Patent ID: 8717362

Claim:
A computer system for generating hair comprising: a processor; a memory including a hair pipeline comprising: a surface definition module to define a surface; and an optimization module to: create a bounding box for a set of hairs; determine whether the bounding box is visible, wherein, if the bounding box is not visible, the hair associated with the bounding box is not rendered on a display device; and if the bounding box is visible, (i) sub-divide the bounding box into sub-group bounding boxes until user-defined stopping criteria are reached, wherein the user-defined criteria are selected from at least one of further dividing the sub-group bounding boxes a pre-determined number of times, further dividing the sub-division bounding boxes until a pre-determined depth of the sub-division bounding boxes is reached, further dividing the sub-division bounding boxes until a pre-determined dimension of the sub-division bounding boxes is reached, and further dividing the sub-division bounding boxes until a pre-determined parametric texture space of the sub-division bounding boxes is reached, and (ii) determine whether the sub-group bounding boxes are visible, and if so, hair associated with the visible sub-group bounding boxes is rendered upon the surface on the display device, wherein, if a sub-group bounding box is not visible, the hair associated with the sub-group bounding box is not rendered on the display device.