Art-directable dynamic-hair shells in Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa

The character design for Madagascar emphasizes the preservation of strong lines, shapes, and silhouettes. Applying these directives to the hair was a major challenge in the first movie, as most dynamic hair solvers have difficulties providing believable simulated motion while adhering to those artistic constraints. Our hero character, Alex the lion, provided an additional hurdle with his mane growing not only on the scalp, but also from the neck and chest. Animators also had only limited control over the shapes generated, and fine tuning individual shots was time consuming and expensive. With a larger cast of lions in the sequel Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, we set out to find a solution that would preserve the movie’s artistic design, provide better animator controls, and could be easily set up on a wide range of characters.