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Friday, October 11, 2024
Curly-Cue: modeling Afro-textured hair in 3D
Boing Boing: Curly-Cue: Geometric Methods For Highly Coiled Hair is the first paper about Afro-textured hair ever to be presented at a SIGGRAPH conference in all its 50-year history, writes Theodore Kim, one of its authors.
3 comments:
JFleck
said...
The intersection of computer graphics modeling and mathematical modeling is fascinating. The texture of the hair is astoundingly accurate. The growth of modeling in computer graphics has grown at an exceptional rate. From the 1970s using 8 bit graphics to almost life like hair textures in around 55 years is hard to comprehend especially in the scale of the universe. Modeling individual hairs (for rendering) would be almost impossible with our current technology but the cut in scope from individual hairs to groups of hairs and modeling their behavior is much easier. The application of reducing detail to an acceptable level for your goals is incredibly useful. The level for detail needs to be high enough to include all of the relevant information but going too far in detail becomes a major time sink and the cost benefit ratio fails to prove worthwhile. For scenic construction, no one needs to know detail to 1/128” for wood construction, and it saves your time to worry about more important details.
This method of creating coily/curly hair has me floored! It is one of the most realistic-looking I have seen so far. It reminded me of Encanto which had just about every hair type. However, I feel like everyone's hair in Encanto looked a little too perfect and shiny, way more perfect than anyone's hair realistically looks in everyday life. I believe that Encanto did the hair by creating a mesh for each curl clump (at least for Mirabel) so that they could manipulate her hair to land perfectly wherever they wanted it. This Curly Q method feels much more realistic and variated, just like normal hair. It also feels imperfect which I love because curly hair is not always as luscious and defined as in Encanto.
There is an implicit racism to the refusal to teach and research 3D modeling of diverse hair types. Unfortunately, the disparity in research about straight and curled hair is clear. 3D Models don’t include textured hair nearly enough, and it seems like the animated model standard is pale with curly hair. When curly hair isn’t taught to animators, they wind up making less curly haired characters. The cycle will continue, and just like the article says about this being the first afro-textured hair article in 50 years, education and access to resources teaching textured hair will be limited. Ignoring the full diversity of hair impacts everyone, not just CGI modeling professionals. When there is no education there is no creation of it in the media, and then people have the severe lack of representation that they currently have because of it. Education and research is the first step, and I’m excited that the lack of diversity in media is beginning to be solved, albeit slowly.
3 comments:
The intersection of computer graphics modeling and mathematical modeling is fascinating. The texture of the hair is astoundingly accurate. The growth of modeling in computer graphics has grown at an exceptional rate. From the 1970s using 8 bit graphics to almost life like hair textures in around 55 years is hard to comprehend especially in the scale of the universe. Modeling individual hairs (for rendering) would be almost impossible with our current technology but the cut in scope from individual hairs to groups of hairs and modeling their behavior is much easier. The application of reducing detail to an acceptable level for your goals is incredibly useful. The level for detail needs to be high enough to include all of the relevant information but going too far in detail becomes a major time sink and the cost benefit ratio fails to prove worthwhile. For scenic construction, no one needs to know detail to 1/128” for wood construction, and it saves your time to worry about more important details.
This method of creating coily/curly hair has me floored! It is one of the most realistic-looking I have seen so far. It reminded me of Encanto which had just about every hair type. However, I feel like everyone's hair in Encanto looked a little too perfect and shiny, way more perfect than anyone's hair realistically looks in everyday life. I believe that Encanto did the hair by creating a mesh for each curl clump (at least for Mirabel) so that they could manipulate her hair to land perfectly wherever they wanted it. This Curly Q method feels much more realistic and variated, just like normal hair. It also feels imperfect which I love because curly hair is not always as luscious and defined as in Encanto.
There is an implicit racism to the refusal to teach and research 3D modeling of diverse hair types. Unfortunately, the disparity in research about straight and curled hair is clear. 3D Models don’t include textured hair nearly enough, and it seems like the animated model standard is pale with curly hair. When curly hair isn’t taught to animators, they wind up making less curly haired characters. The cycle will continue, and just like the article says about this being the first afro-textured hair article in 50 years, education and access to resources teaching textured hair will be limited. Ignoring the full diversity of hair impacts everyone, not just CGI modeling professionals. When there is no education there is no creation of it in the media, and then people have the severe lack of representation that they currently have because of it. Education and research is the first step, and I’m excited that the lack of diversity in media is beginning to be solved, albeit slowly.
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