Recently, EA revealed some behind-the-scenes secrets about character hair in Dragon Age 4: Dreadwolf. Teams from Bioware and EA collaborated to enhance the game’s Strand Hair technology.
The developers focused on three main goals for the Strand Hair technology: achieving realistic effects at 60 frames per second, creating physics-driven hairstyles that respond dynamically to environmental effects and character movement. The most impressive detail is that each character has 50,000 individual strands of hair, allowing for over 100 unique hairstyles.
EA stated that the Frostbite team increased the maximum hair length for characters from 63 points to 255 points, giving them a flowing, natural look. EA explained that, unlike other Frostbite technologies, their Strand Hair technology requires custom rasterization software to composite the hair within the game’s framework.
