Predicting Natural Hair Shapes by Solving the Statics of Flexible Rods

Abstract

This paper presents a new physically-based method for predicting natural hairstyles in the presence of gravity and collisions. The method is based upon a mechanically accurate model for static elastic rods (Kirchhoff model), which accounts for the natural curliness of hair, as well as for hair ellipticity. The equilibrium shape is computed in a stable and easy way by energy minimization. This yields various typical hair configurations that can be observed in the real world, such as ringlets. As our results show, the method can generate different hair types with a very few input parameters, and perform virtual hairdressing operations such as wetting, cutting and drying hair.