14 DAY TRIAL // AMD's TressFX technology earned it a few points for enabling realistic, flowing hair in games, but now NVIDIA is rising up to the challenge by means of the Hair Works Tool, as proven by this game demo.
The Witcher is one of the most famous RPG franchises in the world, so when its programmers say they managed to create realistic hair in its latest installment, people are bound to stop and listen.
The Witcher 3 will be released in 2015 (after a delay), but this will give the designers and code builders time to refine things.
Implementing real hair (as real as anything can get in a virtual environment anyhow) is among the challenges that have already been overcome.
The NVIDIA GameWorks tools are being used extensively, and the Hair Works component is what allowed them to render true hair.
Previously used in Call of Duty: Ghosts (for dynamic fur simulation), it reduces the memory that the GPU needs to create hair.
The secret lies in optimizing rendering algorithms and DirectX 11 tessellation. Initially, the results were unsatisfactory. Hair showed up in dense clamps.
Eventually, though, they cracked the mystery by including a random number generator, which ensured that the density was variable. It also allowed for wind effects (video above by PCGamesHardware.de).
According to Dane Johnston, GPU content manager at Nvidia, templates and hairstyles, and skin, are taken from 3D Max and Maya and entered in a text description fie, which also has the base hair details, telling a game how to render them and how flexible it's supposed to be, etc.
When the designer is satisfied, the file gets Photoshop or GIMP-created textures and is integrated in the game engine itself.
Clothing, liquids and other malleable objects can be rendered through a similar method, thanks to PhysX technology. HairWorks, FaceWorks, Turbulence, ShadowWorks and CameraWorks are, in fact, sub-components of VisualFX, which, in turn, is a component of GameWorks alongside VisualFX , PhysX and OptiX SDK.
Basically, NVIDIA matched AMD's TressFX and raised the challenge bar by adding some more game development tools. Flex, GI Works and Flame Works are software development kits included in its new strategy.
Flex is the latest unified GPU PhysX system and lets devs combine rigid body and fluid simulations, which was hard before.
GI Works SDK (Global Illumination Works) enables real-rime global illumination in any scenes, instead of using pre-backed effects by placing of light sources around an area. Finally, Flame Works SDK renders flame and smoke in a film-quality volumetric effect.
Many games will use one or more of the new features, like Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt (obviously), Assassins Creed IV: Black Flag, Batman: Arkham Origins, Project Cars, and Star Citizen. Both console and PC games will benefit.
