Blondes may have more fun, as the ad used to say, but until now video-game designers have preferred brunettes. Brown hair, it turns out, is much easier for computer-graphics programs to render than are locks of a lighter hue.
But researchers at Cornell University have closed the gap by coming up with a new method for rendering blond hair online. The new process—which traces rays from a light source into the hair—is much quicker than the previously accepted practice, called "path tracing." It can take 60 hours to generate realistic blond hair using path tracing, according to ZDNet. The new method can do equally good work in under three hours. —Brock Read
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