One pass shadows render for Point lights (available in prototype mode)
Light cookies
Light Probe Proxies
Reflection Probes
HDR
HairWorks cache optimization, for even more performance
“How To” video tutorials
VR
DirectX 12
FAQ
Open
Q. Can I groom hairs in the editor? A. Unfortunately not at the moment. HairWorks API does not support this option and all grooming should be finished BEFORE importing into Unity 3D. There is though workaround we may implement later.
Q. What about collision? Does it use whole underlying mesh or do we have to add simple colliders like spheres? A. HairWorks is using collision spheres, but ignores Unity 3D colliders. Like with grooming, colliders should be present in the asset file before importing into the Unity engine.
Q. How does the hairs hold up on an object that is moving? Is it pre-animated? A. It’s a true simulation. Technically plugin sends skinning matrices to HairWorks API for further processing. You may find more details at: SDK Getting Started — NVIDIA HairWorks 1.2.1 documentation
Q. If I use Character Assets like Morph3d which comes with own Hairs, is it possible to just replace their hair with yours? Will Hair Composer work with every Character System out there? UMA / Morph3d etc? A. The character systems like Morph3d and UMA are not supported. But since Hairworks 1.4 we included this option into our TODO list
Q. Can I create eyebrows too? A. Yes you can. But for better performance we would suggest using old school techniques for short-haired models.
Q. Is this DX11/12 and nVidia GPU only? A. It should run on any GPU which supports DX11.
Q. Will it run on XBOX ONE or PS4? A. NVIDIA’s Binary EULA does not allow systems other than Windows. Hence XBOX ONE and PS4 are not in priority list. We are very sorry for that - nothing we can do in this case.
Q. Are there any plans for other GameWorks features to be transformed into plugins for Unity? A. There is no plans to implement extra GameWorks features.
Q. Please could you improve the accuracy of hair self-shadows or support self-shadow blur? A. This is a very complex request. In order to make it more accurate we have to create a technique similar to Deep Shadows" Deep Shadows by r b on Prezi
Q. Can I order you guys to make a custom work for me? A. Yes, it’s possible, we provide custom work only for our products. Drop us private message with details.
According to our schedule we should get RC version in aprox. one month, means all in development features and requirements will be done and ready for production in third-party projects. In two weeks a Beta Version demo will be available for download and tests on Windows machines with DirectX 11 support.
Not sure yet of the discounted beta and pricing. More videos and updates with a progress are expected for sure
Just in case please let us know what would you like to see in the final product. Which options or may be support of some features we did not listed yet?
Well those two things I need are already on your todo list:
Deferred rendering path
Directional light shadows
But as I am using hair solutions mostly for humans and their heads, a video how it will look with this would be awesome. Maybe some shoulder long hair.
As I only saw the density together with a density texture: Will it be possible to style the fur and hair further? You activated the control points, but can you also form the splines?
What about collision? Does it use the whole underlying mesh or do we have to add simple colliders like spheres?
The shoulder long hairs are supported. Even more - hairs can be pinned somewhere in a middle to give a life like look. Will make a video of this later.
You mean to groom hairs in the editor, don’t you? Unfortunately not at the moment. nVidia HairWorks API does not support this. All grooming should be done BEFORE importing the asset file into the Unity 3D.
There are a collision spheres, but as long as nVidia HairWorks API does not give anything to manipulate them it will ignore Unity 3D colliders. For the same reason there is no way to edit hair colliders in the Editor. Like with grooming, colliders should be present in the asset file before importing into the Unity engine.
A full list of instance options (material). These are the same like in the FurViewer.exe editor by nVidia. Once you done editing your hair asset through FurViewer, you may continue working directly from Unity.
There are though some options which won’t be available at the first release. For example “Pins” will work as is, but are not editable yet.
Wow looking forward to this. I tried getting the open source project working but couldnt, not sure if it was the version of unity or what but a lack of instructions and vague information on the setup in the forums didnt help, so it’d be nice to have something current and supported. Any idea what the expected price of this going to be?
Thank you thelebaron
There is no pricing available yet, as we are currently in a middle of licensing HairWorks with nVidia. Once we get it sorted, rest is straight forward and I will put these details with updates
Lighting is more accurate in linear space. Now specular color should show correct lighting
Improvement in Light Probes support. Hair instance will follow same options as native Renderer, and the light probes contribution can be disabled directly from the instance material options.
Hair instance material got extra API to make changes on a fly
Several optimizations in a pixel shader.
“Per Strand Texture” support. Surprisingly we missed that option before.
LOD will be enabled by default now
And a video we promised to make, which covers human hairs Enjoy
Skinning matrices logic has been moved to the C++ native code, now it won’t use too much CPU resources
Some crazy tests with 4096 light sources setup in a scene
Application won’t crash anymore then disabling lights with opened Profiler
Use of SSE with DirectXMath
Known issues:
Overburdened scene with thousands pixel lights, may crash the application. With latest updates it a lot more stable, but may occasionally happen again
Enabling instances may cause non-responsive state. Seems like GPU drivers crash. Please let me know if you experience the same problem in the demo, while switching character lists
Love it, demo ran perfectly here, 1070(tested on both versions). I noticed the guy with the braided beard’s hair doesnt stick in the braid/tie thingys but aside from that everything else looked normal
Issue confirmed on a fresh installed Windows. Something is missing (not the Hair Works DLLs). Stay tuned, will be fixed soon.
Thank you thelebaron! Yes, those are the hair pins. Take a look on Lisa, she also got moving pin point, which is incorrect. Pins are not supported currently and will be implemented after release.
Meanwhile please could you give some FPS average measurements.
On my workbench with 780 GTX it can be as slow as 30 FPS on 3440x1440 with all options enabled. I made People and Creatures in groups intentionally, so it would be easier to see worst performance cases.
about 120-130fps here tested at both 1920x1080 as well as 2560x1440(same fps for both of my monitors strangely enough, the higher res was in a window though).
default camera position and angle
highest settings
gtx 1070
dual x5650
