Hierarchical controls for art-directed hair at Disney

Creating appealing shapes and silhouettes of a character's hair while maintaining the organic motion produced by physical simulation is a challenge in Disney's very stylized animated worlds. This talk describes the introduction of hierarchical sculpting controls into our hair pipeline and presents a set of tools for creating and manipulating this consistent structure to achieve art-directed hair motion. From grooming through animation, simulation and technical animation, hierarchy is leveraged both for efficiency and for preservation of the hairstyle's structure. To date this hierarchical workflow has been used on two feature productions, allowing for the efficient art-direction of a wide variety of hair types and styles.