A Mass Spring Model for Hair Simulation

How to read this

Category

Method: a mass-spring hair simulation model

Contributions

• A mass-spring formulation that simulates full heads of individual hair strands at large particle counts
• An altitude spring formulation to capture torsion while preventing tetrahedra collapse
• Implicit linear springs and strain limiting for unconditional stability, plus handling of sticking, clumping, and self-collisions

Context

Builds on implicit cloth-style integration in the spirit of Large Steps in Cloth Simulation (Baraff and Witkin), adapting stable spring dynamics and collision handling to thin filamentary hair.Builds on: Large Steps in Cloth Simulation

Correctness

Demonstrated on large-scale individual-strand hair with stable contact and collision; readers should keep in mind that mass-spring rod models approximate bending and twisting and depend on careful stiffness and stability tuning rather than a continuum elastic-rod basis.

Clarity

Fairly accessible if you know cloth simulation; a first pass conveys the system, a second pass is needed for the altitude-spring and strain-limiting details.

How to read it

Focus first on the altitude spring and stability sections, since those are the core novelty; a second pass on the collision and clumping handling pays off if you simulate dense hair.