An Artist Friendly Hair Shading System

We show that physically based shading models fail to provide Intuitive artist controls and we introduce a novel approach for creating an art-directable hair shading model from existing physically based models.

Rendering hair in motion pictures is an important and challenging task. Despite much research on physically based hair rendering, it is currently difficult to benefit from this work because physically based shading models do not offer artist-friendly controls. As a consequence, much production work so far has used ad hoc shaders that are easier to control, but often lack the richness seen in real hair. We show that physically based shading models fail to provide Intuitive artist controls and we introduce a novel approach for creating an art-directable hair shading model from existing physically based models. Through an informal user study, we show that this system is easier to use compared to existing systems. Our shader has been integrated into the production pipeline at the Walt Disney Animation Studios and is being used in the production of the upcoming animated feature film Tangled.