in almost every paper, about particle systems being used for hair, I had never once heard the mention of strings. Strings allow a unique pattern of behavior which, I feel, lends itself to natural phenomena like wind or water. It is in this way that I feel this project contributes to the solution of realistic hair rendering.

While strings, modeled as is, does look impressive, there are many things that need to be changed about them before the can be used effectively for hair. One thing is the bending of the strands. A limitation of the angle that a joint can bend is necessary so that the hairs behave more realisticly. Also the elasticity of the hair must be tweaked.

In conclusion, hair is an important part of computer graphics/animation for people or animals. It is a subtle but large part of our recognition for a realistic computer-generated being. Hopefully, one day, hair will be as easy and commonplace to render as a sphere.

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jhoward@wpi.edu 1998