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Abstract:
Hair is one of the crucial elements in representing believable digital
  humans. It is one of the most challenging elements, too, due to the
  large number of hairs on a human head, their length, and their complex
  interactions.  Hair appearance, in rendering and simulation, is
  dominated by collective properties, yet most of the current approaches
  model individual hairs. In this paper we build on the existing
  approaches to illumination and simulation by introducing a volumetric
  representation of hair which allows us to efficiently model collective
  properties of hair. We use this volumetric representation of hair to
  describe hair response to illumination, hair to hair collisions, and
  to subtly direct simulations of hair. Our method produces realistic
  results for different types of hair colors and styles and has been
  used in a production environment.
Paper (PDF)
Additional materials: [clip1.mp4], [clip2.mp4], [clip3.mp4], [clip4.mp4], [clip5.mp4], [clip6.mp4]
Available as Pixar Technical Memo #06-08