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A team of researchers from Cornell University, the University of Michigan, and Meta Reality Labs unveiled WaveFiber, a 3D wave optics simulator based on a physical optics approximation for rendering realistic 3D hair and fur.
Scheduled to make its official debut at SIGGRAPH 2023, this groundbreaking method replicates surface reflection and diffractive scattering, which are prominent in all types of fibers, especially darkly-pigmented ones. The simulation delivers a detailed representation of first-order scattering, but it is not suitable for practical production rendering due to the need for extensive tabulation per fiber geometry.
Both the simulation and practical model demonstrate comparable granular patterns to those observed in optical measurements. Additionally, the compact noise model can be seamlessly integrated with existing scattering models to render hair and fur in a spectrum of colors, introducing visually striking glints that were absent in all previous models.
Rendering of black dog fur with aperture blur, compared to a photograph:
"Our model is able to produce realistic colorful glints, which were missing from all previous models. Our model includes forward diffraction around the fiber. While not contributing to the colorful glints in this scene, the diffraction component produces softer highlights on the fur compared to the ray-based model in PBRT-v3. The macroscopic appearance of the dog fur generated from our model contains a hue shift, which is also observed in the photograph."
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100% procedural material made in Substance Designer.