While doing R&D for a project, I decided to try the latest Strand-based hair system from Unity.
This package is one of those classic Unity examples where they release an interesting feature way before it’s ready. The initial setup was a bit chaotic and I rapidly came to terms with the fact that we would not be able to use this feature in the short term. On top of that, there is no clear timeline of the development process, we don’t know if they are working on it (I highly doubt it) and what is its place on the Unity roadmap.
In any case, we were working on a project involving real time fur simulation when it came out, so I wanted to give it a chance. The project involved glowing fur, so I wrote a glowing fur shader and started playing around with the possibilities.
Despite its precariousness, I found the core functionality of the package to be quite promising. I was able to quickly prototype a wide array of fur options for our project and test how they would respond in real time to different forces. Part of the interaction we were developing was the possibility to pet the animal, so we definitely wanted to test how the fur simulation would respond to that.
I was surprised by how easy it was to create an animated typographic glowing shader and apply it to the simulation. And then, testing it in real time! It definitely showed a lot of promise. Even though I would never use this package for a commercial project, I still feel it would be helpful when exploring different looks and interactions in a real time engine.
