Another year, another blog

I have just created a new blog for my GSoC 2011 project, regarding “Real-Time Volumetric Shadows for Dynamic Objects”. At the end of this project I should be able to obtain a more realistic hair rendering as well, by using self-shadowing.

You can check it out at: http://volumetricshadows.wordpress.com/

GSoC YouTube channel video

I recently made a video for the GSoC YouTube channel.

I included all the main features the fur plugin support:

• Colliders
• Enabling / Disabling physics
• LOD
• Geometric properties
• Materials
• Diffuse Type
• Alpha / Color

Here is the video (hopefully you will be able to see it on the GSoC YouTube channel in no time):

Diffuse reflection

I managed to include diffuse reflection in the fur plugin, and now the lighting model is similar to Phong shading and the specular highlights are done either using Kajiya and Kay or Marschner shading models.

Here is a video of the results:

Fur rendering

Even though GSoC 2010 has ended, I still wanted to add some features to further improve the fur plugin, such as support for animating fur, and rendering fur with Kajiya and Kay shading model.

Presenting was once again Frankie the squirrel:

GSoC final deadline

The final GSoC deadline is tomorrow, or rather the firm ‘pencils down’ date, so I have decided to make a really short self-evaluation of the features I’ve managed to implement.

Done :

• Generate geometry – iFurMaterial (until the midterm)
• Animate geometry – iFurPhysicsControl (until the midterm)
• Write specific shaders – iFurStrandGenerator (until the midterm)
• External parameters – density and height maps, 3D textures, etc.
• LOD system and optimizations – iFurMesh inherits from iMeshObject
• Extend from hair to fur – thanks to Frankie the squirrel

There is still some code rearranging to be done, but nothing much, really: deciding what classes should inherit from what interfaces, making loaders and savers for the mesh, just better organizing the code.

I leave you with this footage of the CS fur plugin as it is now (the FPS is actually double than in the video and above 60 on release settings and ~30 FPS on debug):