Have u seen the hair that Raiden has in Metal Gear Solid 2 ?? It''s not those sharp edges hair that ussualy a 3D characters have, but really cool and smooth hair like when u use Maya to make and render hair (do I make any sense here ??) What kind of technique to implement such a cool features ?? Any information will do.. thx !!! ps : Happy New Year !!!

Pixel shader?

I'm a bit more impressed with Rare has done with StarFox Adventures. How the hell did they do that?

That's like 100,000,000 individual hairs? What the heck?!?

EDIT: I guess that image was a little big (640x480), so I'll just provide the link.



Edited by - utwo007 on January 2, 2002 1:56:13 AM

quote:Original post by utwo007
That''s like 100,000,000 individual hairs? What the heck?!?

Which is why I suspect it''s just a few clear triangles (to get depth information so it behaves 3D like) and drawn as a pixel shader effect. I don''t really know though, I''m just guessing.

Is that really an in-game shot - or is it concept art? It looks very 2D - no shadows... no radiousity... uniform lighting...

Magmai Kai Holmlor

"Oh, like you''ve never written buggy code" - Lee

"What I see is a system that _could do anything - but currently does nothing !" - Anonymous CEO

ello,
I think I know how it was done and no pixel-shaders are needed. I remember to read a doc about a method which used an approach like this:
1.draw skin (normally)
2.draw a texture with hairs just over skin (like few cm over it or so)
3.draw a texture with hairs on all edges (create quads between edge and edge normal)

As you can see you end up with drawing about 3 times the triangles count but no pixel shaders or anything is needed.
There''s a .pdf somewhere around the net that describes this method, unfortunetly I can''t find it atm. If someone is really interested I can take the time to find it in my mess on hd
ps.it''s not for someone that has learn how to use d3d/ogl few days ago....


With best regards,
Mirek Czerwiñski
http://kris.top.pl/~kherin/

You'll have to excuse me because I don't know a lick about graphics programming.

I was under the understanding that only the XBox supported pixel or vertex shaders, and I don't remember volumetric textures being on the GameCube's list either. I could be wrong.

Anyway, all these seem like cool ideas, but I don't see how these techniques help the computer avoid making zillions of FP calculations. I mean, even if you could use some polygons and vectors to establish a volume and direction for the hair to be rendered (notice how the hairs have different lengths and directions?), you still have to fill those volumes with zillions of hairs, each of which have their own position in 3D space, angle, size,, and distance from the camera.

I guess I can see how those techniques could be used to make development of the model easier (so the artist only has to create a few polys and vecors and such rather than millions of individually modeled hairs), but I don't see how it helps during the rendering process.

Magmai Kai Holmlor -

Forgot to answer your question
It's realtime. I'm pretty excited to play a game that looks like that. This generation of consoles is going to kick ace.
As far as lighting and shadows are concerned -- and I'm no graphics programmer, remember -- but each character has a realtime shadow cast by a single distant light source. There are some other local light sourcing being done in some areas, I think. The characters don't seem to self-shadow any, I know GameCube games like Rogue Leader feature multiple local lightsources and self-shadowing. Perhaps these features were taken out of StarFox Adventures in order to save FLOPS for the fur shading? I dunno.

Edited by - utwo007 on January 2, 2002 11:43:13 PM