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Next-Gen Hair Tech: "Every Strand Counts - Physics and Rendering Behind Frostbite's Hair"

Yiazmat

Yiazmat

Member
Oct 25, 2017
349
"Strand-based hair can produce amazing results, but using it in real time for games has been a technical challenge for years. This session covers the advances realized by the Frostbite team on the subject and explains improvements in rendering and simulation."




"Footage recorded in real-time, on next-generation consoles."

qjlzVGX.gif


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Hopefully strand-based hair will become the standard this gen.
 
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Coolsambob

Coolsambob

▲ Legend ▲
Member
Oct 27, 2017
1,269
It's really impressive stuff, but seems a bit too swishy in motion. If they toned the movement down a bit it would look fantastic in motion.
 
Burt

Burt

Fight Sephiroth or end video games
Member
Oct 28, 2017
8,161
Shampoo advertising dollars about to go through the roof
 
vixolus

vixolus

Prophet of Truth
Member
Sep 22, 2020
54,685
yeah not everyone has baby soft thin hair just flopping in the breeze lol. Looks impressive though regardless
 
Negotiator117

Negotiator117

Banned
Jul 3, 2020
1,713
I'm wondering when we are going to see next gen artificial intelligence? Not strands of hair for crying out loud.
 
PeskyToaster

PeskyToaster

Member
Oct 27, 2017
15,314
Frostbite seems to me one of the best performing, highest fidelity engines. Like the stuff they are able to do with Battlefield/Battlefront and hit great framerates from what I can tell is insane.
 
Lulu

Lulu

Saw the truth behind the copied door
Member
Oct 25, 2017
26,680
what happened to tres efx and nvidia hair works?
 
SkoomaBlade

SkoomaBlade

Chicken Chaser
Member
Oct 30, 2017
1,054
Negotiator117 said:
I'm wondering when we are going to see next gen artificial intelligence? Not strands of hair for crying out loud.
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Yep, this is where I'm at. This is impressive and all, but I want an evolution of AI and more realistic physics in my games, things I feel have been stagnating in game dev for a long time.
 
Dolce

Dolce

Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,252
SkoomaBlade said:
Yep, this is where I'm at. This is impressive and all, but I want an evolution of AI and more realistic physics in my games, things I feel have been stagnating in game dev for a long time.
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It's because one is improving visuals, which we don't interact with. The other is game design, and it's a lot, lot, lot harder to improve on these kinds of things.
 
Igniz12

Igniz12

Member
Oct 25, 2017
7,449
When the footage is slowed down the hair looks flowing while the character animation looks like its ticking by, frame by frame. Creates a sort of uncanny valley. Need to see the thing in normal speed.

So this is why the PC version of the game is being pegged back. I figured it had to do with some sort of physics simulation they were always running in the background.
 
SkoomaBlade

SkoomaBlade

Chicken Chaser
Member
Oct 30, 2017
1,054
Gravijah said:
It's because one is improving visuals, which we don't interact with. The other is game design, and it's a lot, lot, lot harder to improve on these kinds of things.
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Oh no doubt its more difficult than simply upgrading visual fidelity, its just I can't honestly remember the last time we had any real jumps in other areas of game dev like AI and physics. Games are more than just visuals.
 
Wrapped in Black

Wrapped in Black

Member
Mar 10, 2018
8,748
Looks pretty good

But my African-ass hair would acquaint any GPU with the same fate as many a plastic pick or comb: gone. Reduced to atoms.
 

ymgve

Member
Oct 31, 2017
549
I guess they haven't nailed down the "stick" factor - hair isn't a bundle of plastic threads, they stick together a little bit which is hard to simulate.
 
Dolce

Dolce

Member
Oct 25, 2017
14,252
SkoomaBlade said:
Oh no doubt its more difficult than simply upgrading visual fidelity, its just I can't honestly remember the last time we had any real jumps in other areas of game dev like AI and physics.
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It's something I want so bad, part of why I enjoyed GTAIV so much was the physics system, but GTAV was a step back and we haven't really had any huge jumps since then. AI is tough, though. Because everything about game design stems from how you are going to interact with the enemies. So making enemies more intelligent has its own drawbacks.
 

icecold1983

Banned
Nov 3, 2017
4,243
Hopefully there is a large jump in general animation quality during user controlled gameplay. Thats going to provide a far bigger gain for sports titles.
 
