Hollywood Hair is Captured at Last
August 15, 2008 | Source: PhysOrg.com
UC San Diego, Adobe, and MIT researchers have developed a new method for accurately capturing the shape and appearance of a person’s hairstyle for use in animated films and video games.
The left two images demonstrate different aspects of a real hairstyle that the computer scientists captured. The third image from left is the reference photograph of the real hairstyle. The new algorithms created the image on the right, which has photorealistic highlights and texture, even through there are no photographs that were taken at that angle.
The researchers captured about 2,500 real-world images of hair using 16 cameras, 150 light sources and three projectors arranged in a dome setup. With this data, the computer scientists determined the physical position and orientation of all visible strands of hair. The algorithms then generated complex hair models, producing on the order of 100,000 hair strands.
They also found a new way to precisely simulate how light would reflect off each strand of hair. The result is the ability to create photorealistic images of the hairstyle from any angle. The automated system even creates realistic highlights.