#whoops..didnt mean to get caught up writing this during work break... oh well

[shesmore-shoebill]

bc i cant resist talking about this. The jokes about the weirdness of Mia's hair/it's unnatural movement are VERY funny and her hair is SUPER wack, well deserved lmfao.

BUT for anyone interested, it has historically been quite difficult to accurately animate hair and fur in 3D, esp in things like games where the movement and interactions are not predictable- aka, its not just simulating it once and recording it, but trying to figure out how to make it organically, naturally move based on unpredictable input. (like someone controlling a character in a game) This is because there are an immense amount of small physics interactions and events happening simultaneously that comprise the way we percieve hair (or fur) to move. This then changes further depending on the texture of the strands, whether they are wet or dry, etc. The typical physics tactic of coding in known behaviour based on certain interactions between objects breaks down a bit with such a large volume of items.

Computing the actual individual interactions between individual hairs using a physics based model, would get you closer to actual movement but quickly becomes very expensive, as you can imagine, (constantly computing physics interactions for thousands of individual hairs).

There have been a number of ways to deal with this issue over time, cheat it a bit/make the performance feasible. You'll notice in older games hair or fur is typically either a flat surface with some coloring/lighting on it to make it seem like a certain texture (more common for fur), or just a. flat line or block without an actual attempt to make the actual movements of esch individual hair. Animation of animal fur is often done in patches instead of treating it as individual hairs or all just a plane, which is why furry animals in video games might look a little like their fur is matted vs all flowing smoothly and softly. Brave did some interesting tech to correctly depict curly hair in a way that feels "right".

anyway. its a fun topic. i find it interesting. cant find a general history video about it like the lecture i attended about it, but there are tons of interesting papers on it as the resesrch and work around this is still ongoing.