Rendering Hair using Pixel Blending and Shadow Buffers
André M. LeBlanc, Russell Turner
Journal of Visualization and Computer Animation John Wiley: 92-97 Vol.
2, No. 3.
Keywords
Hair, Human Animation, Alpha-Blending, Shadow Buffers, Particle Systems.
Abstract
A technique is described for adding natural-looking hair to standard
rendering algorithms. Using an explicit hair model in which each individual
hair is represented by a three-dimensional curved cylinder the technique
uses pixel blending combined with Z-buffer and shadow buffer information
from the scene to yield a final anti-aliased image with soft shadows. Although
developed for rendering human hair, this technique can also be used to
render any model consisting of long filiments of sub-pixel width. The technique
can be adapted to any rendering method that outputs Z-buffer and shadow
buffer information and is amenable to hardware implementation.
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