Patent ID: 7450122

Claim:
A method for determining the collective attributes of a set of hairs, the method comprising: determining a volumetric representation of a hair simulation model, wherein the volumetric representation comprises a plurality of volume elements representing the space occupied by the hair simulation model, wherein at least a first portion of the volume elements each encompasses space including at least two non-colliding hairs of the hair simulation model; determining a set of collective attribute values for the volumetric representation, wherein at least a portion of the set of collective attribute values each represent a collective attribute based on attributes of all of the hairs encompassed by one of the plurality of volume elements, wherein the collective attribute values of the first portion of the volume elements are based on at least non-zero numerical contributions from their respective encompassed two non-colliding hairs of the hair simulation model; and determining a set of optical properties of the set of hairs from the set of collective attribute values.