• Light/Dark
  • Ever wanted an RSS feed of all your favorite gaming news sites? Go check out our new Gaming Headlines feed! Read more about it here.
  • We have made minor adjustments to how the search bar works on ResetEra. You can read about the changes here.

Best hair rendering (not favorite hairstyle, but actual good looking hair rendering technique)

BAD

Member
Oct 25, 2017
9,568
USA
It's probably still Uncharted 4 right?

Hair is very complicated to get right, as we have seen many times this gen. Lara Croft got great motion but bizarre sleek shine, Dragon Age Inquisition got choices but strange piece-y locks, and Geralt got polished detail with bizarre bouncy physics unless you had access to resource hogging physics enabling.

I can't even find a custom character creator that does hair particularly well. Is there one you think does a good job?

I have to say overall I am still in love with Uncharted 4 hair. The men and women have amazing variety in texture, physics, and shine. It's the most pleasingly realistic looking hair that I have seen to date.

Horizon was good but also serves white woman dreads clipping galore. Kudos to it for being just as nice in gameplay thanks to physics as it is in cutscenes.

F2Nds5t.gif


Uncharted 4

IAMUici.gif


RuWmciG.gif


Bonus points if you also share the best hair from a customizable character creator.
 
Lord Error

Lord Error

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,380
I would say Nadine in UC4. It's really the only long hair ever that looks actually convincing. There are many complex rendering techniques, most notably what's used in new Tomb Raider games, which look cool in their own way, but also rather fake.
 
AdaWong

AdaWong

Member
Nov 1, 2017
1,805
Raccoon City
Not sure bout rendering, but Uncharted: Lost Legacy most definitely has some of the best realistic hair aesthetics in terms of detail. The nuances, like when characters get sweaty or their hair is wet (as opposed to dry) are commendable.

tumblr_ozebfuJh8S1qi4j1oo1_400.gif
 
MistahS

MistahS

Prophet of Truth
The Fallen
Sep 2, 2018
3,739
Couldn't find an HD pic to do it justice b it JD's beard in the Gears 5 teaser looked really good. You could really make out each strand of hair. Del had a fantastic head of hair in Gears 4, shame they gave him a beanie in Gears 5.


Arthur's beard in RDR2 is pretty impressive too.
 
SPRidley

SPRidley

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,248
Uncharted 4 uses VERY well made hair planes, and seems to have a robust lighting engine that helps those planes look great in different light conditions, but at the end of the day the tech is still the old way of making hair, with things like Geralt using hairworks or Alice Madness Reutrns being more advanced.
Hope we have soon techniques that makeit viable to actually render "real" hair with real physics in game easily and for multiple characters.
 
ThreepQuest64

ThreepQuest64

Avenger
Oct 29, 2017
5,735
Germany
GameAddict411 said:
I always looks good even after diving into murky water.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
She uses one hell of a shampoo and conditioner! The rendering itself is remarkable, but they need to add extra texture and shaders depending on the conditions. They amped up their game in Shadow of the Tomb Raider when Lara uses mud to cover herself; it's a good step into the right direction but still not enough.

Uncharted's and REngine's hair rendering is also impressive. I also like the fur/hair rendering of Nvidia Hairworks in The Witcher 3.

Seneset said:
Isn't that a console vs PC issue though? I could have sworn TessFX or whatever the first game ran would change with water and dry.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
You remember incorrectly. Unfortunately. Geralt's hair in TW3, however, do change when it rains.
 
Troublematic

Troublematic

Banned
Nov 1, 2017
441
I always felt that the later iterations Eidos Montreal did to TressFX only simplified it and made it less performance intensive but also inferior in quality. From a simulation perspective I think the hair in ROTTR was probably the highest quality. Outside Hairworks I don't think there's others that have tried to do individual strands so anything else has been just artists doing clever workarounds.
 
Kalentan

Kalentan

Member
Oct 25, 2017
44,817
SPRidley said:
Uncharted 4 uses VERY well made hair planes, and seems to have a robust lighting engine that helps those planes look great in different light conditions, but at the end of the day the tech is still the old way of making hair, with things like Geralt using hairworks or Alice Madness Reutrns being more advanced.
Hope we have soon techniques that makeit viable to actually render "real" hair with real physics in game easily and for multiple characters.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

I suppose even though they're more advanced, I feel personally like the hair in Uncharted 4 looks better.
 
Hey Please

Hey Please

Avenger
Oct 31, 2017
22,824
Not America
Discounting pre-rendered stuff, most games do a solid job now within in-engine cinematics and gameplay. I am with OP insofar as HZD is concerned (I am playing it atm). While clipping looks blatant during dialogue segments, the overall fidelity during gameplay looks like substantial progress from the days of Nariko from Heavenly Sword.

Aside from her, the latest batch of TR games, for all their faults, got the hair aspect mostly quite beautifully right.

Another personal preference goes to Adam Jensen. It stood out even more in comparison to the hair rendering quality on most other NPCs.
 
Black_Stride

Black_Stride

Avenger
Oct 28, 2017
7,390
As a black man, the answer is always Del from Gears of War 4
Killer Mike in Gears 4 also has a nice beard but doesnt beat del top hair.

The Division gets an honorable mention for its Black hair.
attachment.php


And for everyone wondering what Kaits hair looks like under her head sock:
attachment.php

But for not Black hair im gonna give it to the RE Engine. Truck driver from Resident Evil 2 RE is godlike, I had to double check this was actually an real time.....was blown away to find out it is."
latest

I couldnt find any good pictures of the truck driver, but anyone who has RE2RE can attest to the insane level of detail this hair has.
ILL capture this cutscene at my 30fps on my PC at as high a resolution as my graphics card will allow, because this is beyond anything ive seen in a game before.
If its just cards like most other techniques, it must have been millions of cards getting this detail level.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.