Reply To: Can you please justify the use of this method?

[Kent Trammell]

Sure, I’ll do my best to justify.

1. Complex hair card systems are industry-standard in modern video games.  The reason being that hair cards are a much closer approximation of real hair (meaning 100,000 individual hair strands). Currently rendering so many individual strands is too complex for video game technology (though this will not be the case forever) and thus hair cards are more efficient for rendering while also being far more realistic than a solid hair model. Here’s a few examples of complex hair card systems:
   1. https://www.artstation.com/artwork/aqKn8
   2. https://www.artstation.com/artwork/6aa5gV
   3. https://www.artstation.com/artwork/n2zw9
2. Solid hair models are not realistic. While this was method was common in early 3D video games (N64, Playstation), it’s rarely used anymore unless the style of the game warrants the particular look or the game is designed to run on a mobile phone. Whenever the method is used, realism is not the result since real hair is not a solid mass.

In short, if the goal is realistic hair for video games / real time application then hair cards is the most effective approach. Even though it’s not an easy or fast workflow, it produces a far more realistic result than modeling a solid mass of hair.

I hope this explanation helps!