Jiraiya

Jiraiya

Member
Oct 27, 2017
10,295
SkoomaBlade said:
Oh no doubt its more difficult than simply upgrading visual fidelity, its just I can't honestly remember the last time we had any real jumps in other areas of game dev like AI and physics.
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Blame the consoles. Devs are ambitious...and I'm sure they would've been further ahead in those other areas if the folks who made these machines didn't forget about the cpu for so long.
 
mcruz79

mcruz79

Member
Apr 28, 2020
2,800
Negotiator117 said:
I'm wondering when we are going to see next gen artificial intelligence? Not strands of hair for crying out loud.
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Exactly this...
realistic movement ( body and face ) and realistic human and animal behavior are the things to truly advance in games...
Its the thing I am anxious to see a evolution this gen with more memory, SSD and specially huge upgrade on CPU but it looks that we won't have such upgrade because of the hardware.
It must be much more expensive and difficult to achieve this things then other advances.
I was really hoping that we were going to see sports games with much better animations and much more varied and realistic behavior for non controlled players but it seems that is easier to make more beautiful hairs.
 
vixolus

vixolus

Prophet of Truth
Member
Sep 22, 2020
54,685
I watched some of the presentation and it's quite fascinating. They have the ability to tone down those values and control how hair operates (see: ponytail and curly hair examples). I think the baby-fine flowing was more for emphasis than how a final look would be. Very cool stuff, and look forward to seeing the improvements and other hair types. This could really be some groundbreaking stuff so we don't have to deal with poor layered textures as hair.
 
nolifebr

nolifebr

Banned
Sep 1, 2018
11,465
Curitiba/BR
Spider-Man Remastered and Miles Morales also have much improved hair rendering. I bet it was something kinda heavy for those old Jaguars.
 
vixolus

vixolus

Prophet of Truth
Member
Sep 22, 2020
54,685
Y'all talking about AI this and physics that... you realize technical artists and engineers working on this aren't the ones working on stuff like that right? You can develop things simultaneously...

I want better AI AND better hair. This is promising tech that doesn't seem to be that demanding based on some of the optimizations they talked about (idk the exact data, but they mentioned some techniques they took).
 
Sekiro

Sekiro

Member
Jan 25, 2019
2,938
United Kingdom
So the old Jaguars were the main reason we haven't seen a huge leap hair tech this gen right?

And that zen 2 will give us a boost unheard of?
 
Lunatic

Lunatic

Member
Oct 27, 2017
2,834
Next step is to stop having the hair look like they're underwater or in a Zero G environment. You don't have every strand on your head bob up and down in the same direction when you move slightly.
 
PLASTICA-MAN

PLASTICA-MAN

Member
Oct 26, 2017
23,654
Yiazmat said:
Seems like it. They released these screenshots before:

joao_felix_ps5.jpg


alexander_arnold_ps5.jpg
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Yeah but that is nothing compared to how the hair moves and how they explained the tech behind it. :O

Reemember those Frostbite hair tech demos last year? It seems they are applying them right now in FIFA and this will extend to all their titles:

gamingbolt.com

Electronic Arts And DICE Show Off Next Generation Hair In Demo Videos

gamingbolt.com gamingbolt.com

www.ea.com

Frostbite Hair Rendering and Simulation

An in-depth view into one area of Frostbite's research: hair rendering and simulation.
www.ea.com www.ea.com
 
elenarie

elenarie

Game Developer
Verified
Jun 10, 2018
9,825
Negotiator117 said:
I'm wondering when we are going to see next gen artificial intelligence?
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Define what you mean by this. Because "next gen AI", or how every researcher calls it, self-learning AI, already exists. It is not fun to play, and players will lose 99% of the time when playing against it, so it is pointless to be used for an experience that is supposed to provide a "good feeling" when playing against "AI".

deepmind.com

AlphaStar: Grandmaster level in StarCraft II using multi-agent reinforcement learning

AlphaStar is the first AI to reach the top league of a widely popular esport without any game restrictions. This January, a preliminary version of AlphaStar challenged two of the world's top...
deepmind.com deepmind.com

 
PLASTICA-MAN

PLASTICA-MAN

Member
Oct 26, 2017
23,654
Sekiro said:
We are ONE step closer to CGI Final Fantasy hair physics. 👀



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That is very different. I will make it simple but the Frostbite tech is more real hair physics but the UE4 one is like particles and fake physics. Both look cool though but Frostbite one is more accurate and thus more demanding.
 
Playboi Carti

Playboi Carti

Member
Jan 1, 2018
1,268
Portugal
icecold1983 said:
Hopefully there is a large jump in general animation quality during user controlled gameplay. Thats going to provide a far bigger gain for sports titles.
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That'll also come with a lot of input lag. It's not that they couldn't do it until now, they could many years ago. The problem is that you can't have very realistic animations and good responsiveness at the same time. NBA 2K games trade responsiveness for very realistic animations, I don't see FIFA doing that.
 
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