Why Animating Textured Hair is Such a Challenge
by Maja Reinholdsson on Nov 20, 2024
The Lack of Representation in Media
As a parent of kids with different looks and hair types, I have become extra aware of the way the media portrays hair. Straight hair often takes center stage in toys, books, and movies—even though about 75% of the global population has textured hair.
That is why Disney’s Encanto (2021) was such a milestone, giving us real diversity in hair (and glasses!) for the first time in animated film history. Earlier, Disney had experimented with Rapunzel's flowing hair in Tangled and the wavy textures in Moana, but Encanto took representation to a whole new level, showing ALL hair types.
Encanto: A Milestone in Hair Representation
A while back, we started thinking about how we could portray detangling textured hair in a fresh, relatable way. That is when our brilliant Art Director, Karl Aulin, had the idea to dive into 3D animation. He quickly created a concept, and we set off to find a collaborator who could bring it to life.
We met Tom, an animator from Visuals By Nor with the perfect expertise—and a passion for the challenge. As luck would have it, his team had access to technology like what Disney uses for its own complex hair animations.
Bringing the Idea to Life
Now, simulating hair with s-curves (waves, curls, coils) is a whole different story than straight hair. Tom explains the intricate process of simulating textured hair: the software involved, the art of balancing realism and efficiency, and the sheer time it takes to render each strand.
The Challenges of Animating Textured Hair
”When it comes to simulating any kind of non-straight hair, you need a far higher level of detail. Each strand of hair needs about 20 times the resolution of straight hair, making it very resource intensive. We simulated a few hundred thousand strands of hair resulting in tens of millions of vertices and files of almost 100GB each for the simulations”
The Art of Simulating Curly and Coiley Hair
”Each strand then had to be rendered with realistic materials and physically accurate properties for everything from shine, translucency, melatonin levels, etcetera, which made each of the ~200 frames take an average of about 40 minutes to render or a total of 130+ hours”
The Intensity of the Process
”From the start we expected that this project would be challenging, but it still ended up more complicated than we imagined. In the end, it was a fun and interesting project and we’re happy to be a small part of providing inclusivity in visual content production”
Challenges and lessons Learned
We thought this story was worth sharing, not only to show you what goes into bringing all hair types to life on screen but also to give a glimpse of why we are so passionate about our work at Rufs.
A screenshot from the program Houdini used to animate the hair.
