CaffeineViking
commented
5 years ago Thank you for the kind comment!
VKHR is more of a "proof-of-concept" research prototype to show that volumetric methods are a viable way to render hair while also gaining something from it (in this case performance and also the ability to estimate global effect like ambient occlusion in real-time).
The features you are describing would be really cool to have in a game but are out of scope for VKHR. Some of these features (e.g. low gravity and "wet" hair) are more related to simulation than to rendering. I do think some of those are available in TressFX 4 though!
The core idea of VKHR can be integrated quite easily into any hair framework (e.g. TressFX 4 and HairWorks), that already uses hair strands as their base geometry. This means that games can choose the hair framework and then add something like VKHR on top of it.
I must say that I am really impressed ! This is more a feature request / general question for future development.
In most case use, games will need to render hair in a not so clean state.
I am talking about liquids (water, blood, viscous goo, oil ..) and solids : (dirt, grass, leaves, moss, trash ...) and a mix of both. Sadly, bear should be able to render hair loss due to damage...
There may also be under water (submerged or shower) as well as low gravity, electric shock / electromagnetic, burnt and special form of hair (glowing, lightning, fire, spectral ...)
Are those possible in the future for vkhr ? I believe most new console games will feature great hair and that this is going to be used a lot :)