Blender's Fur Simulation

Wow. The Peach Project has done some amazing work adding features to Blender in just about every area: Python constraints, mesh deform modifiers, and fur simulation.

This morning before I went to the gym, Adam (our lead Blender guy) showed me an SVN build he compiled that had the new hair/fur rendering and grooming features in Blender. The grooming features were pretty cool, but I was most impressed over sheer speed that the hair strands were rendered.

Later this morning I checked the Peach blog and they showed their work-in-progress of the new hair simulation for their characters. I was floored. This is Pixar quality stuff!

This image is a screenshot from a test video (OGG Theora) they put together showing the character in motion with the fur simulation. The Peach team reported that Blender can now "render 2 million hairs in HD resolution in about one minute." Gamera, the chinchilla character shown in the image, has 1.5 million hairs.

I can't wait to get my hands on this newest version of Blender. Hats off to the Peach developers. Read the rest of their blog post for more information.

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