This was an entirely new work flow for grooming human hair. ‘Volumetric Grooming’ organizes the interior layers of hair (eventually XGEN curves), that were previously difficult to manage (especially when simulating the hair motion). We sculpt geometric volumes that represent the exact shape (silhouette, and interior) of the final rendered hair primitives. This workflow changed the direction of the grooming workflow at Disney Animation and is still used to this day.
I started R&D for this workflow, first, on the short film Glago on the main character. We then continued to R&D the workflow on the film Bolt on a few important characters. Bolt proved successful enough to embrace the workflow entirely for the film Tangled. Starting with Flynn (the leading man) we developed missing tools not only for grooming but to allow the simulation to be more flexible than ever before.
