AMD Tressfx is Coming (2.26.2013)

**6souls** · 2013-02-24 19:16

http://blogs.amd.com/play/tressfx/

**Prothescar** · 2013-02-24 20:22

It's obvious that this is a new hair physics system, just hope this isn't another CUDA/PhysX-type deal. While I understand the want for hardware developers to desire their parts standing out from others due to better features, I hate split markets.

**hey** · 2013-02-24 21:03

Realistic hair physics? Finally, a reason to play games again!

**Kaisha** · 2013-02-24 21:05

Until there's a SpeedTree for Hair, and consoles are unable to make use of it (since both 720/PS4 are using AMD chipsets), I'm expecting more buzzcut/bald protagonists and enemies outside of JRPGs.

And we still haven't solved the problem of fabrics and other cloth physics clipping through stuff. I don't know how they'd 'improve' that for hair no cutting through your cheek/back of your head.

**6souls** · 2013-02-24 21:46

It's rumored to be the engine that was used in the new Tomb Raider game to make Lara's hair look realistic.

**Outlaw** · 2013-02-25 04:11

I wonder if this is going to be used on the PS4? Sinse it's going to be using a AMD chip.

**6souls** · 2013-02-26 10:02

Spoiler: show

Bad Hair Days

Since the dawn of the 3D era, characters in your favorite games have largely featured totally unrealistic hair: blocky and jagged, often without animation that matches your character’s movements. Many games have attempted to disguise the problem with short haircuts, updos, or even unremovable helmets. But why? Simply: realistic hair is one of the most complex and challenging materials to accurately reproduce in real-time. Convincingly recreating a head of lively hair involves drawing tens of thousands of tiny and individual semi-transparent strands, each of which casts complex shadows and requires anti-aliasing. Even more challengingly, these calculations must be updated dozens of times per second to synchronize with the motion of a character.

A New Frontier of Realism

Lara Croft is an iconic character with an equally iconic ponytail. Re-imagining Lara and her haircut for the 2013 release of Tomb Raider wasn’t just an opportunity to modernize the character, it was an opportunity to substantially advance in-game realism by tackling the long-standing challenge of unrealistic hair. Through painstaking collaboration between software developers at AMD and Crystal Dynamics, Tomb Raider proudly features the world’s first real-time hair rendering technology in a playable game: TressFX Hair.

The Science of TressFX Hair

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. Building on AMD’s previous work on Order Independent Transparency, this method makes use of Per-Pixel Linked-List data structures to manage rendering complexity and memory usage.

DirectCompute is additionally utilized to perform the real-time physics simulations for TressFX Hair. This physics system treats each strand of hair as a chain with dozens of links, permitting for forces like gravity, wind and movement of the head to move and curl Lara’s hair in a realistic fashion. Further, collision detection is performed to ensure that strands do not pass through one another, or other solid surfaces such as Lara’s head, clothing and body. Finally, hair styles are simulated by gradually pulling the strands back towards their original shape after they have moved in response to an external force.

Graphics cards featuring the Graphics Core Next architecture, like select AMD Radeon HD 7000 Series, are particularly well-equipped to handle these types of tasks, with their combination of fast on-chip shared memory and massive processing throughput on the order of trillions of operations per second.

http://blogs.amd.com/play/tressfx/

**6souls** · 2013-02-26 16:46

Hi-Res Hair

Spoiler: show

**hey** · 2013-02-26 17:15

Well i've never played a tomb raider game before, but i am really excited for this one.

**6souls** · 2013-03-04 22:24

**Tyche** · 2013-03-04 23:28

Playing it now, didn't expect it to push the system as hard as it does. Running in ultra requires some hardware. The TressFX looks really good though.

**Krandor** · 2013-03-05 00:43

Oddly, the prerendered cut scenes don't have tressfx.

**hey** · 2013-03-05 17:36

Originally Posted by Krandor

Oddly, the prerendered cut scenes don't have tressfx.

I love when prerendered cut scenes look worse than regular gameplay!

**hey** · 2013-03-05 18:04

Originally Posted by Tyche

Playing it now, didn't expect it to push the system as hard as it does. Running in ultra requires some hardware. The TressFX looks really good though.

Wow, yeah. I can get 70 fps on high without tressfx, or 20 with it

. Normal gives 90/30. And i had to drop down to 1200p just to get that much. It's really gorgeous though.

edit: 30-35 fps on high with tressfx after adjusting my overclock a bit (and leaving the first area). That's not so bad i guess, with a 7850.

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