AMD presents Tressfx – realistic rendering of hair via GPGPU

Creating a true-to-life hairstyle is a recurring problem in the gaming world. Not only is it difficult to simulate thousands of hairs, it all requires massive computing power to give a true-to-nature impression. AMD in collaboration with Crystal Dynamics is now assisting with a rendering method that takes advantage of the Directcompute interface and the computing power of modern graphics processors.

TressFX Hair revolutionizes Lara Croft’s locks by using the DirectCompute programming language to unlock the massively-parallel processing capabilities of the Graphics Core Next architecture, enabling image quality previously restricted to pre-rendered images.

The technology is called Tressfx and is said to be the first method that can really simulate natural hair in real time. It is all based on semi-transparent surfaces via Order Independent Transparency (OIT), which in turn uses the data structure Per-Pixel Linked-List (PPLL), to handle the huge complexity and reduce memory usage.

Tressfx will first and foremost be used in the upcoming restart of the game series Tomb Raider. The pictures show the main character Lara Croft’s iconic ponytail with a much greater richness of detail than before, and according to AMD, simulation of physics, weather and wind is also added – including collision detection.

The new Tomb Raider will be released on March 5 for PC / Windows, Playstation 3 and Xbox 360.