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NVIDIA Shakes Its Flowing Mane With Life-Like HairWorks 1.1 Demo
MojoKid writes: Previously, you might not have thought much about a wig on a manikin, but checking out NVIDIA's latest tech demo, as a gamer or 3D graphics artists, hair can be pretty interesting. The video is of NVIDIA HairWorks 1.1, a simulation and rendering tool for creating lifelike hair and fur in video games. In the clip, NVIDIA shows off a Fabio-style hairdo with about 500,000 hairs that bounce and sway as the camera circles and forces move the hair. If this was a real wig, it might unseat one of the most boring videos ever. However, as an example of what modern 3D graphics can do with hair physics, it's pretty darn cool. Previous demos of HairWorks showed up to 22,000 strands of hair, making the jump to half a million much much more significant. The video was recorded with ShadowPlay on a GeForce GTX 980, which has some serious muscle, though it's not the most powerful card in NVIDIA's lineup. What's cooler than making life-like human hair? Putting flowing manes on vicious monsters, of course. Apparently, NVIDIA HairWorks simulation technology also plays a role in bringing more than a dozen creatures to life in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
Bastards ... now I can't get this out of my head!!
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Some of us would be happy just to have bald spots rendered properly.
Have gnu, will travel.
Ah, but just think about it ... hook this puppy up to your webcam, and you can stare at yourself with flowing locks.
It'll be like the Mirror of Erised from Harry Potter. People will just wile away their lives basking in the glory of having Fabio hair.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
In the demo videos they have the fabio hair which looks pretty cool. The hair blurs a bit when it is in motion, but it still looks pretty good. Unfortunately the video game footage from farcry isn't nearly as slick. The change from a nicely rendered texture map to the hair is like the difference between fairly believable animals to animal drawings that were smudged by an eraser. This may be a case of what happens when just a little bit of the computational resources are used (with the rest to scene rending) vs all of the computational resources. Judging from their demo it is currently a net negative in games. In 10 years when we can get the same quality of the stand alone demo with just a fraction of a 100 TFLOP GPU it will be pretty awesome.
Please stop.
So sad you grew up on 90s pr0n, otherwise you'd know pubes don't really flow, they're rather static
I'm shaking my head already at this headline.
The hair blurs a bit when it is in motion,
Yeah, due to the video compression.
I can look in a real mirror if I want to see myself with flowing locks... I am frequently called Fabio and women in bars that I don't know and sometimes are there with a jealous boyfriends or husbands want to play with my hair.
Although it doesn't always work out that well. Once my brother and I went to the store to pick up some stuff to BBQ and his mother in-law saw us in the car. She called his wife and told her that she had seen her husband driving with a skinny blond bimbo.
I'd like to see them try to render anime-style hairs instead. I've never seen it done perfectly, but this seems powerful enough to at least try.
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Fallout 4 needs wooly deathclaws.
Just sayin'.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Only runs on software with an ATI card for some reason even though the support Tressfx
http://saveie6.com/
You are drunk!
This is cool and all, but having seen hairworks in real games now, it looks better when it is turned off.
I think for HairWorks 2.0, they should simulate that beautiful mane getting tangled, because we all know you don't have much time for hair care when you're fighting orcs or dungeon creatures.
If it wasn't vendor locked to only work on their own hardware. The gaming industry needs to reform itself and stop taking bribes from hardware vendors to use vendor specific code that is perfectly capable of running on other vendors' hardware.
NVIDIA fails basic physiology. A human only has a fraction of the half million hairs on this model.
"Politicians and diapers must be changed often, and for the same reason."
Now can they do dirty hairs dynamics?
The simulation still uses guide hairs. You can still recognize the hair strands following the individual guides around. This is one of the most prevalent artefacts of hair simulations to date and I'm a bit disappointed that it's that obvious in the demo. However, they do seem to render each hair seperately, which is a lot of effert and potentially a ton of overdraw. And they need to do some kind of dynamic depth sorting - probably per pixel. That's where it actually gets impressive.
The GTX 980 is about $400, not $1,250. But otherwise, yeah.
Eagles may soar, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
I think we know what nVidia is using to to power it
I mean you have to expect some dandruff and loose hairs falling off during such extreme movement.
I run Nvidia software, it installs 5 services, 4 of which I have disabled; only the Display Driver service runs. I don't play games in 3D, stream video any game servers, or need to be told when to update my drivers. I also don't need my graphic card settings changed at the whim of a program (service).
Now GameWorks is shown, which would be service when/if released. Much like their Physics engine (PhysX) that I've never known a game or application I've used use.
The PhysX directory is not only the first directory in ones Windows Path, if you remove it or place it to the end it fixes the "error". Meaning that directory is checked first for any application (.exe), .dll, .bat, .cmd or anything called. Yes you can speed up your Windows OS drive by putting that directory at the end of the Path, mayhaps not by that much but every little bit helps.
"C:\Program Files (x86)\NVIDIA Corporation\PhysX\Common" is the path and one of those services I have disabled does stop the "error" from being found, replacing it at the beginning of the path. I disable them all after a driver update so not sure which; but Nvidia Geforce Experience Service sure seems a good bet.
And I do play games when I can, Battle Field 3 (all high or max video settings) still a favorite.
The greatest thing about not going bald at my age is that the women love to play with my hair. I keep it long just because I am a pervert. Also, I like my hair. Also, it does not look a damned thing like that picture in the article. No, I did not read the article (I am no heretic) but I did open it to see if there were pictures.
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
Almost everything.
TressFX that AMD came out with a year ago and isn't locked to just AMD cards?
My wife went and got her hair cut in a short bob once although I didn't say it she could tell I didn't like it. At the time I had a fairly short haircut and she told me "It's longer than your hair and will always be longer." Wrong move, I let my hair grow out and it's been an on going joke for the past 8-9 years.