WIP Hair System/Dynamics solver

Artwork Blender Tests
1

I am currently working on an animation and a lot of hair is needed. I noticed how slow blender current dynamics solver is buggy and slow, so I decided to develop my own Hair System as an add-on. Here is a quick test and speed comparison. Notice how I have quality set to 1 and even then, it is way too slow for actual use for live action simulation.
Some settings are set for only the sphere, but working on getting more properties and features integrated as well as more options for the user for better control of the hair. The segments are both set to 10, but for my system, you can smooth all the strands so you won’t get irregular results. I’d say the best feature would be the ability to instance the entire baked simulation so you can add multiple layers giving you high quality hair simulation.

Here is an instancing test:
Note that there is only 200 hair strands being simulated, but instancing them and offsetting point cache data increases its quality. This was done all in under 5 minutes(including simulation)

https://i.imgur.com/03kuBDy.gif
03kuBDy.gif960×635

2

Looks promising

3

Here’s a quick cycles render for hair shaders. I will make sure to include a library of hair shaders and node parameters, but thats for later. Right now I’m focusing on the addon itself and accurate, yet fast hair dynamics.

HairREnder.jpg1920×1080 108 KB

4

Here’s another test. Getting better results.

https://i.imgur.com/tna7OK3.gif
tna7OK3.gif960×540

1 Like
5

Thanks for sharing, and best wishes on this! Having such a tool to speed up dynamic hair animation would be very fun!

6

Looks fantastic. I’d like to try it out.

Btw, did you know that there is a separate strand-modifier on development, to have hair in Blender. This could use it to have more future proofing.